by Music Editor | Sep 24, 2019 | Music
Mommie dearest By Paul Levy Among my regrets is that I am old enough to have seen and heard Maria Callas perform at Covent Garden, but young enough at the time to feel I could not afford the tickets. It goes some way to make up for this lapse that I have seen Joyce... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Sep 22, 2019 | Music, Uncategorized
Bizet’s Carmen is a good example of the dark/fair contrast introduced to Romanticism by Walter Scott: here, Carmen’s (Virginie Verrez) smoking, drinking and all-round bad-girl mezzo v. Micaela’s (Anita Watson) clean-living soprano. The task for the fair-haired woman... 
by Music Editor | Sep 21, 2019 | Music
Brahms and Rachmaninov: the acceptable face of conservative programming? These two composers, each representing his own kind of retro-chic, make for a nice balance of sensual and intellectual, a celebration of the Romantic orchestra, of virtuosity and earnestness.... 
by Neil Young | Sep 11, 2019 | Film
Concorto Comes of Age The biggest, industry-oriented of the world’s film-festivals are often described as having a “hothouse” atmosphere—how ironic, then, that one of the most casual, laid-back and non-materialistic celebrations of cinematic art,... 
by Music Editor | Sep 1, 2019 | Music
Playground for Paladins by Fiona Hook Robert Carsen’s 2011 staging of Handel’s Rinaldo eschews both Handel’s patriotic subtext about the war England was then waging with France, and more contemporary echoes, in favour of a jolly romp taking place in the imagination of... 