Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
Yam Awely 1995, Emily-Kam-Kngwarray-acrylic paint on canvas, 152 × 490 Tate Modern’s presentation of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s batiks and acrylic paintings – 29 years after her death – is the first large-scale exhibition of her work by a major European […]
Is Duke Bluebeard’s Castle a tale of external or internal events? ¨Where is the stage: within, or outside you ?¨ asks the Bard in the prologue to Bluebeard’s Castle. Iván Fischer, the founder and conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra […]
¨Franco Zeffirelli spoke with the animals. He spoke with the geese and was convinced he’d trained them. Only later did he learn that they actually understood the music – and knew exactly when to make their entrance¨. So says Cecilia […]
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades – or Pique Dame – was the last opera Stalin attended. Though he had some appreciation for classical music – as depicted in The Death of Stalin – he was never particularly fond of opera. […]
Ukraine features almost on a daily basis on our digital front pages. In the Russo-Ukrainian war Western sympathy clearly lies with the underdog: Ukraine. Yet Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa (1883), inspired by Pushkin’s poem Poltava, portrays the Ukrainian leader of the […]
Intertwined in a lover’s knot – or a leggy pretzel – the nubile Deianira is seen smooching a well–fit Hercules in Hercules and Deianira (1517) by Jan Gossaert. In Giovanni Bellini’s St Jerome in the Wilderness (1460) the patron saint […]
Remember when Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappé for only that one magic season lined-up for Fiorentina? Unfortunately that line-up never happened, it’s pure fantasy football. But in terms of reputation(while perhaps not so much in talent) those three football players come […]
¨How can you fail with Tosca? … If you fail with Tosca, then there is something incredibly wrong¨, Sir Bryn Terfel told me recently. The Welsh bass-baritone is currently performing at Royal Opera Covent Garden in Jonathan Kent’s revived staging […]
It might come as a surprise to Italians and some (foreign) art experts that the Royal Collection Trust (RCT) holds one of the finest groups of Italian Renaissance drawings anywhere in the world. In total the RCT contains almost 2000 […]
An intoxicated man dressed in a white suit, wearing a panama hat enters during the ouverture. He announces that ‘Love is like Death’. I’m not sure who he is quoting, but it’s not Nietzsche, who apparently saw the opera at […]
PROM 61 Thomas Ades, Anton Bruckner, Sir Simon Rattle, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle knows Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony like the back of his hand. He had no need for a score when he conducted the work with […]
PROM 56 Sunday 1 September Berliner Philharmoniker Kirill Petrenko Anton Bruckner’s grandiose symphonies are not everybody’s cup of Grüner Veltliner. Even now, almost 150 years since the Austrian composer wrote his Fifth Symphony, there will be people – maybe even […]