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Sparkling Candide at Canal Festival

The 300-strong audience stood up as one after Leonard Bernstein's infectious performance of Candide at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam last night. The performance of this 'pocket version' of Bernstein's cheerful musical/opera about the incorrigible optimist Candide, produced by the Nationale Reisopera, took place indoors, in the hotel's ballroom, due to the weather conditions. After all, the Grachtenfestival has to be... 

Audio is the new video. 10 palpable reasons why you should experience 'Oh that sea'

The living proof can be seen just before it knocks you off your socks, or lands under a bus before your eyes: people with headphones on in traffic are not on the same bike path as where you are riding. Not even in the same universe. Even if their eyes are open. We don't realise ourselves how effective sound is 

Paul Ruven only rents himself a venue

Gloating is a beautiful and deeply human thing. Director, screenwriter and film producer Paul Ruven - known for one Dutch film blockbuster after another, we call it Het Bombardement - recently received an impressive bowl of critical shit poured over him following his new bake The Surrender. So many, in fact, that Amsterdam cinemas didn't want to get burned by it.

Still, Ruven does not let himself be cowed.

What's next for Rotterdam? 5 reasons why Simons will struggle

The great theatre maker Johan Simons has made it known that he wants to come to Rotterdam, to set up a major European theatre. He sees his chance now that a spot will become available in two years' time in the artistic direction of the Maasstad's city theatre company, the ro theatre. When they appoint Simons, they can think big, Simons says. And. 

Johan Simons to Ruhr, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Vienna, Ghent. And Varik.

He is the greatest director in the Netherlands. But also the least honourable theatre-maker we know: Johan Simons. The man whose star has been rising since the 1980s is now in Munich. But he is not staying there. After putting the local company Kammerspiele even more firmly on the map internationally, he is looking for new challenges. Den Bosch earlier reported... 

Hamlet more in demand than Jay Z and Beyoncé. That can only happen in the UK

We are talking about the summer of 2015. Then Benedict Cumberbatch will play the title role in Hamlet, to be seen at the Barbican Centre in London. For the show, which plays for 12 weeks, 214% more tickets have already been sold in the first few hours after ticket sales opened yesterday than for Jay Z and Beyoncé's tour, which is on the same... 

"Earth? Don' t enjoy it too much." Robin Williams' mastery already evident in first minute of career

A lot has already been said about Robin Williams. And why it's bad that he's dead. Remains the view that the best humour cannot exist without an inky black background. Humour, then, is an ideal tool to master your dark side. The darker, the more humour, in other words. Stephen Fry talks about the extremities of... 

A performance that really makes you feel the futility of war. Demarrage by Charlotte Caeckaert on @tfboulevard

Flemish actors can speak. Flemish actors usually don't need microphones to make themselves understood over a storm, or from 100 metres away in the open air. Charlotte Caeckaert is one such actress who can do all that, and such technique is a joy to witness. She also writes lyrics, and that's where things go a little wrong.... 

Hearing stories of loss. And cry about it. But then? Separate from the Southern Theatre on @tfboulevard.

Two actors who, together with their director, want to create a performance about loss. Or rather: our fear of losing things, or people. The makers are not quite there yet, it turns out at Theatre Festival Boulevard. From numerous conversations with thinkers and (experiential) experts, they have distilled characters while improvising, which they - separated by a thick... 

What someone else's house does to you: Peeping by Lieke Benders on @tfboulevard

There were people who simply looked in the kitchen cupboards even though the guide expressly forbade it. That type of person, who probably also asks for ketchup at every meal, was one of the more interesting discoveries during the walk you could take in den Bosch, titled 'Peeping'. The performance is an example of 'experiential theatre': theatre without a clear storyline or message,... 

8 enticing words about Festival Boulevard.

It is the most ambitious summer festival in the Netherlands: Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch aims to showcase not only the finest theatre theatre theatre in the low countries, but also the fattest shows, and youngest new creators and the merriest bus drivers. And all that in 10 days, in once tad where the local newspaper does its best to promote culture as scary as possible to make. We briefly summarise it for you in eight enticing words.

O(h) that sea. OK. But which of the two?

The difference is just an 'h'. But confusing it is. This week, the rock opera 'Oh That Sea' premieres in Zeeland. In a month's time, the spherical location performance 'Oh Die Zee' will launch in The Hague, just as the Zeeland show is having its final weekend. The performances are both also about the Odyssey, the classic Greek epic about a Greek hero who, after destroying the city of Troy, takes 10 years to return to his own city, where he then has to kill 100 more lovers of his wife.

What you can learn from Culture Press. Already 4 unique offers for art lovers and culture writers.

Being able to write nicely is fine, but the journalists at Culture Press can do more. They have studied to be art experts, have spent thousands of hours in rooms and halls that even you did not know existed and possess enormous drive. How else could this website exist?

Matthias Mooij (1976-2014): a career that should have been there.

