Richard Rijnvos (1964) has been house composer of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra since 2011. This has so far resulted in two new pieces: Antarctique, the final movement of his cycle Grand Atlas (2011) and fuoco e fumo from the series la Serenissima (2013). On Thursday 2 and Friday 3 February, conductor Gustavo Gimeno leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in its third commissioned work, Amérique du Nord. The...
Writers Unlimited could hardly have chosen a more appropriate theme for this year's literary festival Winternachten: Is this the real life? That question will be on many a mind when the new president of the United States is inaugurated on Friday. Fortunately, some eighty writers who do have something meaningful to say about the state of...
The Dutch film industry announced its annual figures. 2016 was a top year, measured by the once again increased number of cinema visitors. The best-attended film was Bridget Jones's Baby. But the market share of Dutch films dipped to an all-time low.
We Had Love, We Had Guns by Christine Otten is about black resistance fighter Robert F. Williams, who fought for black equality. In the theatre adaptation of the same name, white actors - including Huub van der Lubbe - play black characters and vice versa. Double talk about personal sacrifice, skin colour and connection. Idlewild It is a remarkable coincidence. America is taking...
The cost of crisis Small heroes is the title of the new novel by Almudena Grandes, one of Spain's greatest writers. And little heroes it is all about: the novel is actually a collection of interrelated stories about people like all of us, only these people all live in Madrid. Rich and poor, young...
Yesterday, the chamber made €10 million available for the arts. This brings the tally of government cuts to at least €190,000,000 still. This hard-won extra is the last thing that could be asked for. Everyone agrees, the new system has been definitively embraced. The protest has made itself redundant now that the compromise has been made. And what have we got...
In the presence of Amnesty International and Edward Snowden - via a video link from Moscow - Oliver Stone's new film Snowden premiered at Tuschinski on Thursday night. The dramatised story of the young, gifted public servant who is troubled by conscience and decides to go to the press is not very original or compellingly portrayed. But on the wave of...
If the shock of 9-11 in 2016 highlighted anything, it was the yawning gap between the higher and lower educated in our neoliberal society. White, less-educated and angry male America elected a racist and war hitter as president. We cannot help but conclude that democratic, liberal, highly educated and majority-educated America refused to see the blow coming. In the spring ...
The much-discussed The Birth of a Nation about an American slave revolt gets a preview at two Dutch festivals. Debuting director Nate Parker boldly borrowed the title of famous and controversial classic.
In front of a sold-out Stopera, De Nationale Opera presented its new production of Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut on Monday 10 October. Directed by Andrea Breth, the musical director is Alexander Joel. The lead role is sung by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, who was loudly applauded afterwards. The bad news First but the bad news. The...
'Let me lament my fate in tears. And let me long for freedom.' What would my preference be: book, film or play? That question fascinated me when it turned out that Toneelgroep Maastricht had adapted Arthur Schnitzler's book Droomnovelle and Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut based on it into a new play. Actually, it was not a fair...
Book adaptations set the tone at the Netherlands Film Festival 2016. The Hero after Jessica Durlacher's novel opened the Utrecht film festival.
'Have you really been listening to poems for three hours?' Asaf Avidan had not yet experienced anything like that. The musical headliner of the 34th Night of Poetry has yet another story to take with him on his tour. In the Netherlands, you can quiet a full hall by reading a poem. This year, that even succeeded ...
When you go to a concert, you think about the music, the ensemble, the soloist and/or the conductor. Maybe you look up something about the composer but you never think about the programmer who made the concert possible. Astrid in 't Veld is someone who thinks about the range of concerts on offer years in advance in order to help you with...
Brexit has given an extra charge to many programmes at the Fringe. But what is British anyway, and where do you belong?
At the end of this month, Toneelgroep Maastricht will present 'Eyes wide shut'. The play is an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's film of the same name. The latter was in turn inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's 'Droomnovelle'. The book was published 90 years ago and caused quite a stir. The story of DreamnovelleThe Viennese doctor Fridolin is shocked when his wife Albertine confesses to him that she...
"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not the same way, not quite; such is the logic of the biennial. And then there are things which have never happened before, and which happen now and in a time that seems somehow out of time, or takes our 'now' out with it." [hints]"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not....
It came anything but naturally, writing his collection of short stories The Pier Collapses. Mark Haddon, made famous with The Miraculous Incident with the Dog in the Night, novels come a lot easier. 'I've been trying to write short stories for a long time, and I knew I should be capable of it, but I never succeeded. It was like a...
The Encounter, a large-scale solo performance by British multi-talent Simon McBurney, had its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on Thursday. The Encounter combines the dramatic power of a Hollywood blockbuster with the polished simplicity of 20th-century, stripped-down, edited - call it Brechtian - theatre.
Ivo van Hove is America's best theatre director. The Nationale Opera recently picked up an Oscar for International Opera of the Year and now Carmien Michels, the Dutch Poetry Slam champion, has reached the third step of the podium of honour at the Poetry Slam World Cup. And this in the year when dyed-in-the-wool Girowinners are falling into the snow, racing drivers on their way to...
Imagine has been transforming for several years. When this festival was still going through the world under the name Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, its main focus was on genre cinema. The Fantatstic genre is an insidious term used as a catch-all for science fiction, fantasy and horror. In these postmodern times, fantatstic is harder to delineate. The festival therefore changed its name back in 2009,...
She came, saw and conquered. Until recently, Nell Zink was almost the embodiment of the cliché image of the poor writer, alone in an attic room. But when American writer Jonathan Frantzen touted her work, she grew into literary hype in no time. Her publisher gave her a six-figure advance. From nobody to 'Her Nellness' -...
The Cinéma Arabe festival (from 19 April) is showing a rich palette of new work from the Arab World. Interview with director Hany Abu-Assad who sets a new tone with The Idol. And he has plans for a film about William of Orange. 'That will be my parting gift to the Netherlands.'
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