tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2982566597157182192012-01-30T22:27:02.297ZFramescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.comBlogger4221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-73319948463311043632012-01-30T10:00:00.000Z2012-01-30T10:00:07.560Z

A conspicuously rich weekend of opera concluded this evening with the first UK performance of Jonathan Harvey's Wagner Dream. A fictional extrapolation of Wagner's regrets at not having completed his Buddhist stage work Die Sieger, the opera involves a singing cast dramatising the story of the girl Prakriti and an acting ensemble playing out a meta-drama of Wagner's distended, visionary death.

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-46574408918151362112012-01-29T15:59:00.000Z2012-01-29T16:18:39.278Z

David McVicar's Scottish Opera production of Der Rosenkavalier at English National Opera is lost in some space of time. The single, crumbling Regency backdrop has lost the battle with creepers. The front of the stage has the cobwebbed gilt of candles (and Paul Constable's lighting perpetuates the idea of a candle-lit performance). 'Once upon a time*' says the design as do the rising and

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-21607485121805941272012-01-26T23:30:00.000Z2012-01-27T08:43:44.064Z

Tonight I found myself at an Amnesty International event. I say found, as I had intended to attend a concert which included a rare opportunity to hear Luigi Dallapiccola's single-stretch opera Il Prigionero. What with the concert also comprising Beethoven's fifth symphony, as well as Amnesty's iconic lighted candle as part of the operatic semi-staging, there was no getting away from the

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-57054217759200391972012-01-23T21:01:00.000Z2012-01-27T00:13:55.441Z

A revival of Francesca Zambello's production of a decade. It looks rather like this: The age shows in no other way than the natural drift of the purpose of the population on stage and the mute spirit of the original conception buried within. I rather enjoyed it although the abstraction pulls hard at the seams of reality, not least in the Act 1 finale where the party descends into farce as the

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-33820045162214906452012-01-18T21:44:00.001Z2012-01-18T21:47:22.388Z

Finally, maybe 19 performances in (even the cast have lost count, apparently), I have been to see one of the shows in the Royal Opera's gargantuan run of Richard Eyre's La Traviata (Paul Higgnins directing the revival). It's a nicely straightforward production with Bob Crowley's vertiginous design trompes for the Act 1 party and the Act 2 gaming scene adding notably gloss. The cast I had on

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-44717942119594274972012-01-14T16:37:00.000Z2012-01-18T21:26:31.384Z

Steve McQueen's new film Shame is a deeply serious, adult urban noir - which, incidentally, brings the director's collaboration with his now-familiar principal Michael Fassbender into the territory of the Scorsese/de Niro partnership (but that's another blog). The film is notable for three particular extracts of music. The first, and easiest to deal with is Harry Escott's original theme,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-27999021013080153102012-01-12T16:43:00.002Z2012-01-12T20:43:27.485Z

Forgive this blogger a brief political piece. However, yesterday saw a pair of announcements which cause considerable concern about the trend for the flow of money intended to support the culture through industry. First there was the PM's brief statement designed to coincide with a visit to Pinewood Studios, which came with this footnote about the expected findings of the Chris Smith led

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-17280416408599075162012-01-11T15:11:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:12:15.980Z

The Artist is a silent film which occasionally flashes the modernity of its production to have some fun. It works. Hazanavicius is careful never to undermine his story with too many postmodern asides. However, both the content of the film (a self-reflexive film about filmmaking) and its style, in which Hazanavicius does make use of the postmodern overview a modern audience has of an earlier

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-61075261223550491052012-01-09T10:00:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:07:32.416Z

(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of Octopussy, May 2003)   It's one of the most famous operatic conceits. Incongruously dressed as the eponymous clown Pagliaccio, a man realises the show must go on though he has just discovered his wife's infidelity. It's drama amplified by absurdity (clip dir. Sam Taylor-Wood, tenor Geraint Dodd). It is in a correspondingly absurd

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-34702893690854942592012-01-07T11:41:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:08:02.328Z

The night before last I watched Le Concert, a feelgood screwball comedy concerning a concert orchestra. The drama turns as a maestro of old Russia gets his former band together to play Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in Paris with Mélanie Laurent as the soloist. The weight of the film is a complicated and ill-executed subplot in which Laurent's character turns out to be the orphaned child of

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-81385369511026295102012-01-06T14:35:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:08:18.129Z

The Haunch Of Venison's exhibition The Mystery Of Appearance is an intriguing show across the gallery's four rooms, but equally an excellent opportunity to see the 103 Bond St. space, complete with the top-floor gallery skylight. It's a super place to exhibit during daylight. The great coup of the show is that the gallery have managed to bring a number of the works on show out of private

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-51941386604024435132012-01-05T19:40:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:08:48.063Z

