Classical music and opera - including contemporary forms - from London and beyond.

Attitudes towards science and freedom

Häxan [Witchcraft Through the Ages] (1922), directed by Benjamin Christensen

Häxan couldn’t have been made without Freud. A short introduction to psychoanalysis later and the feeling becomes justified. First released in 1922, it is one of the first – and perhaps only – films of its kind. The unfortunate problem with this is that it makes Häxan difficult to judge.

Radius - selection of new music

Holywell Music Rooms, Oxford, 25 April 2007

In many of these works, the intelligence of the composer is not in representing ideas which might as well remain as programme notes, but in manipulating actions and sounds into captured sensations. Radius’ unabashed approach to the ‘new’ deserves a wider audience.

Children of Adam

Royal Opera House, London

Marriott loses sight of the thing that really unites poetry and classical dance. In a word, form. Instead he plumbs for a degraded notion of both poetry and dance as a sopping wet melodrama of emotion - it’s the ‘let-it-all-hang-out-and-feel-my-pain’ school of art.

Agrippina

ENO, Coliseum, London

In many respects, Handel’s Agrippina becomes a woman’s opera under McVicar’s direction. The plot and its intricacies are driven by Agrippina (Part I) and Poppea (Part II). Power and cruelty, love and lust gravitate around Agrippina and Poppea respectively. McVicar’s staging is a symbiosis of musical and literary genres.

D’you wanna be in my gang, my gang, my gang?

The audience new music needs

What matters is not simply bums on seats, but the engagement of a particular audience. Before any artform can be universal, it has to be particular. It is particular scenes or artistic milieux that give birth to new ideas, and also keep a tradition alive; without them, tradition quickly degenerates into heritage.

Masterclasses with the Royal Ballet

Tchaikovsky Experience, BBC4

What the Dowell/Acosta masterclass shows is how one master conveys to another the essence of something they know inside out, but which will also be different in the hands (and legs!) of another principal. This isn’t about marching to the drum-beat discipline of technique, but about the fluidity of translating a tradition.

Citizen Swan

Why ballet is less conservative than people think

The illusion of ‘fairy-like’ weightlessness is one that is only achieved by the strongest, best-trained and talented dancers and they rightfully command the stage when displaying their skill. As Darcey Bussell put it in the BBC film The Magic of Swan Lake, ‘everything we work for is in this ballet’.

Fauré Requiem by Candlelight

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Thursday 18 January 2007

The fluidity and purity of Elian Pretorian’s singing preserved the aerial and a-temporal character of the score originally written for a boy soprano. It was highly regrettable that the dialogues between the choir and the orchestra were akin to a dialogue of the deaf.

How Music Works

Written and presented by Howard Goodall, Channel 4 (UK)

Connoisseurs can probably nail down what makes Stevie Wonder’s songs and Bach’s cantatas timeless, while Beyoncé‘s ‘Déjà vu’ was an ephemeral hit. Yet this distinction does not come naturally. An appreciation of music has to be fostered, perhaps by documentaries like this - alas, Goodall’s programme does not deliver.

Amadeus

Wilton's Music Hall, London

The period setting of the venue itself, with ruined walls and notices warning the audience about the poor functionality of the building, works wonderfully with the stage art direction - all creating a haunting world, rotting with mediocrity, crying for greatness.

Nixon in China

English National Opera, Coliseum, London

This is a opera that celebrates heroic failure; it’s not whether you win or lose, but the fact that you play the game. As Chou says ‘We fight, we die, and if we do not fight we die’. Nothing about either Adams’ opera or this ENO performance smacks of failure, however.

The Wizard of Pop

Jack Kane Centre, Craigmillar, Edinburgh

Lucy then finds herself on a Musical Road that leads to Craigmillar Castle. There lurks Simon Cowell, the Wizard of Pop himself. To return home Lucy has to reach the castle and become Britney Spears for the day.

Is Musical Theatre Alive and Well and Living in London?

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris at the Landor Theatre, and Passion at the Bridewell Theatre

Lack of innovation in musical theatre leads to the real danger of lack of variety in the performance and production of this genre as a whole, and that includes opera as well.

The Femme Fatale - A Beginner’s Guide

The Rosemary Branch Theatre, London

Chanteuse Sandra Lawrence’s new solo show offers a humorous yet affectionate tribute to the figure of the femme fatale in classic films noirs.

Barb Jungr

The Flea Theatre, New York

European cabaret is so different from the Broadway-style American cabaret that I cannot help but curse the English language for its paucity - we have umpteen ways of saying how we like to take our tea, but can’t be bothered to make up two extra words to describe polarities in entertainment.