Italian singer Mina, whose discs top the charts, yet she hasn’t sung in public, not even in television, since 1978, has been the voice of Barilla since the ’60s. Her unmistakable voice tells us why we should buy Barilla’s pasta while one of her songs plays in the background. Mina’s only contact with the public is […]
Homosexual
Cruelty at the Bolshoi: acid attacks and smear campaigns. Tsiskaridze responds.
Sergei Filin had been receiving intimidating phone calls for a while, and had had his tyres punctured and his email hacked, but the acid attack that has shocked the dance world is beyond all reasoning. While police are not ruling out a personal vendetta, it is almost certainly an attack by someone who wants him […]
Milan’s Teatro Franco Parenti celebrates its birthday with an orgy of Hamlets
One of the most respected Milanese theatres was born from an artistic collaboration between three pillars of Italian theatre: the director Franco Parenti, writer Giovanni Testori and up-and-coming young director Andrée Ruth Shammah. Together they formed the Salone Pier Lombardo which, since Parenti’s death in 1989, has been run by Shammah, and renamed Teatro Franco Parenti. This getting-together […]
Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel, The Stranger’s Child: “an extraordinary achievement”
Lovers of Hollinghurst’s writing have been waiting a long time for the end of June 2011 and the publication of his new novel. In fact, the wait has been seven years, but now we know that it was worth it. As we sit with the book in our hands, the critics start penning their reactions. […]
Anna Massey dies at 73: “I don’t want any dramas in my life. If I’m in a drama, I want to be paid for it.”
Unfailingly subtle, sensitive and intelligent, Anna Massey was, as one admiring critic put it, “one of those splendid British actresses whom one is tempted to call Dame before their time”. Often cast in roles in which she portrayed the prim, the spinsterly or the repressed, in reality she was none of those things. Battles with […]
Glee too gay? GLAAD is mad
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has asked a Houston Fox affiliate for a formal apology after it aired a “Is TV Too Gay?” segment following last week’s 90-minute Lady Gaga–themed episode. The segment zeroed in on the pretty gay Glee, asking whether it “delve[s] too much into homosexual relationships.” And Fox host […]
Patrice Chéreau on English actors, the theatre, and his homosexuality
The Guardian went to meet Patrice Chéreau who is in London to rehearse the first play he has ever directed in the UK. It’s a coup for the Young Vic. The play he is rehearsing is I Am The Wind, a spare, concentrated two-hander written by the Norwegian Jon Fosse. He talked about working with English actors: They are […]
Gennady Yanin comments for the first time on the recent Bolshoi sex scandal, “I don’t need anybody’s sympathy”
Anatoly Iksanov, the general director of the Bolshoi Theatre, has confirmed that what’s seemed like a never-ending reconstruction of the Bolshoi’s historic building is finally coming to an end; he promised that a gala concert in October will cap a tough period in the life of this Russian symbol you can see on the crumpled […]
Elizabeth Taylor: selection from a life… what today’s press has been saying, her best films and her changing look
Today’s press A London-born beauty who never lost her clipped, clean way of speaking, Ms. Taylor possessed vivid features known to three generations of filmgoers: Raven hair, dark eyebrows, ivory skin, a near-perfect figure and, most remarkably, violet eyes that were among the most commented-on physical attributes in Hollywood history. Her great beauty arguably both […]
