Culture

My interests span contemporary art, which has surrounded me ever since my infancy, heraldry, music, especially from Mozart up to the mid-Romantic period, as well as well-sung English choral music from the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. I have worked in the field of culture and media in various capacities.

An amazing mixture of Roland Petit, the Corps de Ballet and Proust

A review of RolandPetit's impressive ballet Proust ou les intermittences du coeur_ : « Les enfers de Monsieur de Charlus ».

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Benjamin Millepied takes Paris by storm

A review of Benjamin Millepied's ballet *Amoveo*, which was attended by a huge concourse of people from Paris and New York.

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Capote and the death penalty: turning the clock back to 1967

A review of the film about Truman, Capote, in which one deliberately veers somewhat off-topic, focusing more on the curious way in which he approached the death penalty on the occasion of his trip to Kansas.

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Chopin: such appropriate music for a ballet

A review of *La Dame aux camellias* directed by Neumaier, Americas most European choreographer.

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I have been know to enjoy Rosenkavalier sometimes

A review of Gerard Mortier's lovely production of Strauss's Rosenkavalier at the Paris Bastille Opera.

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Idomeneo: a lyrical turning point

A short review of Mozart's Idomeneo, truly a revolutionary musical piece at the time it was composed, directed by Luc Bondy at the Palais Garnier in Paris.

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La Dame aux Camélias: crusty old fogeys, jumping for joy

A review of Neumeier's *La Dame aux camellias*. I wonder why it took so long for this wonderful ballet piece, created in 1978, to be included in the Opera’s *répertoire*.

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The French themselves don't realise how beautifully French Les Troyens is

A quick review of *Les Troyens*, arguably France's most beautiful opera, and rather inexplicably quite misunderstood. Gerard Mortier, director of the Paris Opera, has rightly gone against this trend by making it the highlight of the year's season.

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Would the Social Register types in New York hate Haneke too?

A review of Heneke's *Don Giovanni* at the Palais Garnier, which received an absolutely awful welcome from the pretentious Parisian public.

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Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne: Gerard Mortier shuts his bolt pretty triumphantly

Over the past four years, Gerard Mortier has presided over a quiet revolution in style, matched by a major shift in the audience of that venerable Parisian institution

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