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Proven: theatre-goers seek intellectual satisfaction and hardly ever read reviews

Drama reviews mainly fill a need among artists and journalists. Newspaper readers hardly use them. In London, this has been studied. Only 36 per cent of theatre-goers say they read reviews. Much more value fans place on tips from friends and family. Last Saturday at Amsterdam's De Balie debate centre, there was a discussion between theatre-makers,... 

Debating reviews is pointless. Readers are perfectly capable of judging for themselves.

Art has rapidly become unimportant. Artists have been effectively dismissed by populists as subsidy-addicted scum. Media leaves no opportunity to downplay the consequences of the cuts that followed. Putin is about to bring a third world war to Europe. In Amsterdam on Saturday, September 6, three of the Netherlands' last daily newspaper critics talk to artists about... 

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Culture Press follows cultural policy closely. Culture Press dares to put its finger on the sore spot where it is needed. Culture Press is the indispensable source for cultural reporting. Culture Press provides interpretation with daily background articles, reviews and opinion pieces on theatre, dance, film, theatre, music, opera, visual arts, literature and cultural policy. All affiliated authors are specialists in their fields, deeply... 

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Being able to write nicely is fine, but the journalists at Culture Press can do more. They have studied to be art experts, spent thousands of hours in rooms and halls that even you didn't know existed, and possess enormous drive. How else could this website exist?
We willen deze kennis met u delen. Op meer manieren dan alleen via deze website, of met de nieuwsbrief die een selecte groep kijkers ontvangt. We bieden een programma, dat bestaat uit webinars, live ...

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7 confusing reasons why the stage version of The Fountainhead rattles, but you should still go.

Topical again, now that Toneelgroep Amsterdam is reprising the show, my review from 2014. This week, the stage adaptation of The Fountainhead premiered. The book is terrible, the performance rattles, the actors win only narrowly. The content, however, creates even more confusion, which is why I won't stop you from going to see it. And Hans Kesting, of course. I put it this way.

Win tickets to opera at Paradiso! Whether you like opera or not: five reasons to go to The News today

Win tickets for The NEWS at Paradiso

Big new, small news. News is everywhere, there is no escape. On the street, in one's own living room. What starts at the breakfast table can become world news. So: what is your news today? Let us know, share this page and take a picture, post it on facebook and twitter. Add #thenewsnl and win two tickets to the reality opera that will permanently change your view of the news.

Jubilant reviews. With the 'reality opera' The News, the Nederlandse Reisopera has a hit on its hands. However, the familiar theatre setting is being abandoned for pop temple Paradiso. Whether you like opera or not: five reasons to go.

Is Anne too big for reviews? 3 reasons why I find it hard to review Anne

Someone commented on Facebook that it looked a bit odd for a newspaper to hand out stars for a play based on The Diary of Anne Frank. Although I myself shudder to give out stars this early for a Godwin make, surely there is something to The Play and The Review. Indeed, reviews of The Play to The Diary seem superfluous. For how do you review such a play, with such a history? Isn't fuss about layering or no layering, adventurousness or no adventurousness in the direction even a little irreverent? So these are three issues, which led me to consider that maybe it shouldn't be possible at all. Anne review.

We have tickets: you can tell us where to go in the Holland Festival

Het Holland Festival, dat doen we al jaren. Het is zonder meer het hoogtepunt van het culturele seizoen. Op het Holland Festival zie je hoe de internationale kunstwereld erbij hangt. Onder de vaardige leiding van Pierre Audi is het hele gebeuren de laatste jaren ook nog eens een stuk minder elitair en hoogdravend geworden dan vroeger. Een kaartje kost ook vaak een stuk minder dan een avondje André Rieu in Maastricht, om maar wat te zeggen.
Kortom: geen reden om niet te gaan, maar we kunnen ons v...

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"Forbidden!" Or is it? Reinbert de Leeuw performance makes curious about biography

It is the kind of publicity even literary agency Sebes and Van Gelderen dreams of. An argument between biographer and subject that makes it into all the national newspapers. Especially when it is not a biography of, say, an ex-soccer player who squandered his fortune, but one of wayward composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw.
Vrijdag lag het boek in de boekwinkels, met op dezelfde dag een lovende recensie in Het Parool, weer een dag later gevolgd door een interview met auteur Thea Derks. “...

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Biography Reinbert de Leeuw released today

Today, Leporello Publishers in Amstelveen published my long-awaited biography Reinbert de Leeuw: man or melody, on which I worked for more than seven years. The book is on sale at several bookstores in Amsterdam and can be ordered through any bookstore in the Netherlands. When I attended a concert conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw in early 2005, I discussed with some... 

5 lessons from a Tilburg riot: superficial newspaper determines superficial cultural politics

Regionale kranten doen vrijwel niet meer aan echte cultuurjournalistiek. We weten dat, want het was de reden waarom we Cultuurpers ooit opgericht hebben. Hoe erg het er nu, 5 jaar later,  voorstaat met kunst in de regio en de manier waarop de krant ermee omgaat, bleek deze maand in Tilburg. Een lokale journalist van het Brabants Dagblad had een stukje geschreven over vragen die een Statenlid van de PVV in de provincie had gesteld. In het nieuwsverhaal kwalificeerde deze voormalige sportjournalis...

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The Red Piece - photo by Maarten Vanden Abeele

Oppressive (audience) manipulation in The Red Piece

'Don't let anyone leave the room without having experienced or felt something.' That is surely and surely the mission with Flemish Ann Van den Broek's work. If the mood swings in The Red Piece don't do much to you, your retinas will burn out from the changes in lighting design. You might just think you are being manipulated as an audience. But you gladly allow it.

