Six bests in nine days

Namely as good as it can get in theatre (Simon Stone's radical adaptation and production of Medea for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam at the Barbican); in concerts (the two London Symphony Orchestra stunners to celebrate Bernard Haitink's 90th birthday - Mozart and Bruckner on Sunday, Dvořák and Mahler on Thursday); in fiction (putting my thoughts together on Robert Menasse's polyphonic masterpiece The Capital as well as meeting him last Friday); and in opera, stupendous results at the highest level of performance in Birmingham Opera Company's site-specific Shostakovich Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in the Tower Ballroom on the edge of Edgbaston Reservoir. To which I should add the perfection of a small gallery - major collection, handsome surroundings - in the shape of the Barber Institute on Birmingham University's campus. The below is merely the atrium to the superb deco concert hall; most of the masterpieces are in the rooms on the next floor, but even here we have a famous Rodin and a Chola bronze of Natarajan.

Much to say about the Barber collection, but now now. I need to take a break and simply digest after all that writing for The Arts Desk, and as there were too many good production/concert/rehearsal pics around that would otherwise go to waste, why not use some of them? The one below by Sanne Peper, of the stupendous Marieke Heebink as Anna, a contemporary Medea of excess vitality, and Aus Greidanus Jr as Lukas (Jason) with their two sons, is one I couldn't use in the review because the boys were different. And perhaps it's a bit of a spoiler as to how the ash which starts falling on the blindingly white stage two thirds of the way through gets deployed.

Haitink was photographed at the first of the two 90th birthday concerts by Robert Allan. You'd need to watch the film formerly on the LSO website to observe his superb control and vigilance - my friend Joe Smouha beautifully described 'the architecture spun from those tiny movements at the end of the baton' - but there's a sense of that here, albeit in a more genial moment.

The Khovanskygate experience of 2014 told me that Graham Vick's Lady Macbeth would be opera at its communicative best. Sure, every production of it I've seen - Pountney's twice at ENO, followed by Tcherniakov's, Jones's twice at the Royal Opera - has hit hard; but the closeness of one's promenading self to the action, the involvement of all strands of Birmingham society in the chorus and acting group, make this an unrepeatable experience. I got there early because they'd asked if I would prep a group of young volunteers on how to blog their experience (it actually turned out to be how they'd present their enthusiasms about the project on camera, but we quickly adapted and I got something very different out of each - to be blogged about here very soon). This shot I took of a warm-up gives some idea of the venue, which they'd further deconstructed. The orchestra platform is left, the first stage for the action, the Izmailov kitchen, to the right.

And we need a couple more production photos, by Adam Fradgley/Exposure, of the amazing Chrystal E Williams as Katerina/'The Wife'. Up top, she's despatching her inopportunely arrived husband Boris (Joshua Stuart). Here she is again, first liberated,

then deserted by that shit Sergey/'The Lover' (Brenden Gunnell).

I'm more and more drawn to Birmingham, even if it did vote for Brexit by a narrow margin (would it now, I wonder?) , and however messed up the city centre. There are so many hidden delights, and each time I go I discover one or two more. It has one of our most vibrant cultural scenes, that's to be sure. Now, if only BOC could think of Prokofiev's War and Peace...problematic, I know, because Part One is largely chorus-free. Maybe that could be done in a smallish theatre and then Part Two could be theirs in another extraordinary big venue, both with the CBSO. Or perhaps The Fiery Angel with Williams, whose upper range could certainly handle the crazy role of Renata. Anything is possible with this company.

Woman of the Year: a brief commemoration

I had wanted to write more about my impressions of the toweringly great Simone Veil's autobiography, Une Vie. But perhaps a more pressing need is to salute her on International Women's Day, as a pioneer of the possible and the first President of the European Parliament 40 year ago (this July, to be precise).

