Martin Kettle

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Martin Kettle

Garsington’s production of The Queen of Spades leaves little room for doubt that this is Tchaikovsky’s most substantial and forward-looking operatic achievement. There are a few debatable aspects to Jack Furness’s ingeniously busy production and Tom Piper’s mirror-dominated stage designs, and on the opening night it took time for the show to fully hit its musical stride.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Martin Kettle

It requires an effort to keep reminding yourself of the sheer historical oddity of monarchy’s healthy survival into the modern democratic age. Yet so rooted is the monarchy in the mental furniture of Britain that most people in our politics barely think about it. This week, however, the modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential. Judged by any yardstick, Charles III’s visit to Canada was an audaciously disjunctive event.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Martin Kettle

Gounod’s Faust is one of those operas – readers may wish to nominate their own candidates – that one does not wish to see too often. Yes, Faust has celebrated musical moments which are a pleasure to hear sung well. Yes, Gounod’s score eventually becomes more interestingly chromatic as the denouement nears.

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Martin Kettle

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2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Martin Kettle

A house divided against itself cannot stand, warned Abraham Lincoln. The United States’ later descent into civil war over slavery would prove Lincoln right. But is 21st-century Britain now also becoming, in its different way, an unsustainably divided house too? And have Britain’s economic divisions become so intractable that the UK state can no longer manage them? More than at any time in the postwar era, the answer to both questions looks increasingly like yes.