Arts
Thrilling, heartbreaking music drama – you need to see it: ENO’s Porgy and Bess reviewed
Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess springs to life fully formed, and pulls you in before a word has been sung. A…
The truth about Wilhelm Furtwängler
The morning after the first night of Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides in May 1995, I received a call from Otto…
Laudably perverse – maybe album of the year: Cypress Hill’s Elephants on Acid reviewed
Grade: A+ Easily album title of the year, maybe album of the year. A true bravura offering from these supposedly…
‘I should just shut up’: Dominic West on #MeToo and the perils of talking politics
Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his…
Mitchell Galleries
One of the loveliest and best-loved buildings in Sydney, the Mitchell Building of the State Library of NSW is enjoying…
Is modernist architecture unhealthy?
Architects and politicians have a lot in common. Each seeks to influence the way we live, and on account of…
Full of fabulous, but baffling, things: Oceania reviewed
At six in the morning of 20 July 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson first set eyes on a Pacific Island. As…
Radio 4 treats its radio listeners as second-best in favour of those who listen to podcasts
How very odd of Radio 4 not only to release The Ratline as a podcast before broadcasting it on the…
What was Neil Armstrong like? A complete bore if First Man is anything to go by
Damien Chazelle’s First Man is a biographical drama that follows Neil Armstrong in the decade leading up to the Apollo…
Pinter comes across as an eccentric lightweight scribbler: Pinter Two reviewed
Pinter Two, the second leg of the Pinter season, offers us a pair of one-act comedies. The Lover is a…
The new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker is a delight – but the script isn’t
You won’t be aware of this because the BBC has been keeping it very quiet. But the new Doctor Who…
Why Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield
Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is a serial seducer, a man of many…
I genuinely liked Siegfried – which almost never happens: Royal Opera’s Ring cycle reviewed
‘On Brünnhilde’s rock I drew the breath that called your name; so swift was my journey here.’ It’s Act Two…
What’s not to like about Christine and the Queens? Her music
Grade: B– Ooh goody — a parade to rain on! You wouldn’t believe the hyperbole expended by the rock critics…
Stuart Devlin candelabras (1980-81) in Dining Room
Every day, Australians carry some of his work in their pockets. Stuart Devlin (1931-2018) designed the decimal currency introduced in…
Bellini vs Mantegna – whose side are you on?
Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…
After 1980 Pinter began to write like a student troll: Pinter at the Pinter reviewed
The drop-curtain resembles a granite slab on which the genius’s name has been carved for all time. The festival of…
Impeccably – and intriguingly – unclear: BBC1’s The Cry reviewed
It’s a radical thought I know, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like if a new TV thriller…
![A woman-child of dangerous assurance: Allison Cook as Salome in Adena Jacobs’s new production for English National Opera. [Catherine Ashmore]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/6Octopera.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A fascinating failure, but a failure nonetheless: ENO’s Salome reviewed
Yes, Oscar Wilde never wrote it. No, Strauss didn’t intend it. In fact, the composer famously demanded the Dance of…
Lady Gaga is a revelation: A Star is Born reviewed
This version of A Star Is Born, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, is the fourth iteration (Janet Gaynor and…
A week of extraordinarily direct and honest radio on the World Service
The most inspiring voice on radio this week belongs to Hetty Werkendam, or rather to her 15-year-old self as she…
William Forsythe on the day the US government threatened to arrest him
William Forsythe has been called a lot of things in his four decades as a dancemaker: wilful provocateur, ‘pretentious as…
No one would want this gig to be the final memory of them: Soft Cell at the O2 reviewed
When Soft Cell first appeared on Top of the Pops in summer 1981, miming along to their version of Gloria…
Artists of The Australian Ballet
There is a lot of dance news about at the moment. The Australian Ballet’s new version of Spartacus, to the…
Brett Anderson on fame, fear and being 50
‘I always think they’re not lusting after me,’ Brett Anderson says of the middle-aged fans who still turn up to…
