Arts
Cover stories
These days, Aubrey Powell is a genial 70-year-old who can be found most mornings having breakfast at his local Knightsbridge…
Girl power
Lady Macbeth, which has nothing to do with boring old Shakespeare beyond indicating a certain archetype (huge sighs of relief…
A familiar Ring
Herbert von Karajan established the Easter Festival in Salzburg 50 years ago with a production of Die Walküre that is…
Revolutionary road
Cairo is deceptively calm, says Egyptian film-maker Mohamed Diab. ‘People were so scared from the fighting in the streets that…
A square dance in Heaven
It’s 500 years since Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sparking…
The real deal
The other day I had a very dispiriting conversation with a TV industry insider. It turns out that everything you…
Ray Davies: Americana
There is some surprise that after all these years Ray Davies has turned his attention to America. He is the…
Mission impossible?
Just before Peter Donohoe played the last of Alexander Scriabin’s ten piano sonatas at the Guildhall’s Milton Court on Sunday,…
Fallen angel
The Adèsives were out in force at Covent Garden last Monday for the UK première of their hero’s third opera,…
Pleasing pedantry
Christopher Hampton’s 1968 play The Philanthropist examines the romantic travails of Philip, a cerebral university philologist, forced to choose between…
Psycho thriller
Psychological thrillers — or ‘thrillers’ as they used to be known — have become almost as ubiquitous on television as…
Passion indeed
‘The dripping blood our only drink/ The bloody flesh our only food…/ Again, in spite of that, we call this…
Take a bow
Monteverdi 450 — the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists’ tour of his three operas to 33 cities across two…
Boozy bard
Even the Bard’s staunchest fans admit that ‘Shakespeare comedy’ may be an oxymoron. That’s the assumption of the touring company…
John Olsen, Sydney Sun (or King Sun) 1965
His work has been there for all our adult lives; John Olsen’s artistic vision has become part of our visual…
Acting up
Gemma Arterton’s new film, Their Finest, is about second world war propaganda. Her character, who is bookish and sensitive, is…
All dressed up, nowhere to go
Rules Don’t Apply is Warren Beatty’s first film appearance in 15 years and his first as writer, director, producer and…
Constable on sea
John Constable was, as we say these days, conflicted about Brighton. On the one hand, as he wrote in a…
The real deal
How about this for an inspiring response to what could have been a personal tragedy. Chi-chi Nwanoku was in the…
Country pleasures
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights…
David Hockney inside the exhibition at NGV
The impressive David Hockney Show which closed recently at the NGV, having attracted big crowds, will have left no one…
First Bourne
‘Modern’ dance was no laughing matter in 1987. Harold King, director of the now-defunct London City Ballet, cattily typified it…
Concrete cuckoo
The Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council provides a salutary example of a tiny ‘elite’ foisting ‘anti-elitist’ practices on the ‘non-elite’…
Seeking closure
The Sense of an Ending is an adaptation of Julian Barnes’s 2011 Man Booker prize-winning novel starring Jim Broadbent (we…
The good, the indifferent and the simply awful
‘There is only one thing worse than homosexual art,’ the painter Patrick Procktor was once heard to declare at a…
