Three dolours trilogy: Puccini, ‘Il trittico’, Scottish Opera

‘Il trittico’ – or, ‘The Triptych’ – is made up of three one-act operas, each roughly an hour long, that on the surface appear totally distinct. So much so, in fact, that companies often break the work up into something more manageable: presenting two parts as a double-bill, for example, or pairing one of the…

Elizabeth lines: ‘Gloriana’ at English National Opera

ENO’s one-off presentation of Britten’s coronation opera – originally programmed as a platinum jubilee-year special – was destined to become a powerfully significant evening. A double tribute: not only to the late monarch herself, but to the ENO company itself – still very much alive, defying its would-be executioners by putting its heart and soul…

Organised K-os: ‘Hallyu! – The Korean Wave’, V&A, London

‘Hallyu’ – the eye-catching title of this big-ticket exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (‘V&A’) – translates as ‘Korean wave’, the phrase used to describe Korean culture’s steady rise to prominence over the last 25 years or so. Informed by a K-pop aesthetic, it’s a heady, day-glo, assault-on-the-senses experience. Throw yourself into it and…

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022

The exhibition shows the work from two publications and two exhibitions of four nominees: Deana Lawson, Anastasia Samoylova, Jo Ractliffe and Gilles Peress. All four photographers challenge, in different ways, preconceived histories by using their own photographic evidence to posit alternative viewpoints.

Retrospecstive 2021: slight return

One more look in the rear-view mirror before 2021 disappears completely… After the multi-course blowout of choosing 25 recordings of the year, this is more of a digestif, if you will. A few events and developments that gave me cause for celebration: one each for pop, classical, TV, media and film. Bon ‘Voyage’: the return…

20 from 2020

However badly this year has treated us – and in the UK, it has treated those working in the arts very badly indeed – we have still been lucky enough to hear an astonishing amount of great music. Before joining ArtMuseLondon, I would normally assemble a couple of ‘round-up’ posts for my own blog ‘Specs’…

Over the Top with Everything They’d Got: British Baroque at Tate Britain

The new show at Tate Britain, British Baroque: Power and Illusion starts in another epoch when our relationship with Europe was a tad strained, let us say, and ends at the point when a German prince who spoke not a word of English was invited – if not begged – to take over the English throne. You’d almost think Tate Britain had timed this show deliberately.

Don McCullin

Don McCullin, who has a fair claim to the title of the UK’s greatest living photographer, was born in 1935 in Finsbury Park – a bloody tough area of London before the war, and even more so after, when much of it had been bombed flat. The first photograph McCullin was paid for, in 1958,…