Without critics the enterprise falls apart. Everyone offering his art on the free market knows that. Wherever the guild of reviewers is rationalized away, the PR agencies of the entertainment corporations take over. The outcome of that has been apparent for some time and can be seen in regional newspapers as well as on private radio stations and the TV establishment: a hollow imitation of

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-90978076165029935432012-01-02T13:31:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:09:10.317Z

My previous post is simply a revisiting of an old theme - the impossibility of replicating acoustic performance. There is little more to be said. Jamie Bell as Tintin. Photo: quartertothree.com It comes as I stopped to consider other intermediary/media dependent art. For example, I find it very difficult to buy into the process of motion capture, or as it has recently been re-monikered,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-1254167651782259032012-01-01T23:35:00.002Z2012-01-11T23:09:29.784Z

Last night I finally got round to seeing The Buena Vista Social Club. Wim Wenders' documentary concerns a group of old but vital Cubans who used to play at one of the musical hotspots of Havana and were rediscovered after more than a decade of neglect by American musician Ry Cooder. The film culminates in footage of a live performance given at Carnegie Hall as part of a tour promoting the album

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-45801716044096801492011-12-31T10:24:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:09:50.953Z

In many ways the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little but enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.  Oh,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-12603007682684659602011-12-30T22:53:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:10:15.576Z

(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of For Your Eyes Only, May 2003) Discussion of For Your Eyes Only could conceivably cover a few distinctions from the outings thusfar. One might note the conspicuously gadget-low Bond, coinciding as it does with John Glen's first stewardship of the franchise. Glen's approach is muscular, even, narratively-focused and realist. In a canon

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-89282072728794800272011-12-29T12:55:00.003Z2012-01-11T23:10:30.708Z

Just when you thought it might be safe to draw up those year-closing best-of lists, something comes along to stop you short. Such is the impact of this straightforward but cacophonously high-octane retrospective of the work of English artist Edward Burra at Chichester's Pallant House Gallery. Even before going into the gallery rooms proper there is an inkling of the quality beyond the doors with

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-49029066862672708152011-12-27T11:18:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:10:47.785Z

Just a list. 10. Our Day Will Come (Gavras) 9. Wuthering Heights (Arnold) 8. Quattro Volte (Frammartino) 7. Jane Eyre (Fukuyama) 6. Weekend (Haigh) 5. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (Wyatt) 4. Submarine (Ayoade) 3. The Skin I Live In (Almodovar) 2. Margaret (Lonergan) 1. We Need To Talk About Kevin (Ramsay) Honourable mentions - I liked Drive (Refn), Kill List (Wheatley), Attack The Block (

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-74926457567346474882011-12-19T12:06:00.003Z2012-01-11T23:11:02.667Z

The Tomb Of The Unknown Craftsman is an exhibition not only curated by Turner Prizewinning artist Grayson Perry, but one for which he contributes about a third of the material content. The fascinating thing about the exhibition is that it is, at first sight, rather tricky to work out exactly which pieces are his work and which are those he has selected from the vaults of the museum. For sure,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-71536137735090214452011-12-17T17:26:00.004Z2012-01-11T23:11:38.739Z

The sequel to Guy Ritchie's successful Sherlock Holmes feature is another action adventure after the model of James Bond or Indiana Jones. Like those celebrated franchises this has its own distinctive soundtrack. Unlike those franchises this isn't because of an arresting original score (by Hans Zimmer) but because of the noteworthy use and incorporation of classical music. Perhaps the most

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-62518926716982732502011-12-08T23:32:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:12:01.033Z

Hector Berlioz This evening I attended a performance of L'Enfance du Christ, Berlioz's approachable oratorio concerning the flight of the holy family from Herod's bloodlust and their resettlement in Sais, in Egypt. Berlioz's music has a cinematic panache all of its own, the scores bursting with melodrama, mental pictures and many of the dramatic effects that one associates with modern cinema.

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-68021514410421141852011-12-05T21:27:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:12:39.138Z

My life isn't an opera! That's a moot point heavily chewed over in Kenneth Lonergan's new film Margaret, a drama that investigates the relationships and moral equivalence of a disparate ensemble of New Yorkers. At their centre is a precocious but emotionally flammable high-school girl, Lisa (played by Anna Paquin). Lisa is prone to escalating the heat of exchanges. In her words, she can become

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-45805286731712217102011-11-13T10:17:00.000Z2011-11-13T20:40:59.836Z

When [Tchaikovsky] smiles, it's a pale smile. Edward Gardner, Music Director, ENO Like Verdi's Don Carlos, Eugene Onegin is a fine opera: an abundance of melody, ripe for good singing and bound with high drama throughout. Also like Don Carlos the heat of the romance comes early and briefly. The descent is long and chilling. Here's what the conductor and cast have to say about their new