A figure of unimpeachable integrity, she had survived Auschwitz and the 'death march' from there before liberation. She had seen the vital need for peace and unity in a continent which was still unsettled. In her inaugural speech, she pointed out how 

localised wars have proliferated. The situation of peace that has prevailed in Europe has been a remarkable piece of good fortune, but none of us should estimate its fragility. Need I stress that this situation is new for Europe, whose history is marked by constant fratricidal and bloody wars?

Like its predecessors, our Assembly has, whatever our differences, a fundamental responsibility to maintain this peace, which is probably the most precious asset for all Europeans. The tensions prevailing in the world today make this responsibility particularly heavy, and it is to be hoped that the legitimacy bestowed on our Assembly by its election by universal suffrage will help us to bear it and to spread this peace of ours to the outside world.

Worth quoting to those who still rabbit on about 'the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels', though I suspect they are deaf beyond help now if they still persist. Pictured below: Veil at a sitting of the European Parliament in October 1979.

Veil also acknowledged the difficulties of a federation of national voices all needing to be heard, which is the other subject of Robert Menasse's magnificent very rich new novel The Capital, just published in a beautiful English translation by Jamie Bulloch. I'll be reviewing that on The Arts Desk on Sunday. Veil, briefly, on that theme:

The new Parliament will make it possible for the views of all Community citizens to be voiced at European level, and will, at the same time, raise awareness among the different sectors of society of the need for European solidarity over and above their immediate concerns, however legitimate, for these must never mask the fundamental interests of the Community.

Economics are also a theme of the speech, but let's leave those aside since that seems to be all that's at stake right now.  You can read the rest in one of the autobiography's appendices. Meanwhile can I salute some of Veil's standard-bearers of integrity on the UK political scene: the late Jo Cox, Caroline Lucas, Anna Soubry, Tulip Saddiq, Jess Phillips, Nicola Sturgeon, to select a few at random. Today is one to forget those who disgrace Parliament, including our shameful so-called leader, so I won't give them a namecheck.

A Leonardo dozen, Mantegna, Bellini, Lotto

We, as in the British, have been well served by the Royal Collection's holding of more than 500 sheets of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci; I well remember a Hayward Gallery exhibition of 88 back in 1979. 2019 is the Big Year, five centuries after Leonardo's death, so the big show at the Queen's Gallery in the summer will include nearly 200.

Before that, the more interesting idea to display 12 drawings in each of 12 regional galleries and museums, and for free, has been realised with a great deal of care to lend each institution a representative selection of Leonardo's work in the study of human figures, anatomy, animals, topography, inventions across a lifetime. In later years he foresook painting, and who can be that sorry? I know his canvases are masterpieces in the art of chiaroscuro, but - and this is my blind spot - I find the shadowing and the colours we now have make many of his figures look waxy. The only one I personally love is the Lady with an Ermine in Cracow's Czartoryski Museum.

Whereas my Birmingham experience last month, when I travelled up to catch Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Lithuanian composer Čiurlionis's The Sea and some of Grieg's incidental music for Ibsen's Peer Gynt, struck me with the force of revelation. I decided to take a lunchtime train and see if I could get to see the 12 drawings on display in the city Museum and Art Gallery (which I already know fairly well, and now like the Pre-Raphaelites much less than I did in my callow youth). That meant queueing for about half an hour, in lively company, before being admitted in to a single room where the admissions control meant you could get to see everything in close-up (especially useful for me when I took my thick-lensed specs off). I'm not going to illustrate them all, but want to select a few that especially struck me.

Birmingham was especially lucky to get Leonardo's most beautifully-executed large-scale map, of the area around the long marshy lake that used to occupy the Valdichiana in southern Tuscany. The reason for this highly finished work isn't clear; it may have something to do with Leonardo's plans for the Arno canal (the Canale Maestro along the length of the Valdichiana did not begin until 50 years later). But the area covered is much larger, and includes Siena in the lower centre, nicely detailed.

