by Lucien Jenkins | Feb 12, 2018 | Music
The most startling aspect of WNO’s account of Verdi’s tale of doomed love is a wicked fairy. As though moonlighting from the Sleeping Beauty, Justina Gringyte participates in the overture beating her drum major-style mace on the ground in time to Verdi’s...
by Mark Pullinger | Feb 10, 2018 | Awards, Music
Over the past week, the Music Section has made presentations to two of our 2017 Critics’ Circle Award winners. After the opening night of Opera North’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, Mark Valencia presented the award for Outstanding Achievement to Richard...
by Sebastian Scotney | Feb 7, 2018 | Music
“Will she appear?” I was asked by a friend just a few hours before last night’s concert. Martha Argerich has become so indelibly associated with the adjective “elusive”, it increases the urgency to catch her when she does. And appear she duly did in front...
by Amanda Holloway | Feb 7, 2018 | Music
If the Royal Opera had been looking for the polar opposite to its last production of Carmen, it hit the jackpot with Barrie Kosky’s staging. Whereas Francesca Zambello created a conventional Spanish fantasy set around a Seville plaza, teeming with urchins, chickens...
by Simon Tait | Feb 7, 2018 | Visual Arts
The visual arts centre created in Cambridge by Jim Ede has undergone an £11.3m restoration and expansion. Simon Tait reports. There ought to have been a sign outside Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge saying “Modern Art Starts Here”. The story of this extraordinary place is...