🎭 Drama hit the Royal Opera House last week when tenor Roberto Alagna suddenly fell ill during the second act of a performance of Turandot. Richard Hetherington, one of the organisation’s chiefs, had to step in and sing the aria from the wings. As a result, the crowd were denied a performance of “Nessun Dorma”, leading to boos (and much discussion about the logistics of cover performers).
🎻 Almost a year ago to the day, we published a piece from Hugh Morris on the disappearance of the London Chamber Orchestra (LCO), a fixture of the capital’s classical music scene for over 100 years that suddenly disappeared, leaving a trail of angry musicians and unpaid bills. Well, the orchestra now seems to back, as abruptly as it vanished. How do we know? A Daily Mail piece about Davina McCall attending “star-studded LCO bash” in a green leather jumpsuit.
📺 Writer, editor and public intellectual Tariq Ali has criticised the BFI for leaving him out of its season on the legacy of Britain’s multicultural TV programming (recommended yesterday in The Londoner’s Monday briefing). Ali was a pivotal member of the team behind Bandung File, a groundbreaking global current affairs broadcast on Channel 4 in the 1980s, and told the Guardian that the film institute “never contacted me. The first I saw was in the BFI programme that they had an evening of Bandung File stuff.” The BFI, for their part, say that the schedule of speakers hasn’t yet been finalised.
🎨 The National Gallery has long maintained that their 1498 portrait of Albrecht Dürer’s father, acquired in 1904, is not the work of the German Renaissance master but merely an imitator. Now, a new book for a world-renowned Dürer scholar argues that it is authentic, reigniting a debate that has raged among academics for decades. The National Gallery, however, refuses to budge — and, before you decide to make up your own mind, refuses to put the painting back on public display.
Quick hits: Tarek Atoui is announced as the next artist to create the Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall; The National Gallery’s foray into modern art continues apace with the announcement of Patrick Elliott (formerly of National Galleries of Scotland) as curator of modern paintings; the Courtauld will open two new contemporary galleries after a £10m gift from the Blavatnik family.
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