Two earlier works from the previous decade, the 1490s, show Leonardo's habit of including diverse studies on the same sheet of paper. The one illustrated up top started with geometrical shapes before going on to include a rearing horse and rider, an old man in profile, a standing warrior, a study for a screw press and nature studies including a blade of grass and a cumulus cloud. Below is a study for the head of St James in the Last Supper (which I still have to go and see; on various occasions when I was in Milan it wasn't viewable) in red chalk and architectural sketches, in pen and ink, for modifications to the Castello Sforzesco.

The red chalk studies I love the best include this magical stand of trees

with a single tree illustrated on the other side of the sheet (Birmingham have made sure you can see both sides; only the group is illustrated in the splendid and very cheap catalogue for the 200, excellently annotated by Martin Clayton).

In later years Leonardo's understanding of anatomy was enriched by human dissections. Birmingham's specimen shows the bones, muscles and tendons of the hand.

A close-up shows the meticulous mirror-writing developed for practical reasons by the left-handed artist.

It's especially fascinating that in his final years Leonardo turned to objective studies of a cataclysmic deluge. Clayton writes eloquently about this:

It is surely not fanciful to see this obsession with death and destruction as the deeply personal expression of an artist nearing his end - an artist who had seen some of his greatest creations unfinished or destroyed before his eyes, and who had a profound sense of the impermanence of all things, even of the earth itself.

These studies seem light years away from the paintings in the first rooms of the National Gallery's stupendous Mantegna and Bellini exhibition, In fact the difference is about six decades: the 'deluge' series dates from Leonardo's last years in France, while Mantegna's Presentation of Christ in the Temple was executed around 1455.

In the first of many instructive direct comparisons, the NG exhibition showed us how close Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini were in the 1450s and early 1460s (Mantegna was Bellini the younger's brother-in-law), Only the central four figures in Bellini's obvious homage are the same (I see Rona Goffen in the big Yale monograph I have thinks this is 'studio of' and possibly even a copy, don't know if that's been discredited since or not).

My favourite gallery in the world was already well equipped to provide the backbone of this show; it even has both artists' treatment of The Agony in the Garden. There was a special fascination for us in that our good friend Jill Dunkerton took us round on a 'friends and family' preview afternoon.  She'd been working on the restoration of Bellini's Death of St Peter Martyr for the past three years, and the difference she'd made was on display for the first time. This is what it looked like before

 and now; you can already see the softer light, the blue sky that's edging towards Titian (the date is about 1509, shortly before Bellini's death).

It's a strange and in many ways horrible picture, though as Jill pointed out, we shouldn't feel too sorry for Peter of Verona's death at the hands of the Cathars he had persecuted as Inquisitor in Lombardy. The tension is between the foreground action and the scenes of everyday rural activity (even though it's more chopping that's going on). The rows of trees that fill the picture height  in all but the top left hand corner, adding to the claustrophobia, are in themselves beautifully painted, though Jill had some work to do here. A help in gauging some of the original colours was the Bellini workshop's treatment of the same theme in the Courtauld Gallery.

A restorer's background knowledge is always immense, and when I asked if the canvas had been cut off on the left, where we see only the rear and the back two legs of a donkey, Jill was able to tell me that Bellini, always inquisitive about his fellow artists, had met with Dürer and been intrigued that he had done exactly the same kind of 'life goes on beyond the picture' effect. Not sure exactly which work she was referring to, but I found this, Dürer's drawing of light horsemen fighting, from 1489, which fits the bill.

I was astonished to find several critics complaining that the exhibition was 'too academic'; is anyone too stupid to appreciate the similarities and differences between Mantegna and Bellini? I do also wonder if anyone departs from the feeling myself and many others have of love for Bellini and immense respect for the more meticulous, spatially conscious Mantegna? So many of Bellini's angels and putti have exquisite faces and wings; the mastery even of a severely damaged painting like the so-called Rimini Pietà is obvious.

