The liberating, invigorating music of Pierre Boulez
‘When you’re not offensive in life, you obtain absolutely nothing,’ declares a twinkly-eyed Pierre Boulez in one of the archive…
In praise of one of the great avant-garde trolls of cinema
The most important thing to know about the filmmaker and writer Marguerite Duras is that she was a total drunk.…
Children have the Proms. Grown-ups head to Salzburg. Snob summer
Salzburg Festival doesn’t mess about. The offerings this year include an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Lithuanian, a…
In defence of noise music
It’s curious to consider what a venerable old thing noise music is. That this most singularly untameable of musics –…
Every crumb of Kurtag’s music is a feast: Endgame, at the Proms, reviewed
The fun starts early in Beckett’s Endgame. Within minutes of opening his mouth, blind bully Hamm decides to starve his…
A brilliantly cruel Cosi and punkish Petrushka but the Brits disappoint: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence reviewed
Aix is an odd place. It should be charming, with its dishevelled squares, Busby Berkeley-esque fountains, pretty ochres and pinks.…
In defence of the Arts Council
I once knew a monster who said she could not read Proust because there were no figures in Proust with…
The West has much to learn from Hungarian culture
Hungarian culture is living through a golden age, says Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and the West has much to learn from it
The fine art of French rioting
Watching the kids and police play hide and seek
Apocalypse chic: Autechre, Last Days and Southbank's Xenakis day reviewed
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Apocalyptic minimalism: Carl Orff's final opera, at Salzburg Festival, reviewed
‘Germany’s greatest artistic asset, its music, is in danger,’ warned The Spectator in June 1937. Reporting from the leading new-music…
'Oculus Quest is really the way': film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul interviewed
Igor Toronyi-Lalic talks to the film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul about sleep, Tilda Swinton and VR
Modernism's back, baby: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival reviewed
It’s not everyone’s idea of fun, a trip to Huddersfield in the depths of November. But as any veteran of…
A lockdown masterpiece and the Jessica Rabbit of concertos: contemporary classical roundup
So it finally happened: I experienced my first vocal setting of the word ‘Covid’. An encounter that was, inevitably, more…
Why are the Oscars such a lousy guide to great cinema?
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland,predicted to win big at this year’s Oscars, is not a terrible film. It’s a slight, sentimental Grapes…
What's an art form that feels unpopular and pointless, but isn't? Video art
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
Boxed-up Churchill is a real work of art
Central London is becoming a paradise for modernists like me. First there was the extraordinary encasement of Big Ben in…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
The rude, ripe tastelessness of John Eliot Gardiner’s Berlioz is the perfect antidote to Haitink’s Instagram Bruckner
Conducting is one of those professions — being monarch is perhaps another — where the less you do, the more…
You leave awe-struck but also a bit frazzled: Holland Festival’s Aus Licht reviewed
In Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI hands become fists, arms and elbows clubs, shoving, pounding and ker-pow-ing the keyboard to near oblivion.…
If opera survives, it’ll be thanks to artists and curators, not opera houses
It was bucketing it down in Venice, yet the beach was heaving. Families, lovebirds, warring kids, a yappy mutt, all…
It’s ugliness, not beauty, that spurs us to action
Timothy Hyde’s Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye is not about why we find things ugly. It’s…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
