[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gKYtCvM4cAQpsJxYekkWhiqX3TD4s6wQ"] The English National Opera has a really big problem – or, rather, has given itself a big problem. It has decided to “refresh” its core repertory by commissioning a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. The rub is that the former staging wasn’t just any old Rigoletto, it was Jonathan Miller’s greatest of all Rigolettos, … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2014
Dear George Clooney, About those marbles…
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="PjVNV5Zdugg8HexsYqCyx57z1XQQw7KI"] Dear George Clooney, As another Lexington, Kentucky boy, I’ve often wanted to write a fan letter to you. (I’ve been told that some members of our families knew each other, though I’m a good deal older than you, and left my old KY home when you were a child.) Monuments Men is the perfect excuse, as … [Read more...]
Don self-absorbed and solitary?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="FJ72EuFrKSh1OawAdfDgPgR2oZlmAAWV"] Royal Opera House Director of Opera Kasper Holten’s first dive into directing a production at Covent Garden was a belly-flop Eugene Onegin. He was been more successful with the current Don Giovanni, at least to the extent that seeing and hearing it is an enjoyable experience. If his staging contains no new insights into the piece … [Read more...]
It ain’t Shakespeare
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="yMNsxjvC1NZg7QolcUkqidemBUq7Nn8a"] The secret of the success of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies is seeing the events of the reign of Henry VIII through the eyes of an unlikely character in the grand sweep of history, Thomas Cromwell. A London lawyer with a reputation for toughness and bullying, the son of a butcher and therefore not a … [Read more...]