The Colour Violet, Etcetera Theatre, Camden. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Chilean singer-songwriter, poet, cult figure Violeta Parra’s most famous work “Gracias a la vida” can be viewed as an outpouring of gratitude – or as a suicide note.
music
The Merry Widow, ENO. Review by Julia Pascal.
This was the first time I had seen this operetta and the idea of Viennese kitsch did not excite me. Director Max Webster clearly shares my antipathy for schlock. His production is a wonderful reframing of the story from a post #MeToo perspective.
Your Culture is not mine…or is it? America’s tense relationship with high culture. By Stephanie V Sears
As a half French, half American individual, I give in to a pastime common to double nationals, which consists of regularly comparing both countries of origin.
Puccini Museum, Lucca, Italy. By Barbara Lewis.
Lucca, Italy, was the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini in 1858 in an apartment that is now a museum to the last and most famous of generations of Puccini maestros, restored to its Second Empire glory, down to a bed, surrounded by columns, that replicates the one in which Puccini was born.
Hugh Coltman. Interview By Clare Doyle.
I had the great pleasure of meeting Hugh Coltman during the Marciac Jazz festival in the South West of France at the end of July. Born in the West Country, close to Bristol, Hugh Coltman has been living in Paris since 2000.
Virgin, theSpace. Review by Barbara Lewis,
A show that leaves the line “Are you fucking kidding me?” ringing in your ears and delivers a series of morals that include “don’t pressure other people into sex because it doesn’t work” and “don’t judge people by appearances, unless they’re really hot” could cause offence.
BBC Proms 50. Review by Julia Pascal.
The evening opened with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major K622. This is Mozart’s last finished orchestral work. Composed in 1789, it is one of the most exquisite of Mozart’s creations. Annelien Van Wauwe’s interpretation was curiously intimate and delicate.
Jazz Joan and Cigarettes. Clare Doyle.
Here we are in a small town in the Gers department in South West France. This year around 200,000 visitors are expected to descend upon the village for the Marciac Jazz festival. It sounds impossible, but it works!
Andersson Dance/Scottish Ensemble – Goldberg Variations – ternary patterns for insomnia. Review by Julia Pascal.
This is a playful, absurdist and yet serious performance of contemporary dance set to Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Viv Albertine: A Review of Two Memoirs by Jane McChrystal.
According to her latest memoir, To Throw away Unopened, Viv Albertine is very, very angry. Her first, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys opens with the story of how she joined girl band The Slits in the late 1970’s with Ari Up, Tessa Pollitt and Palmolive to make music in the same riotous spirit of amateurism as their punk brothers, the Sex Pistols.
Iolanthe, Richmond Theatre, London. Review by Barbara Lewis.
When Iolanthe in 1882 became the fourth consecutive major success for Gilbert and Sullivan, Gladstone, a Conservative-turned-Liberal, was prime minister and women had no vote.
1 2
Don Carlo. Grange Park Opera. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Don Carlo – or Don Carlos – in history was the mentally unstable son of Philip II of Spain whose brief betrothal to the woman his father later married and contacts with Protestant rebels in the Low Countries provided ammunition for the “black legend” propaganda whipped up by the opponents of his father’s rule.