And no reproduction can do justice to the lit-from-within quality in possibly my favourite of all Madonna and Childs, with saints Catherine and Mary Magdalen equally exquisite.

It seemed like an embarras de richesse that at more or less the same time, relatively unheralded, the National Gallery had another stunning exhibition, relatively small but with nearly as high a quotient of great paintings, of Lorenzo Lotto. This one was free, the thinking being that visitors wouldn't want to pay twice, but it would have been worth a substantial admission price. Again at Jill's instigation, we were very lucky to see many of these paintings, and to be introduced to a genius I feel a personal stake in, when Bergamo held a big Lotto exhibition back in 1998. There we saw the big altarpieces in town, the intarsie of the Santa Maria Maggiore choirstalls and the frescoes in Trescore Balneario as well as the 50 paintings in the show. A couple of years later we took a Lotto itinerary around the Marche before a walking weekend in the fabulous Sibillini mountains (alas, Castelluccio at the head of the Piano Grande was destroyed in the recent earthquake). The great glory here was the richly-coloured Crucifixion in the pretty but very much working village of Monte San Giusto.

One small place still on the list to visit was Asolo, where an Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Anthony Abbot and Louis of Toulouse (1506) hangs in the Duomo. Now not necessary, because here it was in the second room of the National Gallery exhibition. News to me that the Virgin has the face of Caterina Cornaro, former Queen of Cyprus made Lady of Asolo in the last years of her life.

That apart, the great glory, as in Bergamo (where the painting is normally in the Accademia Carrara), was the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, with Niccolo Bonghi (1523). It's a shame the picture was damaged not long after painting, allegedly by a French soldier; there should be a landscape through a window in the upper part.

But that still doesn't detract from the tenderness and intimacy of the hands in the central group.

Once again, the Royal Collection comes into play with its famous portrait of Andrea Odoni; the exhibition had done a good job in assembling similar antiquities either side of the painting. But I'm sorry if I whet your appetite; both exhibitions closed some weeks back, and I kick myself for not returning to the Lotto.

Follies of 2019

To declare the National Theatre's revival the best ever production, with the best ever cast, of Sondheim and Goldman's layered masterpiece, you'd have to go back as far as the 1971 premiere. My theatre editor on The Arts Desk, Matt Wolf, was sitting next to a man who'd been there, and he declared this was tops. What I do know is that I laughed, cried and cheered my way through the 2017 press night of Dominic Cooke's subtle staging, already the stuff of five-star raves like mine, and that it just got even better (Marianka Swain seems to me to hit the nail on the head, and eloquently so, for TAD this time). Production photos throughout by Johan Persson.

It sounds curmudgeonly to say so, but while Imelda Staunton brought her usual perceptiveness and truth to the role of Sally Durant Plummer, the former Weismann Girl who's been eating her heart out over decades for the man she should have married while wed to the one she doesn't really love, it didn't fit her like a glove in the way that her definitive Mamma Rose in Gypsy absolutely did. The lines lie quite high, really needing an accomplished singer - some numbers were transposed for IS, I'm told - and one hears Barbara Cook sometimes in the true show voice of Joanna Riding.

But oh, we get so much more. It's interesting that, as before, the production images don't give away what happens in the climactic 'Loveland' Follies of the four main characters, working all the better for not coming after an interval. So you see the sweet facade of Sally above, not the raging monster that breaks out of 'Losing My Mind'. The image - slight spoiler notice - of her ripping off her wig and staring terrifyingly with her clown-face at the audience is up there with the great moment of her Julie Jordan bursting out of the house in Act Two of Carousel and crying 'where is he?' (of the 'ghost' Billy Bigelow). I remember how our row rocked with tearful heavings at that point.

