A weekly round-up of what's going on in the arts
Get ready for Harry Enfield - opera director. The former milkman (and opera nut) is being lined up to direct a comical work for English Chamber Opera, an enterprising bunch of young thesps planning to give fresh "slimline" twists to the classics. ECO, which will launch formally in April, has also got Stephen Fry's tacit agreement to translate Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto for Mozart's masterpiece on marital fidelity, Così fan tutte.
Apartheid South Africa gets the Working Title treatment next month with the release of Phillip Noyce's Catch a Fire, about the black activist Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke). Despite the great US previews, my guess is that Brit crits will call for a slightly more thoughtful and less polarised story.
Will 2007 (finally) be the year of the graphic novel? I gather that BBC Drama has optioned The Vesuvius Club, an Edwardian thriller by Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen). And this month, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are retold as Japanese graphic novels, or manga. Sky TV is snapping up the rights.
The sprawling Gilbert and George show at Tate Modern doesn't even mention the many thousands of artworks influenced by the oddball duo. Ben Borthwick, co-curator of the exhibition, tells me space constraints prohibited it - the 200 G&G works crammed into the gallery still represent less than 20 per cent of their life's work.
Still - "Gilbert and George" was always going to be better than the National Portrait Gallery's pretentious "Face of Fashion", which launched on 15 February. Never have I seen the director, Sandy Nairne, deliver so short an introduction - and scarper so quickly. Why, Sandy, were you embarrassed?
bendowell@ btinternet.com
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
