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2 weeks ago | 
lrb.co.uk | Olivia Giovetti
Ain Anger as Dosifei and members of the Slovak Philharmonic Choir as Old Believers in Simon McBurney’s production of Mussorgsky’s ‘Khovanshchina’, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, at the Salzburg Easter Festival in April 2025. Photo © Inés BacherThe version of Khovanshchina that Mussorgsky left behind when he died was as messy as the history it depicts. He began working on the opera in 1872, the bicentennial of Peter the Great’s birth.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Olivia Giovetti
Anna Netrebko as Abigaille, ensemble and choir in the Berlin Staatsoper’s new production of Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’. Photo © Bernd UhligWhen Verdi’s Nabucco was first performed in 1842, Milanese audiences were quick to see their own situation under Austrian occupation reflected in the plot, a loose adaptation of the Biblical story of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar and the plight of the exiled Judeans in Babylon. The chorus ‘Va pensiero’ became a rallying cry for Italian independence.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
ft.com | Olivia Giovetti
Much in the same way that Khovanshchina has 13 soloists but no single main character, Mussorgsky’s opera exists in several radically...
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
ft.com | Olivia Giovetti
In a studio space tucked away on a side street in central Lviv, 14 nuns fling themselves, one at a time, to the centre of the room.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
van-magazine.com | Olivia Giovetti
“Everybody’s so angry right now that nobody can listen or talk to anybody else,” Salman Rushdie said earlier this week in an interview with Jon Stewart.
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Apr 18, 2024 | 
van-magazine.com | Olivia Giovetti
Back when Twitter was still (somewhat) good, someone by the user name @Swaefastide posted a portrait of Lord Byron, in traditional Albanian costume, with the caption, “I will NEVER apologize for being a wildly successful alpha male,” lampooning the words of Trump-endorsed author Nick Adams. Non-Trump-endorsed author Ryan Ruby took the parody one step further, retweeting the original Byron post with the caption: “Shat himself to death in Missolonghi.” April 19 marks 200 years since that moment.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Olivia Giovetti
Last Friday afternoon, shortly after the Palestinian writer and researcher Salman Abu Sitta had said that ‘the voice of the victim is silenced, denied, condemned and vilified,’ the German police cut the power to the Palästina-Kongress in Berlin. The three-day conference, whose organisers included the Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (‘Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East’), had faced opposition since it was announced in February.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
van-magazine.com | Olivia Giovetti
The 2014 EuroArts documentary portrait of Maurizio Pollini, “De main de maître,” opens with a literal portrait: that of the pianist’s great-uncle. The interviewer mistakes the painting for Pollini himself.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
van-magazine.com | Olivia Giovetti
Listen, none of us made good decisions in our 20s.
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Mar 7, 2024 | 
van-magazine.com | Olivia Giovetti
Over the last few months, I found myself unexpectedly steeped in George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while working on “American Rhapsody,” a documentary about the work’s centennial for BBC Radio 3. Part of me said yes to the project because I thought that it would be a nice diversion from the dumpster fire of real life to spend some time absorbed in a fun piece of music that doesn’t simultaneously demand engagement with social, cultural, and political issues.
