The tried and proven order of the traditional symphonic concert program dictates a short introductory piece, followed by a well-known concerto featuring a well-known soloist; then, after interval, a symphony to showcase both the orchestra’s and the conductor’s abilities. This palatable menu was, however, presented with a twist at ...

In this fortnight's Update: ABR's Arts Highlights of the Year, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, the 2018 Adelaide Festival, Shostakovich and Ashkenazy, Melbourne Opera's Roberto Devereux, Katie Noonan and Michael Leunig, Mapping Melbourne 2017, Russian Revolution and Anton Chekov, Birdcage Thursdays at fortyfivedownstairs, 30 years of Boomalli, Riccardo Muti and the AWO, and theatre, opera, and film giveaways.

Six films into his career as a director, George Clooney is still a little indistinct as a filmmaker, though there are certain subjects – television, politics, the intersection of the two – to which he returns. What’s indistinct is the voice. He has struggled through a tall-tale biopic (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 2003), a screwball ...

In his introduction to this year’s Melbourne Festival, Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway emphasised the need for people to step away from the hateful invective festering in public discourse and to note the bigger picture of humanity’s journey. ‘The last couple of years – globally – have not been our best’, he says in ...

Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma elicits the ultimate rose-tinted nostalgia in ageing opera aficionados. Operagoers of my generation wax lyrical about Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé in their prime, while making disparaging remarks about present singers. We in turn were bored by ancients who admitted that La Callas ...

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is known for its large-scale, ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions. These are usually impressive, often enlightening. But sometimes it can be even more rewarding (and less exhausting) to visit a show on a much smaller scale. Such is the case at the moment at The Met, where six paintings by modern ...

In this fortnight's Update: British Film Festival, Kazuo Ishiguro, Victorian Opera's 2018 season, Tarnanthi, Gert and Bess at TheatreiNQ, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Russian Film Festival, Jill Bilcock, Anh Do's portait of Uncle Jack, Cans Film Festival, This is Desmondo Ray!, and theatre and film giveaways ...

Tom of Finland is a worthy enshrinement of the life of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen (1920–91) into the cinematic pantheon of queer historical biographies. The World War II veteran and advertising art director best known as ‘Tom of Finland’ drew thousands of naked and leather-clad men with gigantic nipples and ...

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman’s humanistic, wheeling manifesto of the American destiny underpins Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s one-man play, American Song, and the collection of poems form the credo and frame the questioning of its central character, Andy. The poems’ exploration of a world of natural ...