• Thursday 15 April 2010

• Terry Gilliam, Mike Figgis make opera debuts at ENO

  

  Naked with chefs: Joseph Raisi-Varzansh in ENO's controversial Turandot last year. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

  You can sometimes hear complaints about English National Opera – they just grab the most fashionable names from the theatre, say the company's critics, and stick them in opera and hope for the best. (Rupert "Enron" Goold's 2009 Turandot was the one that really split opinion – some found it wayward but with flashes of brilliance, others felt it proved that the only really successful opera directors are those who are primarily musicians.)

  For next season, announced today, at least one can see that ENO are being consistent – they are forging a distinctive identity based on the idea of hooking talent out of other artforms and using that as a way of tempting new audiences into the London Coliseum.

  And certainly, I'll be dying to see how Terry Gilliam envisions Berlioz's Damnation of Faust next May – as well as what Mike Figgis makes of Lucrezia Borgia in January.

  I daresay there will be some who'll deprecate ENO's obsession with opera neophytes. But these two... well, while there's every chance their productions will flop (there always is – opera's tough like that) I'll be intrigued to see what they come up with. Gilliam's sense of spectacle and of the extraordinary surely bodes well; he is an "operatic" film director. As for Figgis, who meticulously scores his own films, no one could accuse him of not being deeply musical.

  In fact, I think the ENO season is a pretty exciting one. Here's a quick run-down of my highlights. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 16.39 BST

• Tuesday 13 April 2010

• Clash of the Titans and the classics

  

  Myths remade for 2010 ... Sam Worthington as Perseus in Clash of the Titans. Photograph: Jay Maidment/SMPSP

  Typical Hollywood. The Greek myths might be bizarre, exciting, violent and dramatic, but that didn't stop the creators of the highly enjoyable Clash of the Titans film making their plotline even more extravagant than the source material. And that goes for both the ancient Greek myths and the original 1981 movie.

  Spoiler alert: here's a brief plot recap. The 2010 version has Perseus, as a baby, found in a chest with his dead mother by a fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite). He grows up to witness the destruction of a mighty statue of Zeus outside Argos (which is given a coastline location; actually, it's inland). His adoptive father and family are killed as a sort of collateral damage incident by Hades, who rises up from the depths to take revenge on this insult to the gods. He is taken to Argos where he discovers that king Cepheus is determined to overthrow the gods themselves, who are sustained by the prayers of mortals. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 11.52 BST

• Monday 12 April 2010

• The Labour manifesto and the arts

  

  Arts initiatives ... Gordon Brown launches the Labour manifesto at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

  Perhaps it is a response to the Conservatives having taken the initiative on the arts in recent months; perhaps it is at last a recognition that being associated with culture isn't necessarily a byword for elitism; perhaps it is just a cynical recognition that while the arts may not be a vote winner, by ignoring them you provoke the ire of a small but extremely noisy arts lobby.

  Whatever the reason, the arts and culture are prominent in the Labour manifesto to a quite unprecedented extent - at least as long as I have been reading Labour manifestos.

  There may not be much in the way of surprises in the Communities and Creative Britain chapter of the manifesto, which was launched today. But what we do have is a handful of initiatives and policies: a biennial Festival of Britain to celebrate British achievements in the arts from 2013; a £10 theatre ticket scheme to be rolled out nationally to ape the National Theatre's Travelex £10 tickets; primary legislation for national museums so that their independence may be increased; and new incentives for philanthropy. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 15.52 BST

• And the winner of the 2010 Classical Association prize is...

  I had a trip to Cardiff last Friday to be presented with the 2010 Classical Association prize, which is an award given each year to the person deemed by the association's council to have most furthered the public understanding of classics. The prize was awarded partly to recognise my books (It's All Greek to Me and Latin Love Lessons) but also my infiltration of classics into the paper (and I really am lucky to write for a paper that recently let me write 4,000 words on Homer's Iliad, for example). Special mention was given to this blog.

  Well, I'd always been a bit snooty about awards before I'd won one (pets win prizes, etc). Now – not so much. Of course it's small beer compared with the big literary awards, but it's an incredible pleasure to be recognised, particularly by such a distinguished organisation. (The CA membership is composed of teachers of classics at universities and schools as well as interested others; its council is composed of ridiculously impressive people.) Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 11.57 BST

• Wednesday 31 March 2010

• British film funding takes a new direction

  The UK Film Council announces its priorities for the next three years tomorrow. With its budget slimmed down by £25m, it has had to trim its activities; accordingly, its three different funding streams have been simplified into one fund worth an annual £15m to which filmmakers may apply. According to John Woodward, the Film Council's chief executive, the criteria for successful applications to the fund will be simple. "It's about creative excellence," he told me. "If a film is ambitious, has creative integrity and has the opportunity of finding an audience – whether that audience is large or small – we'll be interested."

