Arts feature

Despite the economic gloom, ENO’s John Berry is optimistic about the future of opera Opera director David Alden said in a recent interview, ‘Opera is alive, popular — and hot.’ I agree. Opera is very much in the public eye and thriving in UK opera houses, cinemas and performing arts centres. However, as we wait to

New York is in the grip of memorial mania, writes Tiffany Jenkins In early 1991, the construction of a federal office building in lower Manhattan was halted after an unexpected discovery. Underneath the ground, covered by a patina of concrete and steel, was the coffin of a colonial-era African. It was not alone. Construction work

William Cook goes to Skegness and watches Cannon & Ball attract an adoring audience It’s August and Edinburgh is full of fashionable young comedians, but here in Skegness the Festival Fringe seems a million miles away. With its amusement arcades and fish and chip shops, this unpretentious place feels forgotten by the metropolitan arts establishment.

Nina Conti appears convinced that her puppets are real. Freddy Gray investigates Isn’t Nina Conti too good-looking to be a ventriloquist? One thinks of blokes in working-men’s clubs with frazzled hair, not Nina with her smiling face and big brown eyes. It’s hard not to look at her, which must be a professional disadvantage: isn’t

Charles Moore on how to renew and maintain life in the deserted villages of rural Romania To understand this story, one must go back nearly 25 years. As Soviet Communism moved towards collapse in the late 1980s, people were in danger of forgetting Romania. Because of Romania’s relative independence from Moscow, the West played down

The ‘seriously handsome’ Toby Stephens talks to Mary Wakefield about the magic of acting With some people, their prep school selves seem barely submerged beneath the adult surface. They talk away like grown-ups but one shrug, a grin, and you can see their inner schoolchild. Toby Stephens, sitting opposite me in a boxy room high

What are the ingredients of a good audio guide? Henrietta Bredin investigates These days you’re more than likely, at any museum, gallery, exhibition or public building of interest, to be offered an audio (or even a multimedia) guide with which to ‘enhance your visitor experience’. There will probably be a small cost involved and you

Marianne Gray talks to the down-to-earth Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn about her latest film Brenda Blethyn doesn’t really understand why people continually ask her why she plays dowdy, often downtrodden characters, like Cynthia, the despairing mother in Secrets & Lies, or James McAvoy’s heartbroken mother in Atonement, or Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who

Andrew Lambirth talks to John Richardson, biographer and friend of the artist John Richardson has spent a lifetime in the company of great art and artists, and is justly celebrated for his ability to evoke, explain and evaluate their work in beautiful prose. Best known as the biographer of Picasso, he has written about many

Lloyd Evans talks to Michael Attenborough, whose star at the Almeida is the theatre itself The back office of the Almeida Theatre in Islington could do with a major refit. Dowdy, open-plan and scattered with Free-cycled furniture, it looks like the chill-out room of a student bar or the therapy suite of some underfunded weight-watch

Mary Wakefield talks to Roger Allam and discovers that he thinks acting is only a game As I meet Roger Allam’s eye, in the bar area of Shakespeare’s Globe, I feel a lurch of dread. I love Roger Allam. I’ve held a torch for him since the mid-Eighties, when he starred in Les Mis as

As Clint Eastwood celebrates his 80th birthday, Peter Hoskin salutes his artistic legacy My life at the movies began with Clint Eastwood about a decade ago. Channel 4 was screening A Fistful of Dollars (1964) one night, and my brother insisted that we stay up and tune in. I didn’t know beforehand that it was

New Labour inspired a golden age of political comedy. William Cook looks to satire’s future Although few will mourn Gordon Brown’s departure, his drawn-out demise should be a source of sadness for comedy aficionados, be they red, yellow or blue. For New Labour’s most unlikely legacy was to inspire a renaissance in political comedy. It

Robert Gore-Langton on a stage adaptation of the Erskine Childers classic Riddle of the Sands The Riddle of the Sands was published in 1903. It was an instant bestseller and has never been out of print since. It’s the story of two young Englishmen who, while sailing off the German coast, unearth a fiendish plot