Baroque specialist and conductor Andrea Marcon, together with his La Cetra Barockorchester, manages to weave a fine lace work in Vivaldi's opera seria Catone in Utica (1678 - 1741), on which, among others, German soprano Anett Fritsch, Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg and striking Italian mezzo-soprano Francesca Ascioti shine like precious jewels. The international cast of Catone in Utica...
"Let's have a Magna Carta of British Broadcasting." With those words, celebrated actor Idris Elba (Luther, The Wire) began his closing remarks in the British Parliament. For the past half hour, he has been speaking to the Lords and Ladies kindly yet persuasively about the need and opportunities for diversity in British television. The timing of this speech was perfect because...
Lots of audience and wonderful stories made the Saturday of the literary festival Winternachten a party. For Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård's visit in the afternoon, queues stretched from the hall to the front door of the Theater aan het Spui. Poet and writer Rodaan al Galidi read about his years spent in an asylum seekers' centre. ©Marc
Hello Darkness is the theme of the international literary festival Winternachten, this coming weekend in The Hague. It takes guts, in a time when everything has to be fun and cosy and we prefer not to spend our free time dealing with misery or 'heavy topics'. That is why we love Winternachten, because that festival really goes...
'Exciting and accessible, with great tragic content and an unexpected and poignant ending'. With those words, writer Jan Vantoortelboom was awarded the Zeeland Book Prize last week. A Quattro Mani visited him in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and talked to him about his novel De man die haast had. 'I have grown as a writer.' Writing house 'The Tortelnest' adorns the hand-painted...
Inside Out. Almost six months after its Cannes premiere, we talk to producer Jonas Rivera about the reactions. Does the Pixar hit help parents understand their children better?
Many theatre practitioners secretly beg for the introduction of corporal punishment for schoolchildren with CKV. After all, schoolchildren with CKV are bent on ruining the lives of actors. They are assisted in this by disinterested teachers, who on their nights off are more concerned to please their pupils than the providers of culture. As a compromise, ...
Last year, theatre festival Boulevard ran a competition giving young creators the chance to create a performance. Requirements: the target audience (young people aged six and over), the length of the performance (roughly 20 minutes) and the theme (Vincent Van Gogh). This weekend the first two winners could be seen, next weekend the other two. Above all, the first performances showed the two faces ...
Ellen Vogel is dead, aged 93, and that is a loss. Calling her 'a monument' is an insult, so I won't do that here. Ellen Vogel was a regal actress, though: dignified and a bit posh. She was also someone who knew how to hide her anger sublimely. I experienced Ms Vogel a couple of times. The first time...
In the midst of all the Greek calamity, something beautiful has blossomed: a new inspired cinema that makes us blink.
Pixar set the bar high. So high, in fact, that its recent output was downright disappointing. But Inside Out exceeds all expectations. It may be taking it a bit far to say that Pixar single-handedly revived the animated film. But ever since the software company founded by George Lucas started making great films, the competition was blown away. Toy Story broke all records in 1995,...
1. Intimacy That the atmosphere in a packed hall becomes intimate enough for a girl in the audience to ask legendary American rapper-poet Black Ice the question: If poetry equals love, as he had just proclaimed, did it ever break your heart? Black Ice, the man who strings his associations together faster than Halbe Zijlstra strings his stupidities,...
Willem Jeths (1959) is one of the most successful Dutch composers. Through his enormous craftsmanship and drive, he manages to create his own sound world, which is surprising yet accessible. His work is regularly performed at home and abroad and has appeared on many CDs. In 2014, he received the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts and later that year he was appointed
Reinbert de Leeuw conducted an electrifying concert around Leoš Janáček at the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ on Thursday 12 March. The synergy between instrumentalists, singers and conductor yielded flawless performances, which were rewarded with ovational applause by the almost sold-out audience both before and after the interval. The cheers even led to an encore: a song from the popular cycle Rikadla...
"Everyone who writes will sooner or later run into a wall, a limit of what cannot, should not and should not be written. And almost everyone will flinch at that moment and refrain from writing it. Because that wall is there to protect us from what we don't want." Karl Ove Knausgård, already compared by some to Marcel Proust,...
Georges Vermeersch comes home early from prison, where he was serving a sentence for incest with his daughter Christiane. In the meantime, his wife Jeanne has had a child by younger neighbour Erik. So how to move on? Casper Vandeputte directed an intense, haunting version of Hugo Claus' play Friday at the Nationale Toneel. Lead actors Stefan de...
For the second consecutive year, the Festival of Early Music is organising a Laboratory, in which young creators can learn about their craft. This year's programme features Medea by Czech composer Georg Benda. This 'melodrama', an alternation of spoken text with music, was a resounding success at its premiere in 1775. Musicologist Jed Wentz and scholar Mary Helen Dupree revived it...
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
The main character of Bach's St John Passion? Jesus, of course. Wrong. It is the narrator, the evangelist, especially in Dale Duesing's wonderful staging, especially when interpreted by Robert Burt. Where in ordinary performances of the Johannes the evangelist's recitatives mainly interrupt the arias and choral passages, here they form the dramatic core. We truly see John's passion.
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