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1 week ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
We sometimes forget how much opera provides a captivating alternative to classic drama but this was written all over Opera Australia’s Verdi Gala concert with Nicole Car which was such a triumph the other week. And it’s pretty obviously the rationale for Angelina Jolie’s inhabitation of the role of Callas in her epic Maria.
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1 week ago | 
smh.com.au | Peter Craven
By Peter Craven May 7, 2025 — 12.00am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. FICTIONMy Name is Emilia Del ValleIsabel AllendeBloomsbury, $32.99What a strange and dazzling writer Isabel Allende has become.
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2 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
The National Gallery has been gifted Edvard Munch’s Man with Horse and its acquisition brings to mind James Mollison, the legendary director of the gallery, who famously bought Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles in 1973 for $A1.3 million. In August 2024 the National Gallery bought a Gauguin painting for $US6.5 million.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend of mine with French to die for – she can interview Catherine Deneuve, she could interview Jeanne Moreau – put on her phone the actors of the Comédie-Française reading the whole of Proust in French but also that irresistible trash story The Three Musketeers.
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4 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of Meryl Streep lending her vast vocal range and capacity to assume any accent to the voice of Aslan.
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1 month ago | 
eurekastreet.com.au | Peter Craven
Richard Chamberlain came to fame in the 1960s. The first episode of Dr. Kildare was broadcast in 1961, the first year of Kennedy's administration, and the last episode was screened in 1966, the year of Bob Dylan's motorbike accident, and two years after LBJ beat Goldwater, the man who wanted to nuke the Viet Cong.
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1 month ago | 
thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Peter Craven
David Szalay’s new book, Flesh, is one of the finest novels to come out of Britain in years. An Englishman of Hungarian background, Szalay (pronounced “Sol-LOY”) can do anything he likes with structure and with style. His previous book, All That Man Is, was nominated for the Booker Prize and was characterised by undisclosed directions and apparent improbabilities that became in practice wonderfully real and lifelike.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and Richard Wordsworth who was Fagin in the most notable revival of Oliver! were about as good as actors get in any role and that they were notably better than their Australian successors.
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1 month ago | 
smh.com.au | Peter Craven
A poetic thriller about humanity and connection in the internet ageWe’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later. By Peter Craven April 9, 2025 — 12.00am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Peter Craven
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular with the generation he comes from. Jackson was known as Old Hickory and he was a kind of deus ex machina in Davy Crockett films, a bit like Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood or Ivanhoe.
