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Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. Reviews remain open for one week before being paywalled.
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Recent reviews
Saul at the Adelaide Festival, Which Way Home, Laughter and Tears, Gandel Philanthropy Funding for Multicultural Arts Victoria, Brahms and Bendix-Balgley at the ASO, Nijinsky, and a giveaway from Victorian Opera and Circus Oz ...
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Everyone loves a youth orchestra. All that young talent and enthusiasm oozing from the stage energises and captivates. An audience comprising a good number of proud parents and friends lends a sense of heightened anticipation ...
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Everyone agrees that the end of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss is a disappointment. Suddenly and without much ceremony Eliot has Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom drowned in a flood. It's a finale that has baffled and frustrated readers for more than a century and half. Can anything ...
... (read more)An A-Z of Alfred Brendel by Michael Shmith (Alfred Brendel: The Complete Philips Recordings) ★★★★★
Why an A-Z of Brendel? Well, this is what the man himself has to say in the preface to his slim volume, A Pianist's A-Z: A piano lover's reader (2013): 'This book distils what, at my advanced age, I feel able to say about music, musicians, and matters of my pianistic profession ...
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In his introduction to the Folio Society edition of Twelfth Night, Peter Hall describes the play as a transitional work. Moving on from the light-heartedness of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Twelfth Night Shakespeare mixes grief and cruelty in with the comedy. We are advancing towards ...
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Bravo ABC, Mike Parr at the NGA, Amanda Joy and Paul Hetherington at Winter Arts 2016, After Shakespeare, 'Ball of Wax', Robert Alagna, and giveaways from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Melbourne Opera ...
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With a needle on cloth, Mary Jane Hannaford preserved her sharp observations of people as stout appliquéd figures set amidst interpretative renditions of Australian animals. Late in life she embroidered favourite verses and slyly captioned her pictures in quilts for her family. Close to one hundred ...
... (read more)Two productions of Così fan tutte' (Opera Australia ★★★★1/2 and Vienna's Volksoper ★★★)
Mozart's third great collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Così fan tutte, has enjoyed a chequered performance history since its première in the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1790, a year before Mozart's death. Its initial series of performances were interrupted by the death of Emperor Joseph ...
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Degas: A new vision is an exhibition of 206 works selected and presented by Henri Loyrette, the distinguished Degas scholar, former director of the Musée d'Orsay and subsequently director of the Musée du Louvre. In its range and variety the exhibition confirms the verdict of the writer and critic ...
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'Ihave no money and no husband,' comments Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) in Love and Friendship, Whit Stillman's adaptation of Jane Austen's novella, Lady Susan. The dilemma is common both to Austen's heroines and to this American director's: his five films have charted the ...
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