He could have become an important director, but was at the wrong time, in the wrong place. In the end, his illness fatally bothered Matthias Mooij. Yesterday, this still young theatre-maker died of lung cancer, more than a year and a half after the premiere of his first large-venue production: Mogadishu. With that performance, of a play written by the English writer Vivienne Franzmann, Mooij put a new tone in the theatre: no longer did he fall back on theatre-familiar, mainly German and Austrian repertoire, opting instead for British authors.

Meanwhile, the Manifesta continues as usual in Petersburg. Is that choice?

About the same time as the train from Donietsk to Kharkov arrived in my mailbox yesterday, a press release from the Manifesta. Our cultural pride in St Petersburg. These weeks, the Dutch festival is organising an audio tour of Rimini Protokoll, the renowned highly political company from Germany. Oh. And, as a third item: there is a conversation tonight about what the Biennale is capable of in times of political turmoil.

Increasing pressure on art talent: 22 new creators to keep a close eye on.

For the past few weeks, academies across the country have been celebrating: a new batch of visual artists graduated and showed themselves to the world. Besides parents, grandparents and a few friends, a lot of art professionals descend on such a graduation presentation. Scouts, in the form of other artists, press, curators, collectors and gallery owners. All these people especially hope not to miss the new discovery and therefore try to be there as early as possible. In some cases, that is even before the artist graduates from the academy. If the talent does not develop as expected, it is a pity, but otherwise you are the discoverer. We join in for a moment, and sought out 22.

Reinbert de Leeuw in Zomergasten, not in Muziekzomer

In just over two weeks, the NJO Music Summer, with more than sixty-five concerts performed by young musicians, spread across more and less obvious locations in the province of Gelderland. One hundred and sixty young people flocked from all over the world to show their skills from 1 to 17 August. Anyone staying in Gelderland at that time could not possibly miss their presence.

Working for free has become commonplace in the arts. 4 bare facts by festival director Meulman

'The practice of payment by book voucher does not belong to a professional sector with substantial economic importance.' Jeffrey Meulman, director of the Dutch theatre festival, has learned to live with it. Against his will. As host of the annual Gala of Dutch Theatre, he has managed to organise that party again. Without money.

Aufführung der Komposition " Delusion of the fury " von Harry Partch in der Musiktheater Inszenierung von Heiner Goebbels mit dem Ensemble musikFabrik in der Jahrhunderthalle Bochum im Rahmen der Ruhrtriennale 2012-14 am Mittwoch, 21.08.2013

Seeing music (and not hearing it?)

Because of my fascination with the complex relationship between listening and watching, I decided to visit three performances at the recent Holland Festival and experience what happened when I tried to pay equal attention to ears and eyes. The first was "Delusion of the Fury" (1966) by American composer Harry Partch, the second a concert performance of Philip Glass's opera "The CIVIL warS" (1983), the third a performance of Franz Schubert's "Die Winterreise" (1827) in which twenty-four short films by South African artist William Kentridge were shown.

Four opera myths shattered @Oerol festival

Is a performance opera if not a note is sung? If the audience sits on a stand in a car park with headphones on their heads? Or if a man cries out like a dog with a tongue out of his mouth throughout the performance? The definitions of opera are stretched quite a bit at five Oerol performances. Interestingly, hardly anyone calls the performance opera. By necessity, musical theatre is often used, but that term does not really fall into a warm bath.

Five things we learned from opera amuse Sweeney Todd

  • What: A preview of the 'musical thriller' Sweeney Todd
  • Location: the biggest rehearsal room of the Dutch Travel Opera
  • Present: almost the entire cast, one hundred and fifty guests
  • Menu: bread, pastry, a dessert as pretty as it is tasty
  • Drinks: water, red/white wine ánd Bloody Mary's, complete with celery as a stirrer, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, pepper (and salt, nowhere to go), lemon (should have been lime), prepare it yourself

Ayn Rand was haunting Dutch theatre as early as 2006.

Ivo van Hove has not only a play made based on Ayn Roland's novel of ideas The Fountainhead. In 2006, the artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam even wanted to base a whole new design of the theatre system on it. Eight years later, we can see that only the negative aspects of Van Hove's vision have been realised.

Doesn't 'The Returns' exclude you as much as the art snobs parodied by Forsythe?

When someone speaks in sentences with words that repeatedly rhyme with 'art' or in which the syllable 'art' keeps popping up, you have to adjust to a different logic than that of everyday communication. If it is also a woman dressed in bright red who pronounces those words eloquently and with many mannerisms, suggesting that she is hyper-sensitive to anything to do with art, your thoughts balance between:

Spaghetti 'Thyestes': classic roots work fiercely in a new preparation

In Rome, they have known what good food is for 20 centuries or so. Bloodletting is everything. Seneca, a Roman of the better sort, wrote plays in which bloodshed was elevated to an art. Audiences feasted on them, just as they feasted on Seneca's recipes in Shakespeare's time, 1,500 years later, and as we feast on Game of Thrones on TV now. It can't be gory, can't be cruel enough. We like that.

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