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-35651471467304899142011-11-11T20:56:00.001Z2011-11-11T21:30:11.081Z

Errol Morris is everywhere on a screen near you at the moment. His latest documentary feature, Tabloid is opening on screens across the UK this weekend and the night before last BBC 4 showed his 1988 exemplar in the genre The Thin Blue Line. Here's a commercial he directed ten years ago, Photobooth, a spot for Public Broadcasting Channel PBS that won him an Emmy. The track is Di quella pira from

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-63598801343999203612011-11-08T16:06:00.000Z2012-01-11T23:13:00.119Z

The BFI are showing one of the films that they seem to have on rotation down at the South Bank, Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966). There's a good reason for that too. It's a fine film, a thriller with philosophical complexity, it's also a lot of fun, capturing the 1960s youthquake with an objectivity remarkable for being so close to its epicentre. Part of that now oft-cariacatured

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-35365998089210165042011-11-01T10:00:00.000Z2011-12-30T23:06:13.965Z

(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of Moonraker, May 2003) Moonraker is, by a significant margin, the most beautiful Bond movie thusfar. There are two reasons for this. The first is a function of the story. This outing's evil mastermind is a totalitarian eugenicist determined to purge the earth before re-populating it with beautiful people and their progeny. The upshot of

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-1966556892024208342011-10-31T09:45:00.000Z2011-11-01T19:36:08.337Z

I'm a blogger, it's my opinion! Much to the dismay of the few with whom I have discussed it, my experience of Steven Spielberg's new film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was not a happy one. The short version is that I got bored and left early. Given that many are talking about this film as the Indiana Jones outing that the Crystal Skull should have been, this seems

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-65404699735063627012011-10-30T14:22:00.001Z2012-01-11T23:13:26.955Z

Yesterday I saw George Clooney's new film of political skulduggery The Ides Of March. Like a feature length version of an episode of The West Wing, it's a film about the treachery, manipulation and frailties of being human caught beneath the lens in the petri dish of modern American politics. I say lens advisedly. Like The West Wing, there is an intensification of the drama in this situation,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-33669874787715703602011-10-30T07:04:00.000Z2011-10-30T07:05:09.985Z

It's not often that an evening spent at the Royal Opera (let alone any opera company) is rescued by the chorus. This was my basic reaction on leaving the new Der fliegende Holländer (or Flying Dutchman) last night. Clearly the work itself is not in the same ball park of quality as the Ring Cycle (certainly not the post-Tristan operas) despite some splashes of ingenious orchestration. Jeffrey Tate

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-14800441648090023532011-10-29T13:05:00.000+01:002011-10-29T13:11:31.544+01:00

Next weekend sees another outing of a modern underscoring of Carl Dreyer's 1927 silent masterpiece The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. In this screening with live performance, the LSO under Marin Alsop perform Richard Einhorn's Voices Of Light, a work designed to play in tandem with the film. Apparently the whole thing is available on YouTube: This performance comes not too long after the last in a

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-50188850525540326022011-10-28T08:53:00.001+01:002011-10-29T12:19:15.829+01:00

Today sees the latest in the successful chain of Picturehouse cinemas to open in London. The Hackney Picturehouse is a redevelopment of The Ocean building on Mare Street, opposite Hackney Town Hall and the famous Empire. Yesterday I had a chance to look around and see what this new development offers. Most importantly, Hackney Picturehouse is a four-screen cinema complex. Like its siblings

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-27382087647506510102011-10-28T00:04:00.000+01:002011-10-28T17:10:05.252+01:00

Commemorative stamp, issued 1999 Dimitri Tiomkin was one of the most accomplished, garlanded and best-loved film music composers ever to have worked in Hollywood. A drinking buddy of Sergei Prokofiev's who learnt his trade playing both for silent film and the live shows of comedian Max Linder in his native Russia, Tiomkin was a state composer in the early years of the Soviet revolution.

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-56597332041720941592011-10-22T16:21:00.003+01:002011-10-22T16:30:36.255+01:00

Very interesting video of the We Need To Talk About Kevin press conference at the London Film Festival, concerning the music and sound design through which it's incorporated. It's fascinating to get a chink of a window into the process of apportioning extant popular music and the use of the original score. It's extraordinary to think that 'thousands' of pieces were played against the film

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-57354953995030516172011-10-20T08:58:00.000+01:002011-10-21T09:48:39.326+01:00

The film opens in New York, in a park. It's cold. The scene unfolds from a wide crane shot, zooming slowly in towards the end. That end is a decisive moment and the shot cuts away to the film proper. And the film is... Carnage? Roman Polanski's new drama has a prologue played out under the titles, in which we see the act that brings the cast together in a New York apartment. Or perhaps we