Fewer audiences, but fuller halls for @hollandfestival 2013

69,500 visitors, at least 5,000 fewer than previous editions, but the halls were fuller. With 82% audience occupancy, the Holland Festival organisers are satisfied with the 2013 festival. Whether that higher occupancy rate, apart from the smaller number of performances (14 fewer than last year) is also due to smaller halls, is impossible to find out from here, but the fact that the large Theater Carré, with its many unsellable low-visibility seats, was also hardly used this year will certainly have helped.

Cannes opens with The Great Gatsby, but the novelty is already off

Zou Gilles Jacob, de directeur van het filmfestival van Cannes, het als een buitenkansje zien of een knieval voor Amerikaanse studio's? Dat Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby woensdag de openingsfilm is betekent zeker spektakel en veel aandacht. Maar het is geen wereldpremière, en dat is niet wat we gewend zijn van het belangrijkste filmfestival ter wereld. The Great Gatsby, met Leonardo DiCaprio in de titelrol, ging op 10 mei al in première in de Verenigde Staten, Canada en enkele andere landen. H...

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Legendary film critic Roger Ebert died

Het zal wennen zijn om hij het aanklikken van 'external review' op de Internet Movie Database niet meer de naam van Roger Ebert tegen te komen. Deze legendarische criticus die 46 jaar lang schreef voor de Chicago Sun-Times overleed donderdag op 70-jarige leeftijd. Twee dagen geleden nam hij na een elf jaar lange strijd tegen kanker afscheid op zijn website met de woorden 'I'll see you at the movies'.
Ebert was een van de weinige filmcritici die wereldwijd bekendheid en waardering genoot. Wars va...

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Culture Press ratings: thick 300,000 minutes of attention

With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000

Der Schatzgräber II: Van Hove exposes core and weaknesses

“Die sprookjeswereld is nooit zo mijn wereld geweest,” verklaarde regisseur Ivo van Hove voor de première van Schrekers sprookjesopera Der Schatzgräber. Opmerkelijk, want Van Hove en zijn vaste scenograaf Jan Versweyveld waren bij De Nederlandse Opera eerder verantwoordelijk voor Tsjaikovski’s Iolanta en Janáčeks De zaak Makropulos – ook eerder sprookjes dan grootse dramatische werken.

In Tsjaikovski’s laatste opera draait alles om prinses Iolanta. Iedereen weet dat ze blind is, maar houdt dit ...

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Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Der Schatzgräber I: blistering music, freezing dry staging

De Nederlandse Opera opent het seizoen met een zelden uitgevoerde opera van Franz Schreker, waarin heidense en christelijke thema’s door elkaar lopen. De schitterende muziek wordt weersproken door de kille regie, waardoor identificatie met de personages uitblijft.
Na afloop van de bijna drie uur durende Schatzgräber werd gisteravond in het Muziektheater het hardst geklapt voor het Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest en chef-dirigent Marc Albrecht. Op diens instigatie haalde De Nederlandse Opera di...

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Nobody likes a critic

Al YouTubesurfend stuitte ik op deze messcherpe sketches van Stephen Fry en Hugh Laurie. Afkomstig uit de hoogtijdagen van hun geniale programma A Bit Of Fry & Laurie. Bij het zien van deze prachtig gepersifleerde windbuilerij, overviel me het akelige gevoel dat er sinds de uitzending van  deze sketch verdomd weinig is veranderd in de mentaliteit van de kunstcritici. De zelfgenoegzaamheid ligt altijd op de loer.
Critici zijn rare snuiters, ook wij bij CultuurPers. Want, ondanks het feit dat...

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Blood-soaked Macbeth fits festival theme perfectly but fails to touch #HF12

Imagine Arjan Robben. The much-troubled frontman of the Dutch national team has just seen a brilliant move rewarded with a penalty and he is ready to take it. Up comes a field hand with a new set of adhesive letters for his shirt because the numbers are no longer legible from the stands. Lots of lashing, shirt off, seconds glue. Circumstances, in short. After two minutes, the fielder is gone, the number readable and the referee's whistle sounds. Then try to hit the target.

Popcorn polishes off rock 'n' roll #hf12

Popcorn wants to build bridges and dissolve borders; away with the differences between high and low culture. Covers of the band's favourite songs are interspersed with new compositions, thus blurring boundaries. Unfortunately, they do not succeed in this and the band sounds mostly academic and soulless. Popcorn is an experimental performance in which a composite band seeks to bridge the gap between... 

Enfant terrible Boris Charmatz puts finger on sore spot with confrontational choreography about the elusive child

 With enfant, choreographer Boris Charmatz broaches a difficult topic: how do we as adults deal with ourselves, and how do we deal with children? Charmatz draws on the French philosopher Lyotard, who pondered the "inhumanity" of adults and saw real people in children. The current image about physical contact with children is distorted and it is... 

With Antony Hegarty and the Metropole Orchestra in a fairytale forest #hf12

Antony Hegarty geeft met zijn pianist en het Metropole Orkest de gelaagde en emotioneel geladen show Cut the World weg. Hij laat zien dat het geen punt hoeft te zijn om meer van hetzelfde te presenteren. Het publiek waant zich ondertussen in het sprookjesbos en eet uit zijn hand. Foto: Clive Osborne Het is niet de eerste keer dat de… 

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