The way that key song is played underlines what Cooke does with so many numbers - has them start naturalistically and quietly, at a mirror ('Broadway Baby' and, more stylised, this one) or conversationally to friends, admirers or husband (Tracie Bennett's ever-stupendous 'I'm Still Here' - pictured above, given in full in the YouTube film at the end of this piece - and Janie Dee's cool-beginning 'Could I Leave You?' - Dee pictured below with Alexander Hanson and Christine Tucker) and then rise to heights either of theatrical defiance, on with the motley, or sheer fury. The stage persona can be as 'real' as the inner turmoil revealed.

I was struck this time by how much the young 'ghosts' were interacting with their older selves, more palpably aghast at the way they'd turned out. Having a drink after the show with our former Edinburgh University Theatre Company buddy, and the best Buddy you'll ever see, Peter Forbes (pictured below), he confirmed that Cooke, even in absentia for part of the rehearsal period as he was finishing off a film, had wanted more of this. The excellent junior show singers, therefore (Christine Tucker, Gemma Sutton, Harry Hepple and Ian McIntosh) had to be 'present', emotionally speaking, the whole time. So you looked at them much more often. In any case, 'Waiting for the Girls Upstairs' is as perfect an ensemble (an octet, in fact) as Sondheim ever devised.

Alexander Hanson gave us a different Ben from Philip Quast, the cracks showing from the start, some very sensitive singing going on. Perhaps that meant that the ultimate breakdown felt inevitable rather than surprising, but none the worse for that. I assumed we were seeing the same Hattie 'Broadway Baby' Walker as first time round, since they looked identical, but this was Claire Moore (pictured below) rather than Di Botcher, absolutely terrific.

I was hoping to see Felicity Lott, taking over the veteran Austrian diva Heidi Schiller from Josephine Barstow for this stretch of the run, but she was stricken with laryngitis, and though she felt better on Tuesday morning, she gave it one more day before she was back in the bosom of people she absolutely adores (and it's reciprocated).

I went, lucky me, as a guest of Meyer Sound, celebrating its new partnership with the NT, and it may come across as the kind of commercial plug you keep getting, in knowing inverted commas, throughout RuPaul's Drag Race (welcome, Season 11 - it's going to be good) if I say that, yes, the quality of orchestral balance with well-miked singers really showed their part in the overall success. But what ravishing playing! Jonathan Tunick, Sondheim's master orchestrator, is hugely, sincerely impressed. Peter told us how he was there at an orchestral rehearsal at which Peter's son, a double-bassist, was allowed to sit alongside the professional player. Tunick would tweak a note here and there, hearing everything with the ear of a Boulez, re-allocating a line or two to make all the difference.

That's professional genius. And lest you ever doubted it about the master, I came across an amazing 55 plus minutes of Sondheim in conversation with André Previn which absolutely nail it, making no allowances at all for what the TV audience might or might not know. I found it when I was looking, on the advice of my Arts Desk pal Graham Rickson, for Previn's Pittsburgh Mahler 4 to add to the TAD homage I put up yesterday. I didn't find that, but I came across this - and, better still, it has the three wonderful first performers of Side by Side by Sondheim - Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin and David Kernan - bearing out what Sondheim says about duet form, pastiche - a chance to hear the first song he wrote for 'Phyllis's Folly', not even heard in Side by Side, and breaking the song-mould. A true and generous insight into the creator's workshop, and what a brilliant interviewer Previn makes.

And we have to end with Bennett's 'I'm Still Here', as performed at an awards ceremony feting the last run. Now, I have to catch Company before it closes. Meant to go over Xmas, but ended up in hospital instead...

Early spring along the Thames

Should have been in the snowy valleys of Valdres, Norway, from last Thursday to Sunday, savouring the Hemsing Festival. But alas, my operation scheduled for two Tuesdays earlier, was cancelled without the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital admin even telling me; I only found out because I rang five times to check over confusion about a local or a general anaesthetic (the latter, obviously), to be told 'oh, they should have phoned you'. With the pain from the stent having intensified, and a cold on top of all that, I didn't feel I could cope with the travel. So I stayed at home, mostly rested and made some limited excursions which cost me afterwards but were well worth doing in such freakily warm weather (about which much has been said in a 'this-is-all-very-well-but' way I understand, though I do remember patches like this in mid-Feb from years back). And on Monday morning I had my op; stones and stent all out, so I'm moving more easily now if taking it quietly.

