This stunning exhibition educates as it enthrals. Strachan’s themes are serious and consistent: he focuses our attention on black people and their achievements that have been sidelined or obscured by our overwhelmingly white understanding – and re-telling – of history. He navigates this over-arching topic through a wide range of disciplines and media: sculpture, paint,…
Marital jealousy and the tears of a clown at Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park’s decision to bring two operas together in a double-bill was a stroke of genius yesterday evening. Il segreto di Susanna and Pagliacci deal with the same theme of marital jealousy, but in style and content they couldn’t be more different. ‘Il segreto di Susanna’ by German-Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, is a little-known…
Emotional intelligence: ‘Eno’
This post is about Gary Hustwit’s new documentary on musician, producer, artist, thinker and what-you-will, Brian Eno. Please feel free to read the sections in any order. Pro-Bono This version of U2’s lead singer – still a youngster, suspended between earnest rookie and later model of save-the-world self-assurance he would eventually become – pours every…
‘Edgar’ – Puccini’s early unloved opera performed at Opera Holland Park
2024 is the centenary of Puccini’s death. In order to honour the great man, James Clutton, Director of Opera at OHP, opted to put on Tosca this season and also Edgar, a little-known early work of Puccini’s. Edgar premiered at La Scala in 1899 and received a lacklustre reception. Believing he could improve on the opera,…
“a warm tribute” – Matt Dibble: 24 Preludes & Fugues
“a warm tribute” – Matt Dibble: 24 Preludes & Fugues
Jazz circuit: Tom Cawley, Vortex, London
The jazz pianist Tom Cawley is responsible for one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever been to in my life. I’m thinking back to what feels like pre-history, when Croydon – my patch – not only had a music venue tucked discreetly inside its town hall, but hosted an annual jazz festival. If my reckoning…
Crown prints: ‘Royal Portraits’, The King’s Gallery, London
Subtitled ‘A Century of Photography’, this is an absolute crowd-pleaser of an exhibition, precision-tooled to draw in the fascinated tourist alongside the domestic royal-watcher. However, whatever your views on the monarchy (which, I can assure you, it won’t change in any way), I still think it deserves your attention. This is a show equally concerned…
Paul Grant Cuts It as the Barber of Seville at Opera Holland Park
It was over to Opera Holland Park again, this time for Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. In its time, this opera was a huge success and it remains popular to this day. I have seen it twice in the last few months, at English National Opera, and last Thursday at Opera Holland Park. What makes this such…
Tosca and her Toy Boy tenor impress at OHP
Opera Holland Park has opened the season with Puccini’s operatic blockbuster Tosca. At OHP the stage was transformed into a back alley in Rome. It was 1968, mid-election, and there was trouble on the streets. In the opening scene, the police laid into demonstrators, political prisoners hid out in the church, while police chief, Scarpia, issued…
A new support system: Music Patron
Music Patron is an exciting, fascinating and even provocative new arts-funding initiative. It not only examines and challenges the ways we can, and do, support musicians, but offers a solution that aims to achieve practical, positive outcomes in the face of ongoing financial and ideological attacks on the industry. The name itself deliberately conjures up…
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