  The other change for the Film Council is the creation of an "innovation fund" of £15m over three years. That's specifically to help independent film people from all parts of the business (distributers, producers, exhibitors etc) to try to get their heads round tackling the onrush of the digital future. Woodward reckons that audiences are still more eager than ever for the communal experience of the cinema; a trend that is heightened by the advances in 3D. But there are opportunities to be grasped for a future in which films will, almost certainly, be made available on demand to viewers in their sitting rooms. This ought, thinks Woodward, be good news for British film. The availability of British film in cinema and on TV has always been, of course, limited – by all kinds of practical factors. But in the future we could be confronted with "a limitless inventory" of films to choose from. All this is in its infancy, and the fund will help people develop these ideas and crucially, cogitate on ways to make money digitally. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 16.58 BST

• Are the arts a new battleground between Channel 4 and the BBC?

  Time was when if you wanted to see television programming that took the arts, especially avant-garde art, seriously, you'd switch to Channel 4. That reputatation has been drifting for some time now (anyone for Relocation, Relocation or Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, both airing at peak times tonight?). This has been despite the superhuman efforts of such figures as Nicholas Glass, arts correspondent at Channel 4 News, and former arts commissioning editor Jan Younghusband, now at the BBC, who birthed such programmes as The Death of Kinghoffer, Steve McQueen's debut feature film Hunger, and that rare beast, the reality-format-arts-programme-that-was-actually-good, Operatunity (shame it spawned so many inferior love-children).

  However, today comes the announcement that Channel 4 has appointed a new arts commissioning editor in Tabitha Jackson, currently head of More4. (Not someone I know, so I have no particular take on whether she's a Good Thing, alas – though it's fair to say that she won't be quite as marinated in the arts as Younghusband, who worked in opera and theatre before moving into broadcasting.) She'll have a doubled budget (£6 million per year) for arts programmes. And a new arts board is to be set up under the chairmanship of director of television and content, Kevin Lygo. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 15.17 BST

• Tuesday 30 March 2010

• Mike Nelson to represent Britain at Venice Biennale 2011

  

  Looking into Mike Nelson's piece Amnesiac Shrine at the Tate Liverpool Photograph: David Sillitoe

  An old Red Crescent medical bus, seemingly recently discarded by hippies who've turned it into an opium den – the claustrophobic space seems thick with their presence. A derelict building in Margate turned into a cannabis factory – again filled with the presence of a cast of characters that's busily supplied by the viewer's imagination. A plain white door in a chic contemporary art fair that leads you through the looking glass into a dingy, grubby, unsavoury photographer's studio. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 16.16 BST

• Monday 29 March 2010

• The Gospels, according to Philip Pullman

  Charlotte Higgins: The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ had me re-reading the Bible

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 16.14 BST

• Monday 22 March 2010

• Last of a generation: Wolfgang Wagner dies aged 90

  

  Lord of the Ring: scene from the 2001 Bayreuth production of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Photograph: EPA

  Our obituary of Wolfgang Wagner, who has died aged 90, rather crushingly says of its subject: "The most remarkable aspect [of his life] was his longevity". And yet, while he certainly wasn't an artistic visionary, his role in one of the most remarkable family businesses of all time will more than earn him his place in history. The history of the Bayreuth festival – with its tortured and serpentine family feuds and its serious brush with Nazism – is endlessly fascinating.

  Born in 1919, Wolfgang served in the army on the Polish front during the war until being injured out: Hitler was a frequent visitor to his hospital bed. Needless to say, Hitler's devotion to Wagner, and Wolfgang's English mother Winifred's devotion to the Führer, were important factors in the continued success of the Bayreuth festival through the war. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 17.40 GMT

• Friday 19 March 2010

• Carol Ann Duffy the classicist (on David Beckham and Achilles)

  

  Sportsman, fashion icon, classical hero: Beckham on the pitch Photograph: Matteo Bazzi/EPA

  I've been thoroughly enjoying the Poet Laureate's David Beckham poem: Carol Ann Duffy really is showing that she can turn out a public poem with a light touch that doesn't feel strained and awkward and not like her. (It's published in the Mirror — online, they've stuck an advert in the middle of the third stanza. Stylish.) Needless to say, I'm also enjoying that it is also a poem with classical content. She's charted such territory on many occasions before. There's many a Sapphic twist to her cycle of heady love poems, Rapture (2005). And in The World's Wife (1999) Duffy gave hilarious monologues to such characters as Mrs Aesop and Mrs Tiresias.

  In Achilles (for David Beckham) Duffy refers slyly to various stories about the mythical Greek character. First of all she has his mother, the goddess Thetis, dipping him in the river Styx: thus his imperviousness to injury was to be ensured. But she held him by his ankle, leaving it vulnerable (Hence the metaphorical phrase Achilles' heel and the anatomical term Achilles tendon, providing, needless to say, the triple meaning on which the poem turns.) This story, by the way, appears in the first-century AD Statius poem The Achilleid and is not before attested, but it has none the less become "part of" the Achilles story as we receive it today. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 11.53 GMT

• Tuesday 9 March 2010

• Spring break

  

  It's lambing season ... Photograph: Adrian Burke/Corbis

  Charlotte Higgins: I'm taking a break now till 18 March. See you then

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 11.52 GMT

• Thursday 4 March 2010

• The ICA: kill or cure?