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-90503521062998569742011-10-16T01:08:00.000+01:002011-10-17T07:58:48.760+01:00

Conductor Tom Seligman The Kensington Chamber Orchestra, celebrating its 75th year, is an amateur ensemble playing half a dozen or so concerts a year to a high standard. You can tell this from the programming alone: whilst it's not atypical to find a group of enthusiastic part-time musicians programming Mendelssohn (Hebrides Overture) and Haydn (Symphony No. 97), less obvious were the two

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-24229274060690171252011-10-14T18:12:00.005+01:002011-10-14T23:29:44.280+01:00

This week - and into next - the Royal Opera House is blogging about the use of opera in film. They're promoting the beginning of their big screen season and it also serves to draw attention to their successful relays where opera is shown live in cinemas. It's a particularly auspicious time to be doing this of course as the London Film Festival is now fully into its stride. What better time for a

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-28178986616782003202011-10-09T19:33:00.001+01:002011-10-09T19:34:37.893+01:00

Back to the Rosemary Branch Theatre (a super, 50-seater space above a good, straightforward Hackney pub) for more music theatre. On this occasion I had come along to hear Charles Court Opera perform Gilbert and Sullivan's most celebrated operetta The Mikado, in which what I imagine to be the usual ingredients of sprightly melody and textual wit are transposed to a (occasionally ersatz)

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-82574487303980570102011-10-08T10:39:00.001+01:002011-10-08T12:17:07.473+01:00

There is inherent drama in a group of nuns (any closed clerical order, perhaps). The austerity of an existence of service and humility will at one time or another be either too claustrophobic for some or an attractive retreat for others. Consequently, the drama within such a group depends both upon the outside world and upon the background of the characters within. The films The Sound Of Music (

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-5387249175970867772011-10-06T18:32:00.001+01:002011-10-07T17:58:28.329+01:00

I have a vague familiarity with Gerhard Richter's work: I was struck, visiting Tate Britain sometime back, by one of his blurred/reportage paintings Schwimmerinnen (1965), and I visited the Serpentine exhibition of new work three years back. On that occasion I think I got out of bed on the wrong side and had no patience with Richter's intentions. This Tate Modern retrospective is a good,

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-6437651805582018972011-10-04T08:11:00.001+01:002011-10-04T14:17:56.564+01:00

Having 'completely missed' the Boulez love-in at the Southbank this weekend, I thought I might try Exaudi's premiere-heavy programme of contemporary choral music at Kings Place. I have to say that it has been some of the best money I have spent on a concert all year. The group manage the wild frontiers of avant garde choral music with a mix of good singing, fearsome musicianship and (very

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-50649177859198148242011-10-02T10:30:00.000+01:002011-10-02T10:30:01.253+01:00

Lennox Berkeley Lennox Berkeley's A Dinner Engagement and Bohuslav Martinu's Comedy On The Bridge, performed at the Rosemary Branch Theatre by Minotaur Music Theatre, are not particularly well-known works. There are a number of reasons for this. Neither Berkeley nor Martinu are particularly familiar names, and one-act operas are by their nature rather marginalised (it's difficult to programme

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-15087106274084502982011-10-01T09:30:00.000+01:002011-10-01T09:32:59.268+01:00

(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of The Spy Who Loved Me, May 2003) In 1977 cinema was dealing with significant shockwaves. The nature of the experience was being changed by the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas who were creating event matinees in Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Just as Live And Let Die had reacted to the high watermark of

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-64432052908056634952011-09-22T13:03:00.002+01:002011-09-22T16:02:19.989+01:00

This week's most high-profile film release is the big-screen adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré's 1974 cold-war espionage thriller. The natural comparison however is not that between book and film but between film and the 1979 TV miniseries starring Alec Guinness. There are plenty of good things to be said about Tomas Alfredson's film and it stands up well against the

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-1508358228720806042011-09-09T09:29:00.000+01:002011-09-16T08:32:43.089+01:00

The celebrated 1949 Ealing comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets is not the only great British post-war comedy of manners. Benjamin Britten's third opera Albert Herring (1947) has the same tonal core as the film; the lampooning of stereotypes and class heightened by the melodramatisation of death. No doubt this cocktail of morbidity and parochial/familial relationships was part of a general

Framescourerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16337399654564898755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-86268246617432050292011-09-04T09:22:00.000+01:002011-09-05T20:41:03.666+01:00

I suppose the best way to describe the 'Ignite' weekend at the Royal Opera House is to talk in terms of the village fete. The doors are thrown open and the public invited to wander the various spaces. There are half a dozen attractions from conventional performances in the Linbury Studio to a pop-up cinema in the Crush Bar. The Clore Studio, balcony and upstairs bar - though not the main

