Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Damian Thompson

Unsung hero | 12 May 2016

Music

One of the greatest choral symphonies of the 20th century, entitled Das Siegeslied (Psalm of Victory), has been heard only three times since it was composed in 1933. The last performance took place in Bratislava in 1997. The text is a German translation of words from Psalm 68: ‘…as wax melteth before the fire, so

Deluded divas

Arts feature

When the Fat Lady Sings, everyone is primed to chortle, even if she is Montserrat Caballé and doing it wonderfully well. Hergé’s cartoon creation of Bianca Castafiore embodies the type: with her flaxen plaits and heaving embonpoint, she is a ridiculously bad fit for the simpering virginal heroine of Gounod’s Faust, particularly when carolling her

Striking the wrong note

Cinema

Before we turn our attention to Florence Foster Jenkins — but if you can’t wait, it’s so-so — I feel I should address the several hundred (and counting; hell’s bells) comments below my negative review of Captain America: Civil War last week, and the many pleas that I should ‘get a life!’, which seemed a

Bell canto

Opera

Cursed, or perhaps blessed, with almost no visual memory at all, I had almost completely forgotten what the Royal Opera’s current Tannhäuser, directed by Tim Albery and with set designs by Michael Levine, looks like. Or perhaps it was the natural tendency to repress the memory of unpleasant experiences. Wanting to enjoy the Overture, I

Last words | 5 May 2016

Music

This, my 479th, is to be my last contribution as a regular columnist to The Spectator. I have written here for 33 years and 4 months, a way of life really, and one I have greatly enjoyed. I thank Auberon Waugh in absentia for suggesting me to Alexander Chancellor in the first place; and Charles

Service with a smile | 5 May 2016

Radio

He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite match the engaging brilliance of David Munrow, who back in the 1960s persuaded us that medieval pipes-only music was cool listening. Munrow’s series on what was then the Third Programme was aimed at six-to-12-year-olds but

Paul McCartney

More from Arts

It’s slightly galling, after years of sticking up for Paul McCartney, to read a new biography of the bloke and realise that you don’t, in the end, really like him that much. But that’s how good Philip Norman’s book is — Macca has no agenda, it simply lets you make up your mind. And for

Wings of desire

Exhibitions

Maria Sibylla Merian was a game old bird of entrepreneurial bent, with an overwhelming obsession with insects. Born in Frankfurt in 1647, she sacrificed her health and financial stability in pursuit of her passion. It carried her halfway across the globe and earned her lasting renown among a handful of cognoscenti. Merian was 15 when

That’s entertainment | 5 May 2016

Television

The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in 1924. But rather than a shock comeback for Downton Abbey, this was — perhaps even more unexpectedly — Tommy Shelby’s new home in Peaky Blinders (BBC2, Thursday). Which explains why so many of the guests

Lloyd Evans

Literary lap dance

Theatre

Great excitement for play-goers as a rare version of a theological masterpiece arrives in the West End. Doctor Faustus stars Kit Harington, a handsome, bearded bantamweight with round glasses and rock-star curls. We first meet him wearing a grey hoodie and lounging in a bedsit surrounded by cheap Catholic statuary. The druggy clothes and the

Filming the Final Solution

Arts feature

In July 1986, nine months before he died, I met the Italian author and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi at his home in Turin. He was in shirtsleeves for the interview and the concentration camp tattoo 174517 was visible on his left forearm. (‘A typical German talent for classification,’ he tartly observed.) If This is a

Is it art or science?

Exhibitions

William Henry Fox Talbot had many accomplishments. He was Liberal MP for Chippenham; at Cambridge he won a prize for translating a passage from Macbeth into Greek verse. Over the years he published numerous articles in scholarly journals on subjects ranging from astronomy to botany. One thing he could not do, however, was draw well

James Delingpole

His dark materials | 28 April 2016

Television

So: Game of Thrones. Finally — season six — the TV series has overtaken the books on which it is based and the big worry for all us fans is: will it live up to the warped, convoluted, sinister genius of George R.R. Martin’s original material? As regulars will know, the great thing about Martin

Word processing

Radio

‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and Trousers (directed by David Blount). ‘The words are the notes and they have to be in exactly the right place. And every line has to pull its weight, add something to the situation.’ Apps was

Lloyd Evans

Polly’s pleb adventure

Theatre

Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari, the underclass minibreak, the sojourn on the scrapheap that inspires a literary monument. Orwell’s first book was turned down by Faber boss T.S. Eliot, who received the script under its original title, Confessions of a

James Delingpole

Sex offender

Music

I saw Prince play once. I was bored rigid but couldn’t mention this to the girls I’d gone with: as far as they were concerned, watching the purple sex dwarf (he was 5ft 2in) masturbating with and fellating his guitar and generally getting off on his sublime pixieness was like experiencing the second coming. Me,

Less than Marvellous

Cinema

Captain America: Civil War is the 897th instalment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This time round, the superheroes take sides, with the marketing asking if you’re #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan but not if you’re #TeamNeither, as would be most useful in my case. I swear this is the last Marvel

Sound and vision | 28 April 2016

Opera

Janacek’s Jenufa, his first great opera, had a one-night stand at the Royal Festival Hall last Monday, courtesy of the wonderful Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, a large body that had all of five minutes’ singing, and a mainly excellent cast, with Karita Mattila making her transition from

Prince and me

Features

This is only interesting, well a bit interesting, because the poor man died last Thursday and for a few short days almost anything with the word Prince in it stands a chance of getting some traction. So forgive me if this feels a bit rushed. And opportunist. And exploitative. And attention-seeking. It’s all of those

All the world’s a stage | 21 April 2016

Arts feature

In this much-heralded Shakespeare anniversary year, one might expect a certain respect for the works to prevail. In Holland it’s different. Under the tutelage of a Belgian, Ivo van Hove, a huge slice of Shakespeare’s history theatre has been filleted for the stage into something that might sit nicely on HBO alongside Game of Thrones.

Special delivery

Television

Five Star Babies: Inside the Portland Hospital won’t, I suspect, have been a hard sell to BBC2’s commissioning editors. Childbirth and rich people are both reliably popular subjects for TV documentaries. So why not combine them into one handy package by showing us life at the UK’s only private maternity hospital? And yet, however artificial

Written on the body

Radio

Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone dealing directly with the refugee crisis, with those who have fled from intense fear and terrible violence in their home countries. Armstrong has been investigating recent developments in our understanding of the impact of severe

Lloyd Evans

The Jezza effect

Theatre

Corbyn the Musical feels like it comes from the heart. Did the writers live through the 1970s when the hard-left was full of hope and confidence? Socialists then genuinely believed they could see off capitalism (which seemed in its death throes anyway) and replace it with a happier and more equal world. The show takes