On Chesil Beach is not Ian McEwan’s first screenplay, nor his only adaptation for the screen. The Children Act (2017), directed by Richard Eyre and based on McEwan’s 2014 novel, is also due for release in 2018. In an interview he gave at the Toronto International Film Festival, where both films premièred, McEwan ...

When John Copley’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor is remounted, it often comes with the marketing phrase ‘a piece of Australian operatic history’. The production was created for Joan Sutherland in 1980, giving Australian audiences a second opportunity to see her in the role that caused a sensation she first ...

Imagine, if you can, an elderly white man, Michael Caton, stretching his arms wide and performing an Indigenous dance as part of a traditional welcome at a summer, country-town folk festival, before delivering a sermon on the virtues of acceptance and multiculturalism to a smiling, nodding, ethnically diverse circle of music lovers ...

Vincent van Gogh called homes ‘human nests’, and in Auvers-sur-Oise it was a nest he was after, to regain his poise through work and rest. Loving Vincent, a Polish–English co-production, spends most of its time in Auvers, where Vincent died an arduous death in 1890, but begins in Arles, where Vincent made friends such ...

The tried and proven order of the traditional symphonic concert program dictates a short introductory piece, followed by a well-known concerto featuring a well-known soloist; then, after interval, a symphony to showcase both the orchestra’s and the conductor’s abilities. This palatable menu was, however, presented with a twist at ...

In this fortnight's Update: ABR's Arts Highlights of the Year, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, the 2018 Adelaide Festival, Shostakovich and Ashkenazy, Melbourne Opera's Roberto Devereux, Katie Noonan and Michael Leunig, Mapping Melbourne 2017, Russian Revolution and Anton Chekov, Birdcage Thursdays at fortyfivedownstairs, 30 years of Boomalli, Riccardo Muti and the AWO, and theatre, opera, and film giveaways.

Six films into his career as a director, George Clooney is still a little indistinct as a filmmaker, though there are certain subjects – television, politics, the intersection of the two – to which he returns. What’s indistinct is the voice. He has struggled through a tall-tale biopic (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 2003), a screwball ...

In his introduction to this year’s Melbourne Festival, Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway emphasised the need for people to step away from the hateful invective festering in public discourse and to note the bigger picture of humanity’s journey. ‘The last couple of years – globally – have not been our best’, he says in ...

Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma elicits the ultimate rose-tinted nostalgia in ageing opera aficionados. Operagoers of my generation wax lyrical about Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé in their prime, while making disparaging remarks about present singers. We in turn were bored by ancients who admitted that La Callas ...