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-36418945843889592322011-09-03T03:00:00.000+01:002011-09-03T12:23:04.490+01:00

La Clemenza Di Tito is the second opera that Opus Opera has mounted this year, once again a Mozart opera seria. An opera tilting toward the enlightenment, the same mixture of longing and deceit is removed from the god-fearing and fatalism of it's elder cousin Idomeneo and repositioned in a more day-to-day political situation. Though he is not always exactly inspired, this dessication is not a

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Known primarily as a composer - and thrust into the spotlight by last year's attempted gazumping of the X Factor Christmas #1 elect with 4'33" - this touring show, stopping off at the Hayward Gallery, also looks at John Cage's art, writing and performance works. The space is two rooms. The first has a collection of his art works, pieces of chance-structured art that are in themselves

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(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of The Man With The Golden Gun, May 2003) The Man With The Golden Gun is totally obsessed with disproportion. At the centre of this is, of course, probably the tallest principal antagonist of the series in 6'5" Christopher Lee's Scaramanga who invariably shares the frame with his diminutive sidekick Nick Nack, played by the 3'11" Hervé

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Wagner is different. The differences between this composer's music dramas and those of other composers are often issues of taste, let alone the business of scale or technicality. With all the attendant paraphernalia of a full-blown theatrical production what sets it apart can sometimes get obscured. Fulham Opera's production of Das Rheingold is necessarily without the benefits or trappings of a

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First to the technology. This is the second live streaming of a Glyndebourne opera production this season (the first was Die Meistersinger), an event distinguished by its accessibility: if you have a good internet connection, you can watch. There are a number of things to be said about this form of seeing an opera but straight away one must acknowledge that The Guardian, hosting the event, have

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This weekend The Guardian published a supplement to coincide with the second of their live opera performance relays from Glyndebourne. How To Enjoy Opera is intended as a guide for the barely/un-initiated: key works of the repertoire; how opera has changed; basic ideas to scotch myths and prepare the listener for a first experience; and some useful tips on how to find affordably-priced tickets.

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Another day, another new opera in London town. Today I saw the UK premiere of Angel Fighter, a new work which is essentially a short opera (people will probably want to call it a cantata). It was commissioned by the Leipzig Bach Festival and, in situ, sounds something like this: The performance I heard was at London's Cadogan Hall, a much dryer acoustic than the Thomaskirche Leipzig, with a

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(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of Live And Let Die, May 2003) ... and while we're on links, you should play this Barry Adamson track on a loop whilst reading anything to do with Live And Let Die 1973 was the greatest year in the history of cinema. No? OK, read this list of its most popular films. The quality is undeniable and extensive. Live And Let Die comes in at #7.

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Somerset House has, in the past decade, reinvented itself as a buzzing London venue. I was there fairly recently to see the latter half of the Ai Weiwei exhibition curated by the Lisson Gallery. On this special evening for the Courtauld Gallery, which occupies the north side of the building, there were a number of queues of those waiting to get into the Film4 Screen series, where films are shown

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Hortus Conclusus, Peter Zumthor's Pavilion for the Serpentine this year is a stern, even exclusive affair. A thick featureless black gauze suggests the entrance to a labyrinth and, once inside, the space resembles a cloister. It's actually rather lovely inside, peaceful and removed if cramped, with plenty of tables at which to sit and have a drink. I'm not sure that the opacity is going to endear

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In the great tradition of concerts held in St. Paul's Covent Garden, Iris Theatre's production of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus had competition from street performers in the market. It's unlikely that the al fresco crowd were getting a show with more energy than that generated in this production of Strauss' farce though. In fact, it might be that there was too much energy in this high-calibre

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I'm sorry to hear of the death of Lucian Freud, an artist held in very high esteem (I'm not totally familiar with his work myself) not least by the establishment: he held the OM. Freud seems to have been one of the last links to a brutally honest, post-war bohemia of artists. His passing puts me in mind of John Maybury's remarkable biopic of Freud's sometime friend and colleague Francis Bacon,

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In Fake Or Fortune Fiona Bruce and an erstwhile Antiques Roadshow colleague Philip Mould tell the stories of four specific paintings. As the title suggests though, the works are shrouded in sufficient mystery to string out hour-long programmes. Can a work ostensibly by Monet be proved as such to the satisfaction of the market's kingmaker? How did a watercolour by Winslow Homer come to be found at

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The Tree Of Life is released today in the UK. I've had a chance to see the film and though I'm planning to write about it in my usual way, I thought I might think separately about the music used in the film. The music is a vital part of The Tree Of Life, not only aesthetically but also structurally; Malick often chooses to have sequences of fragments of shots strung together and the music lends