The above is spring tide at Chiswick Mall. Heading back from Chiswick House, I found a group of people, including cyclists with their shoes and socks off, hovering because the river water had come up on to the pavement as well as the road. But I could see it was going out, and waited, pleasantly chatting. Sometimes it's good to be detained by nature.

First springwatches, after various traversals of Brompton Cemetery on the way to and from the hospital, took place the previous week. First a Valentine's morning dream; high time to see what was going on in the walled garden of Fulham Palace. Not much, though the magnolia by the Tudor gateway seemed almost ready to flower

and potatoes were lined up In the glasshouse for planting.

This time we headed out of the south gate, to be faced by a very vocal robin on the fence that separates Fulham Palace gardens from All Saints Church

in the graveyard of which was the first crocus display I came across of any substance.

This one was especially surprising because of the humming of innumerable bees, which proves crocuses/croci are good for more than just saffron. I think the Palace is upping its supply of hives again after a big swarming left it with only one hive last year.

So we proceeded to a lunch in warm sun at the Garden Centre cafe, after which I wandered back to Fulham Palace to pick up a couple of scented geraniums from the cart for the window boxes (others have survived the winter so far). Time to admire the bare shape of the glorious copper beech, complete with nests, before it takes on its full beautiful leaf.

Next day, in the afternoon, to Kew for the first time this year. Its crocus patches used to be by the Victoria Gate, but now they're more extensive around the Temple of Aeolus

and in the arboretum area. From above:

and below:

with catkins to provide some contrasting colour.

More with a moon behind them between the larches of the lake

and same moon above one of the redone vases of the newly-restored Temperate House.

with that unique light of incipient leafing on the trees nearby.

After all this abundance, Chelsea Physic Garden wasn't doing a great deal, and I left in some dudgeon that the wonderful Tangerine Dream Cafe - slightly bohemian but easy going village-institute service, first-class food - had been replaced by some anonymous 'please wait to be seated' franchise; the corporate spirit has spread here (signed a petition some time back, but clearly the new director was not to be swayed). Much of the interest was in hangers-on from last summer and autumn - the pomegranates by the Swan Walk gate, being frequented by a squirrel,

a lone teasel with a backdrop of eucalyptus

and a sunflower husk facing the first flowering magnolia (M. denudata) I saw this year.

A frond of Dicksonia antarctica unfurling

and dwarf irises rather oddly displayed in an open-air cabinet were catching the light

while there was brilliant sunshine by the pond near Sir Hans Sloane's statue, the clam shells brought back from the voyage of Captain Cook's Endeavour.

Rather more classical ornamentation in what felt, in reality, like a really spooky late afternoon light at Chiswick House gardens the following afternoon

and more modest crocus displays than at Kew, but with a Palladian backdrop, and for free.

Camellias are already profuse in the Grade 1 listed, Lottery Fund-restored greenhouse (March is the official display month).

First coot nesting rather early on the lake.

The ring-necked parakeets which have spread upstream at least as far as Kensington Gardens are here too, as well as at Kew (top), and kissing on a willow by the Thames. Big debates going on now about culling, but still, to see them is as deceptively exotic as...high temperatures in February.

And so back as the sun set over Chiswick's church and brewery

with signs of spring life in some of the other gardens of Chiswick Mall

and another magnolia partly bloomed in front of the last house before the passageway with the Dove pub in it.

A new haunt discovered the following day when we attended a special commemoration of the great Blondin at Kensal Green Cemetery. But that's for another photojournal.