  

  The ICA's building on the Mall. Are the contents worth saving? Photograph: David Paterson/ WildCountry/Corbis

  Time now to corral some reporting and thoughts on the Institute of Contemporary Arts. I've written two reports: in January, a piece about the depth of financial problems (the institute has received £1.2m from Arts Council England's Sustain fund, half to sort out immediate cashflow problems and half to address longer-term issues). This piece drew on leaked minutes from an ICA meeting in December in which staff were told that the salary bill had to be cut by £1m from £2.5m, and interviews with director Ekow Eshun and chair Alan Yentob. The second piece related to the departure of exhibitions director Mark Sladen. A leaked email sent to colleagues revealed that he had told his bosses he would consider a new post as director of programmes only if Eshun resigned. (He has now been made redundant.) I also reported angry scenes between him and Yentob and a vote of no confidence – taken by staff, but, by consensus, never actually counted. An in-depth piece in Mute magazine by JJ Charlesworth takes a view on longer-term problems at the ICA. A piece by Louisa Buck in the Art Newspaper contains useful stuff on finances gleaned from trustee Alan Taylor. Meanwhile the Times vox-popped various artistic great-and-good, asking: should we let the ICA die?

  There are many issues floating around in all this. Here's how I think they coalesce. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 11.41 GMT

• Tuesday 2 March 2010

• Margaret Hodge: the arts are a 'closed shop'

  

  Locked out? Margaret Hodge at the John Harvard Library, Southwark. Photograph: Frank Baron

  Lyn Gardner has already raised the issue of unpaid workers in the arts – and I too have heard the problem spoken of several times over the past few days with increasing disquiet. At an event at last week's Association of British Orchestras conference in Glasgow an orchestral manager told me that several applicants for a job with his organistion had told that him their previous posts had been made redundant and replaced by unpaid internships. This morning, at a Demos event at which arts minister Margaret Hodge spoke, someone who works for a major gallery told me that the same thing is happening at their workplace: people are being made redundant and replaced by unpaid interns.

  This is the reality of what happens when already slender organisations are compelled to make "efficiency savings". As the gallery- or concert-goer, you may not notice too much difference in the art you're seeing – "frontline services" may be being protected – but somewhere in an office, behind closed doors, someone may be being quietly exploited.

  As Paul Hughes, managing director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra pointed out at the ABO conference, it's also no way to run a railroad – training up people to do a particular job for six months and then doing it all over again with the next intern is inefficient. He said: "I feel deeply uncomfortable about the use of this free middle-class labour" – for of course, internships privilege those who can afford to work without being paid, who can rely on kindly relatives for free accommodation. Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 15.32 GMT

• Wednesday 24 February 2010

• What should be the musical theme for the 2012 Olympics?

  

  Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé in the video for Barcelona, proposed as the theme for the 1992 Olympics. Photograph: Richard Young / Rex Features

  In my G2 arts diary today, I quote a poll made by the Association of British Orchestras (to whose annual conference I go tomorrow).

  Apparently most people questioned would like there to be a Nessun-Dorma-style Olympics theme for the London 2012 games, and most people would like it to be classical, and, indeed, half thought it should be played by a British orchestra.

  So: if Italia 1990 could call on Puccini, what should we do? Choose something by Elgar? Purcell? Harrison Birtwistle? Thomas Adès? Or maybe it shouldn't be classical at all. All I could think of yesterday was gloomy stuff (Nimrod, Dido's Lament) which wouldn't do at all. But this morning suggests to me Elgar's In the South, or even better Cockaigne (In London Town). Of course we arguably have the whole of Handel, which ought to give us plenty to go on (Hail the Conquering Hero? – although could be a bit tricky for Middle Eastern politics). Suggestions here please!

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 08.30 GMT

• Monday 22 February 2010

• The Conservatives: nice or nasty for the arts?

  

  Favoured by the Tories? Pelleas Et Melisande at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

  It's a very Tory day today, with the Conservatives' arts manifesto covered in our news pages, and with my Jeremy Hunt interview in G2.

  I feel I've now said rather a lot, and it's time for you, readers, to have a go at raking through the Tory arts manifesto.

  I'll only add one or two thoughts here, which are more personal than the necessarily reasonably formal way in which I've covered the material in the paper.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Charlotte Higgins 09.36 GMT

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Charlotte Higgins on culture – most commented

1. 1. The Labour manifesto and the arts (9)
2. 2. Terry Gilliam, Mike Figgis make opera debuts at ENO (2)