At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Category: Enlightenment

• Choral Classical Music Concert Culture Enlightenment London Symphony

  Beethoven Choral Symphony: LSO at the Barbican review *****

  London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle (conductor), London Symphony Chorus, Simon Halsey (chorus director), Iwona Sobotka (soprano), Anna Stéphany (mezzo-soprano), Robert Murray (tenor), Florian Boesch (baritone) Barbican Hall, 12th February 2010 Not quite the Tourist’s last Beethoven fix before lockdown. A very dramatic take on various of the piano sonatas from Boris Giltburg was to follow…

  June 7, 2020
• Culture Enlightenment Feminism History London Magic Mortality Myths Philosophy Religion Science Fiction Theatre Time

  Faustus: That Damned Woman at the Lyric Hammersmith review ***

  Faustus: That Damned Woman Lyric Hammersmith, 5th February 2020 I bet Chris Bush was good at English at school and maybe beyond. In the precis question. For she has an unerring eye/ear/pen for taking complicated/contentious/convoluted issues and dramas and rendering them explicable, topical and entertaining. Kicking off with TONY! The…

  April 25, 2020
• Chamber Music Classical Music Concert Culture Enlightenment Germany London Piano Quartet Romanticism Sonata Symphony

  Beethoven Weekender at the Barbican review

  Beethoven Weekender “This could be the closest thing to heaven …. “. No not the Tears for Fears dirge from 2004 but one of the many fine singles from the vastly under-rated, and alas short-lived, Kane Gang from 1984. The KG, along with the magnificent Prefab Sprout, and the rather…

  April 14, 2020
• Classical Music Culture Enlightenment London Opera

  Seraglio at the Hackney Empire review ****

  Seraglio Hackney Empire, 4th October 2019 Or to give it its full name Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail or The Abduction from the Seraglio. Here though Seraglio, not just to reflect the fact that this English Touring Opera production is sung, (and spoken), in English following a colloquial translation by…

  November 15, 2019
• Chamber Music Classical Music Concert Concerto Contemporary Classical Culture Enlightenment Germany London Opera Symphony

  Britten Sinfonia Beethoven cycle at the Barbican Hall review *****

  Britten Sinfonia, Thomas Ades (conductor), Barbican Hall, 21st and 26th May 2019 Lawrence Power (viola) Eamonn Dougan (director) Jennifer France (soprano) Christianne Stotjin (alto) Ed Lyon (tenor) Matthew Rose (bass) Britten Sinfonia Voices Choir of Royal Holloway Beethoven – Symphony No 7 in A majpor, Op 92 Gerald Barry –…

  June 10, 2019
• Comedy Culture Enlightenment France London Religion Theatre

  Tartuffe at the National Theatre review *****

  Tartuffe: The Imposter National Theatre Lyttleton, 24th April 2019 Top Girls. Downstate. Small Island. Follies which I can vouch for from the first run. And now this Tartuffe. All superb. If the NT is still going through a dodgy patch artistically then f*ck knows how good it is going to…

  May 7, 2019
• Classical Music Culture Enlightenment Identity London Love Magic Opera Relationship

  The Magic Flute at the ENO review *****

  The Magic Flute English National Opera, 28th March 2019 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When opera works there is no other art form to touch. But when it doesn’t it can be mystifyingly dull. What’s more it can be the very same opera which is both…

  April 16, 2019