Category Archive: MUSIC
Valentine’s Day
St. Valentine (from 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'
(2015 – ASO) After champagne and real Turkish delight, and the annual re-run of Picnic at Hanging Rock, it was time to head through Adelaide’s February furnace to the Festival Theatre, where Arvo Volmer conducted the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s version of a concert, curiously and incongruously entitled “Passionate Tchaikovsky”. We had the Russian composer’s Violin Concerto, with Ilya Gringolts sublime on lead violin, wearing a frock coat straight from Fiddler on the Roof. Written in 1878 to console its creator for the unfortunate and instantly-regretted decision to marry the loopy and self-centred Antonina Milyukova, the piece was not played till…
Continue Reading →Der Freischutz
(By Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber, premiering in Berlin on 18 June, 1821) It is good news that Melbourne Opera staged this neglected gem not so long ago – bad news that TVC couldn’t get there to see it, and at the Athanaeum what’s more! It was reviewed by Peter Burch in ‘The Australian’. Quite daring when first staged in 1821, as much for the lower class characters as the ghostly theme that enchanted a young Wagner, Weber’s music is accomplished and highly accessible (touches redolent of Beethoven, and even, in overture, AIbioni) with effects used to great advantage, especially in the…
Continue Reading →Elvis and the Brummies
Birmingham Symphony Hall 31 May 2013 Yes, believe it or not, TVC stalked Elvis Costello to Birmingham to see his spectacular spinning songbook concert. First, a morning stroll to sneak a peek at roadies setting up the wheel (which turns out to be somewhat incidental during the show) and then to while away some pleasant hours at the Art Gallery in the square – some very good pre-Raphaelites as well as post renaissance art, including an installation featuring a sheep alarmingly bearing human teeth; St Paul’s embarkation by Lorrain; an excellent portrait of Prince Faisal by Augustus John; a bust…
Continue Reading →Ultra-kitsch
O tempora, o mores! Tosca’s taking up with fascists in the updated OA production (‘don’t cry for me, Mussolini, the truth is you can’t spoil Tosca…’). Fondation Louis Vuitton opened in Paris last October, described by Jonathan Meades in the Spectator (Xmas 14) as “yet another of Frank Gehry’s exercises in outsize origami.” Yet it would be hard to match, for sheer ugliness, the Centre Georges Pompidou. [Update note: The Times reports (September, 2017) that Richard Rogers, the man responsible for the Pompidou Centre, has criticized interventions by Prince Charles on additions to historic public buildings, calling the Prince “architecturally ignorant…[viewing…
Continue Reading →Don Giovanni
Image courtesy of Barcex
English National Opera, London Coliseum (Autumn 2004) Oh Dear: what have we here? Don Giovanni is driven on stage in a clapped-out Ford Consul (or something – not good on cars, TVC will use Pam Ayres’ phrase) and out spills Donna Anna and Don Giovanni, covering up their junk. And downhill from there. This Calixto Bieto production was touted as “Mozart meets Reservoir Dogs” . It was more a case of ‘Salieri meets The Panic in Needle Park meets Cruising’. David Parry conducted. Eventually, some of the good bits floated back into our cerebral cortex, helped by wine chugged at…
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