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OperaUpClose have achieved with a fairly successful staging of Britten's serial spectrecle. The Turn Of The Screw is a tricky opera littered with themes and vernacular that are very slippery to grasp. Britten's treatment is no less elusive. Though his extraordinary (even by his standards) rigour in composition is clear in analysis, in the theatre, especially one as compressed as The King's Head,

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(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of Diamonds Are Forever, May 2003) 'Through a glass, darkly': Jill St. John as Tiffany Case Unconventional sexuality is no stranger to the franchise: Red (From Russia With Love) is asexual and Klebb is gay; Pussy Galore's lesbianism is tied to her criminal allegiance in Goldfinger (both facets overcome by Bond's hetereomnipotence); Vargas

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The ENO company machine is purring like a high-marque luxury car at the moment: consistent, uncontroversial, impressive. Nico Muhly's Two Boys, here receiving its premiere at ENO ahead of further performances at the Metropolitan Opera, New York is guaranteed a strong showing. The opera (written with librettist Craig Lucas) is a fairly straightforward thriller couched within the intrigue and

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from Idea Generation Gallery's Celebrity Flickr set A super exhibition from the artistic heart of the 90s Mancunian group The Stone Roses. Even if John Squire's show Celebrity were called something else, the works on show, substantial but strangely fragile canvases of Islamic-style patterned art would have an appeal of their own. I think that Squire's reactionary naming of the works have more

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A Midsummer Nightmare. ENO have produced one of the most powerful and discombobulating stagings of an opera that I have seen there for a long time. That they've managed to do so with a production that many have, reasonably, found offensive and with an opera that in my opinion is one of Britten's less successful speaks volumes for director Christopher Alden's conviction. Set in a boy's prep school

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The BP Portrait Award is the most consistently rewarding exhibition that London offers annually. It's also free. It has the additional attraction of being an exhibition that offers no prejudice by featuring 'name' artists. Although the awards have already been distributed and the winners are known, there is no sense of having to understand some sort of philosophical or contextual basis for the

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The Vorticists exhibition at Tate Britain has probably the punchiest opening room I've ever walked into - not just at Tate but at any exhibition anywhere (including the grand drama of the V&A's Baroque atrium). There is one piece, Jacob Epstein's The Rock Drill (1913-15), reconstructed in the 1970s (an account of which can be read here), and mounted here in a room painted a vibrant magenta-purple

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Last night I finally got my hands on a ticket to see a live performance of an opera relayed to a local cinema. Finally? The popularity of these events is such that tickets are in considerable demand. For some this popularity is a minor phenomenon, especially given that opera is a live theatrical experience and that the art form itself is generally seen as rather rarefied. So this 'phenomenon'

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This was a punchy performance of Verdi's Macbeth, a comprehensively well done production with impressive soloists and the company in its stride. The piece is a peculiar animal, given to spasms of drama seemingly in order to shake itself out of drifting into grand opera cruise mode. Also, I heard a performance in a cinema via live relay, an experience with advantages and privations, but one that

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Have you ever seen a dead body? It's the most freaky thing to see the human body at rest. Movement is the fourth dimension in art.(Julian Opie, from The Guardian) It's entirely reasonable to think of Julian Opie's work as part of the Pop Art tradition, given its colourful, bold style and its high profile use as the cover art to Blur's album The Best Of (right). I think of Julian Opie in the same

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I'm a sucker for Pinter, although I have a highly chequered relationship with productions at London's theatres. This Comedy Theatre production reminds me of trying to see The Caretaker (with Michael Gambon) from the balcony, where a mixture of vertigo and sheer discomfort in chairs not replaced since the war meant I left early. Well despite having to battle once again (all of the above plus some

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A one-off performance of Lerner & Loewe's highly-regarded musical My Fair Lady is a welcome lightning strike in a town which currently hosts a high profile run of Pygmalion. This performance was essentially a vehicle for the London Concert Choir, an amateur society for whom the venue, the Cadogan Hall, is a familiar haunt. The evening presented an opportunity for the choir to venture from their

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ENO's new Simon Boccanegra is something of a passion sinkhole, although intriguingly it's as much through design as through misfiring. The opera itself is a queer fish, pulling the focus of the drama away from the conventionally limelit vexed lovers to concentrate on political powerplay and Verdi's own fascination with the father-daughter relationship. An early cousin of the through-composed

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(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, May 2003) The key to the success of On Her Majesty's Secret Service may well be buried in the plain sight of that most archaic British obsession, heraldry (certainly the publisher of Fleming's 1963 novel thought so, right). The College Of Arms plot device is, on the face of it, a ruse to ensnare the

