Igor Toronyi-Lalic is arts editor of The Spectator
They enter two by two. Grannies, mainly. Headscarved, mainly. Some locking arms. A bit glum. Like rejects from Noah’s ark. Passing through two vertical beams of light, they appear then disappear, shuffling into the darkness. From concrete caves, they begin to wail for the dead. We’re witnessing Artangel’s latest extraordinary commission, ‘An Occupation of Loss’,
Imagine the National inviting RuPaul to play Hamlet. Or Tate giving Beryl Cook a retrospective. The London Sinfonietta offered a similar cocktail of mischief and insanity in devoting the opening concert of its return to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, after a three-year refurbishment, to the nihilistic drag act David Hoyle. It had me grinning from
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which, like a bad smell, hovered over Simon Rattle’s ten-day coronation. But then came the most amazing Rite of Spring I’ve ever heard and to moan suddenly seemed criminal. No masterpiece is harder to pull off
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights he filched pastoralism for the French. Rameau’s mastery of landscape is not just a question of orchestral colour, though that’s a large part of it — those goaty oboes, lowing bassoons, cooing flutes transport you
Imagine climbing the hills that surround Belfast and stumbling upon this 11-metre-high steel bollock. ‘It will be visible from a number of different points throughout the city,’ coos the Arts Council. Haven’t the people of Northern Ireland suffered enough? ‘Origin’ is the winner of our second What’s That Thing? Award for the worst new public
Wouldn’t it be nice, in these divided times, for humanity to have a common enemy – preferably an inanimate one. Welcome to the What’s That Thing? Award. We’re in our second year, hunting down the most execrable new pieces of public art that have appeared in the past year in this country and this time we’ve teamed up with the Architecture Foundation.
Nothing pleased Iannis Xenakis more than a great big rattling storm. The sound of a thunderclap would have him running out of his home half naked to join the elements. If he was at sea, he’d sniff out any lightning and sail his yacht directly at it. The Greek composer was what we might call
Gerald Barry loved playing organ for Protestants as they allowed him a lie in. Then they found out he wasn’t Protestant and sacked him. When he moved to a Catholic church, he was forced up at the crack of dawn, so he punished the congregation by not giving them the chance to breathe between verses.
In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, the ‘exterminating angel’ of the title is a mystery illness. A debilitating virus — much worse even than man flu — that attacks the social immune system and shuts down your ability to act, to think, to be. It prevents you from remembering how to behave at middle-class dinner parties.
BBC Proms 2016 is about as exciting as my sock drawer. But it’s unclear who exactly is to blame. The new head David Pickard claims only half the stalest socks are his — the rest inherited. The festival enjoys an incredibly privileged position. Some might even say it’s dangerously spoilt. Free from commercial pressures, free
A mixed year so far for new opera. A few really dismal things have appeared from people who should know better. Did the world really need an operatic treatment of Dante’s Divine Comedy for orchestra and chorus? Louis Andriessen thought so; his La Commedia (2004–8) luckily only reared its drab head for one night at
The Royal Opera House seemed nervous about Georg Friedrich Haas’s world première Morgen und Abend. They sent out a pdf of the libretto in advance, which they only ever do when they think that the words or the plot are unintelligible. Thrilled to report that it was a double whammy. An introductory soliloquy was spoken
We opera critics love gazing into crystal balls. We’re particularly good at discovering Ed Milibands and backing them to the hilt. Postwar opera is full of them. Take Hans Werner Henze. He was considered the future his entire life. Yet watching a presentation of two of his chamber operas at the Guildhall School of Music
It’s easy to forget what a mess of an art form opera once was. For its first 100 years it had no name, it had no fixed address, it didn’t really know who it was or what it was doing. You’d find it at schools, at weddings, at political functions. It was an artistic whore
The poor French. When we think of classical music, we always think of the Germans. It’s understandable. Instinctive. Ingrained. But unfair. We forget that most of the heavy lifting — most of the intrepid leaps forward in harmony, colour, rhythm and form — was done by the likes of Berlioz, Debussy and Boulez. The most
Joan Rivers has died from complications resulting from throat surgery. She was 81. For many, she was the best. The funniest, sharpest, most mischievous comic we will ever know. And though she’d hate us for saying it, she was also a true feminist pioneer. Well before it had been settled whether women should be doing stand-up at all, she was not only doing it but shaping
Jurassic Park has a lot to answer for. When I was growing up, I was convinced Richard Attenborough was a real dinosaur scientist. I was also convinced that Richard was David. When I became a bit older and wiser, and grew to realise there could be two Attenboroughs, I came to the conclusion that Richard might just be famous
When is a great international arts festival not a great international arts festival? When it can’t uphold even the most basic principles of free speech. Last night a play by an Israeli theatre company was forced to cancel its run at the Edinburgh Fringe as the result of the barracking of a group of anti-Israeli thugs. The
With characteristic bluntness and admirable concision, Joan Rivers has offered her thoughts on the Israel-Hamas conflict: ‘Let me just tell you, if New Jersey were firing rockets into New York, we would wipe them out.’ She also lobs a few rockets at ‘college grad’ Selina Gomez for her pro-Gaza tweets: ‘Let’s see if she can
It sounds like a cruise liner, doesn’t it? The Cool Britannia II: stopping at Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones and 12 Years a Slave. And if the rumoured guest list is right, the people invited to this reincarnation of Tony Blair’s infamous 1997 luvvie-fest are not far off cruise-liner quality. If Katherine Jenkins isn’t already
