Arts
Roberto Alagna as Pinkerton at the Met 2016
Born in France of Sicilian parents, Roberto Alagna has been one of the opera world’s outstanding tenors for nearly 25…
Death metal
With its loud guitar riffs and even louder fashion, heavy metal has always been ripe for ridicule. In its mid-1980s…
The male gaze
Everybody Wants Some!! is a comedy written and directed by Richard Linklater, which is the good news, but it’s set…
Surreal, strange and scatological
Why do we put one work of art beside another? For the most part museums and galleries tend to stick…
Unsung hero
One of the greatest choral symphonies of the 20th century, entitled Das Siegeslied (Psalm of Victory), has been heard only…
Unsung hero
One of the greatest choral symphonies of the 20th century, entitled Das Siegeslied (Psalm of Victory), has been heard only…
Shaw thing
T.E. Lawrence is like the gap-year student from hell. He visits a country full of exotic barbarians and after a…
Shaw thing
T.E. Lawrence is like the gap-year student from hell. He visits a country full of exotic barbarians and after a…
Divine comedy
You have to be quite silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. G&S is still…
Divine comedy
You have to be quite silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. G&S is still…
The power of song
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
The power of song
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
Something to crow about
There’s no way of saying this without shredding the last vestiges of my critical credibility, but this new Ben Elton…
When opera singers can’t sing
Were Florence Foster Jenkins and her fellow culprits touchingly heroic, cynically fraudulent or just plain bonkers? Rupert Christiansen reports
A literary lap dance: Doctor Faustus reviewed
Great excitement for play-goers as a rare version of a theological masterpiece arrives in the West End. Doctor Faustus stars…
The 17th century painter who hacked her way through Suriname in search of insects
Maria Sibylla Merian was a game old bird of entrepreneurial bent, with an overwhelming obsession with insects. Born in Frankfurt…
Peter Phillips bids farewell to his music column after 33 years
This, my 479th, is to be my last contribution as a regular columnist to The Spectator. I have written here…
Royal Opera’s Tannhäuser is one of the ugliest stagings I have set eyes on
Cursed, or perhaps blessed, with almost no visual memory at all, I had almost completely forgotten what the Royal Opera’s…
Not a trip to the cinema you’ll bitterly resent – or hugely enjoy: Florence Foster Jenkins reviewed
Before we turn our attention to Florence Foster Jenkins — but if you can’t wait, it’s so-so — I feel…
Predictably meh: Scottish Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed
Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…
The Heckler: love your music, Macca, just not sure about you
It’s slightly galling, after years of sticking up for Paul McCartney, to read a new biography of the bloke and…
If you want to know how music really works listen to Classic FM not Radio 3
He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…
Even the sternest Leavisite critic would find it hard to resist BBC2's Peaky Blinders
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
Wednesday Lily and Otto by Myriam Kin-Yee
To be celebrating the 200th anniversary this year of the Royal Botanic Gardens is quite astounding. Just 28 years after…
Deluded divas
When the Fat Lady Sings, everyone is primed to chortle, even if she is Montserrat Caballé and doing it wonderfully…