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First the dreaded word: updating. But don't be put off. The action is updated by about three centuries, not four, to the early 1800s - the time of Wagner's birth, Romanticism and revolution. It works rather nicely - one feels more connected to the goings-on. The guildsmen's trades seems more pertinent, being the pregnant seeds of the industrial revolution not fifty years hence. At the back of

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There was a time when TV was AMAZING. In 1999 the success of a TV drama series for Channel 4 called Queer As Folk catapulted its principal star Aidan Gillen into a low orbit of fame. Though Gillen has been a successful actor since then, his appearance on the Baltimore-set civic drama The Wire was an equivocal experience. In the opinion of this blogger he was mis-cast as a councilman and

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The bare arches space of the Southwark Playhouse has been left with little upholstery for this modern-dress production of Antigone. Most familiar amongst contemporary symbols are the four large 'concrete' slabs which form the walls either side of a central opening - the concrete units used in the construction of the Israeli perimeter wall (right). Amazingly, I had a struggle to link up what was

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This is a front-loaded exhibition. The best work culminates in the Constellation pictures of gallery 7 (of 12). From this point on Miro's visionary pieces, including the two rooms of triptychs have crossed over into an esoteric aesthetic and cannot be reached. The burnt and punctured canvases of the penultimate room are the collateral issue of a blinkered artistic intellect - the firework

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The Sly And Unseen Day is George Shaw's touring show ahead of the Baltic Turner Prize exhibition, for which he is shortlisted. It's a concentrated exhibition, a collection of eighteen paintings rendered in Humbrol enamel, the paint used by model enthusiasts to paint their miniatures. The paintings themselves are not miniatures but invariably of a medium size (Ash Wednesday at 91cm x 121cm is

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The first thing you see when you come into Tracey Emin's retrospective at the Hayward is Knowing My Enemy (2002), a collapsed pier and shed which, high up, dominates the space almost as if hidden in plain view, like the proverbial elephant. It's representative of much of the show in two ways. Firstly, in being part appropriated fixture of Emin's past, part construction (complete with affecting

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Watching this The Cherry Orchard reminded me of Michael Haneke's tortured masterpiece The White Ribbon, in as much as there are a collection of self-assured but ultimately parochial individuals caught at the early surge of a tidal wave of social change. Of course Haneke's fairy tale is a blacker affair, accusing, cold. The attraction of The Cherry Orchard is that for all the chill wind of change

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Ahead of Tracey Emin's retrospective at the Hayward opening on Wednesday, I'm reading a Thames & Hudson collection of essays on the artist, The Art Of Tracey Emin. It's fairly old - published 2002 - so it has some solid summary and analysis of what this arch yBa was all about in her heyday but no information of her work over the decade since. I myself haven't really heard much about Emin's work

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The Lisson Gallery and Somerset House are staging exhibitions of Ai Weiwei's work just as the Tate Modern Turbine Hall Sunflower Seeds are finally harvested: yet all were arranged before the artist's dubious incarceration by the Chinese government. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing, as it happens. The artist's work speaks for itself without any explicit reference to the politics of modern

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(Here is a link to a revised version of my IMDb review of You Only Live Twice, May 2003) The You Only Live Twice OST LP cover The BlogalongaBond project has been bowled one or two googlies already. No sooner had the idea got traction than John Barry died, and then earlier this month Angela Scoular, an actor in Bonds both official and spoof was reported to have taken her own life. These are

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I have finally got about to visiting this exhibition of the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco's work late in the day. I'm pleased I did. Like the Donald Judd exhibition of seven years ago I came away with a serious, un-premeditated reaction to the exhibition. Unlike the Donald Judd exhibition my reaction was not aesthetic so much as personal. Orozco's intense eye for the way in which our world

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(This is a link to a revised version of my original IMDb.com review, May 2003) Thunderball, Penguin 2004 The name's Jones, Davy Jones. We have yet to get to the burial at sea opening of You Only Live Twice, still this film seems to want to scuttle itself at every turn (even the 2004 Penguin edition of Ian Fleming's novel, right, uses an image from You Only Live Twice - perhaps the publishers

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(animation by Si Clark) With this production of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, the Royal Opera shows commendable nerve. The show is a sumptuous, four set, present-day updating which draws the autocratic rule of the Tsar full circle with the current oligarchy. A mob in designer black parade their entitlement ostentatiously and often with a gun in hand - the people are hassled into complaint

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The V&A's latest exhibition, on the Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century, is very close to home. The art and design of the group loosely centred about Rossetti's work and ideals was a well-researched, globally sourced hotchpotch of contemporary Eastern and Antiquarian art which became the mainstay of the South Kensington Museum, later the V&A itself. Leaving the exhibition is a curiously

