Author: Michael Hasted

Vermeer Is Coming Home

Vermeer Is Coming Home

Posted by | 13 Apr 2015

It is billed as “an incredible detective story” – something with which we are very familiar on these pages as there has recently been quite a spate Agatha Christie and other whodunnits gracing our stages. Everyone likes a mystery, all the more so if it is true . . . On a recent visit to Holland we discovered one that has been rumbling on for nearly 100 years, one not dissimilar to the riddles of the Loch Ness monster or the Mona Lisa’s smile – everybody has a theory but nobody has the facts.

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ENGLISH TOURING OPERA at the Cheltenham Everyman

ENGLISH TOURING OPERA at the Cheltenham Everyman

Posted by | 9 Apr 2015

THE SIEGE OF CALAIS, THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST INDIES and LA BOHEME. “If you thought The Siege of Calais was obscure, wait till you see The Wild Man of the West Indies (Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo). English Touring Opera is clearly carrying a flag for Donizetti – and why not. First performed in 1833 Wild Man was, apparently, very successful in its day but by 1889 it had disappeared not to be seen again until 1958. This production claims to be the first in Britain in modern times . . . this was a fine production . . . ”

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Bandits! or The Collapsing Bridge

Bandits! or The Collapsing Bridge

Posted by | 1 Apr 2015

BANDITS! OR THE COLLAPSING BRIDGE by David Mayer with Bryony Dixon centres on the earliest surviving motion picture filmed in a British theatre. Brief but amazingly eventful, it records the conclusion of The Bandits, a London Hippodrome sketch performed in 1902: soldiers give chase on horseback; a bandit queen fires a pistol; a mill explodes into flame; a bridge collapses in the millrush . . .

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