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Here's the Royal Opera's trailer: This evening's double-feature in the Royal Opera's Opera Shots series was a Stewart Copeland adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale-Heart followed by A Doctor's Tale, composed by Anne Dudley to a text by Terry Jones, also directing. The cramped musical hall-style set and lighting design (including projections) for Tell-Tale-Heart really intensifies the

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With this new production of The Coronation Of Poppea, OperaUpClose have rediscovered their mojo. All the inventive intent sidetracked by the success of Boheme has once again found the right vehicle. It's really pleasing to know that the Spreadbury-Maher/Norton-Hale enthusiasm for opera wasn't just because of an idea for the one work. Part of this reinvigoration comes with a fresh team. Mark

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An unexpectedly hot evening at the Hampstead Gatehouse Theatre, and not only because of the premature arrival of summer. Handel's late opera has the familiar operatic issues of romantic entanglements and Olympian meddling, but with the politics of the bedroom rather than the boardroom. Aside from a youthful willingness to engage with the work's explicit nymphomania, it's a good opera for the

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As March becomes April the opportunity to see opera has exploded across London like some sort of daffodil flashmobbing. Indeed, with the festival season just on the horizon there's a great deal of rehearsing going on across the country in addition to the regional companies that continue to provide high-quality operatic experiences (by all accounts). Moreover, the majority of the operatic activity

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Based on a modestly successful contemporary play by Alan Richardson, Robert Hugill's When A Man Knows is a two-handed incarceration thriller. A man in a suit (Eddie) finds himself shackled and hooded in a disused factory. His incomprehension and outrage becomes belligerence as a woman (Pamela) arrives. Proud but defensive she weathers his sarcasm, pleading and bargaining, to reveal the reason for

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I put my frustrations about the absurdity of opera into a sketch for my Channel 4 series The Armando Iannucci Shows [Autumn 2001]. In it, I attend a performance at Covent Garden of Ibiza Uncovered: the Opera, in which we mounted a full-scale modern production, with trained opera singers rather too old for the parts singing in their bathing trunks about shagging and going to Manumission to see

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-35216578632127555162011-03-26T09:35:00.006Z2011-03-26T22:56:20.719Z

The recent release of Werner Herzog's Cave Of Forgotten Dreams is the latest in a short but high-calibre roster of German artists working in France over the past ten years. At the forefront is the film director Michael Haneke. Code Unknown presented a matrix of interlaced stories concerning contemporary Parisians; the subsequent Hidden linked social volatility to France's political history.

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-35626188436956153792011-03-25T23:27:00.002Z2011-03-25T23:29:46.367Z

This compact but rich exhibition at the British Museum has an inevitable political thrust. Not only is the exhibition of cultural and material treasures from that country an exercise in heightening awareness of a region in which we are at war. The exhibitions is, in fact, largely comprised of artefacts discovered in the lull between post-war conflicts and then hidden during the resurgence of

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-84459773465362729812011-03-22T14:34:00.003Z2011-03-22T14:54:18.176Z

A major piece by Anselm Kiefer, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love) has recently gone on show at Hoxton Sqaure's White Cube gallery. Like so much of Kiefer's work, this is a collection of pieces concerned with history - the pieces are inspired by a Greek legend - and by being a continuous part of that history - they are made in such a way as to draw attention to their

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-41053050343589159862011-03-19T12:36:00.007Z2011-03-21T23:04:52.585Z

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' new opera Kommilitonen! is about the heroic, principled actions of twentieth century students. It's written as an ensemble vehicle for the student corps of the Royal Academy of Music, but, of course, serendipity keeps tabs on these things. It looks as if it could have been written to the current political agenda: a significant domestic student protest within the last

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-90613280992150901102011-03-17T22:21:00.002Z2011-03-17T22:25:57.207Z

Well, better late than never. This retrospective closes tomorrow and was worth getting to see on its final evening. John Stezaker has been superimposing, juxtaposing, cutting up and cutting out found images for about forty years. The results are often surreal, sometimes challenging and always witty. If the exhibition had been sold on a single style of image it was the superimposition of

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-55150719075167682552011-03-14T21:42:00.017Z2011-03-15T14:11:59.582Z

What's the difference between a cameo, a small role and a bit part? Cameos take in non-actors playing roles, like Richard Branson in Casino Royale, Stan Lee in various Marvel adaptations (and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock in almost every film he made). These clips also suggest another typical component of a cameo - that the featured individual is caught in frame briefly and, most likely, without

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298256659715718219.post-28232006888491551832011-03-12T21:22:00.000Z2011-03-12T21:22:39.782Z

Why do we ask so many questions? Two people shouldn’t know each other too well if they want to fall in love. L’eclisse (1962)love Monica Vitti, love Michelangelo Antonioni. This super-minimalist gif from the amazing iwdrm.tumblr.com

Framescourernoreply@blogger.com0