Front Row

This week sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Herman Melville, writer of one of America's greatest novels, Moby Dick. Sarah Churchwell and Richard King discuss the extraordinary tale of Captain Ahab's pursuit of the white sperm whale that had bitten off his leg. The story of Ahab's revenge is famously narrated by Ishmael, who is on his first whaling expedition, with one of literature's most...

American opera singer, Tamara Wilson withdrew from her final ever performance of Aida at the weekend. She was scheduled to be conducted by Placido Domingo at the Arena Di Verona but announced on Instagram that her absence was due to illness. But it comes after her public opposition to the use of ‘blackface’ for the role - heavy "chocolate brown" make-up. Tamara speaks out about the incident and wh...

Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans, starring Kim Cattrell as Agrippina and Craig Roberts as Emperor Nero, is the first foray into cinema of the popular children’s TV series. Classics author Natalie Haynes gives her verdict. On the 400th anniversary of her birth, we assess the life and work of Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi with Professor Susan Wollenberg and mezzo-soprano CN Lester;...

Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! is Chichester Festival Theatre’s new summer musical, starring Josie Lawrence as Aunt Eller and Hyoie O’Grady and Amara Okereke as the young lovers. Fiona Mountford reviews. Following violence and verbal abuse directed at ushers, some theatres are issuing them with body cameras, hoping this will deter aggressive behaviour by audience members. Theatre critic Fiona M...

Literary critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig dissect the longlist of the 2019 Booker Prize longlist. For the full list see below. Tea is the most widely-consumed drink after water. Julie Finch, director the Compton Verney gallery, guides Julian May through their new exhibition A Tea Journey: From the Mountains to the Table. The show navigates the cultural history of the cuppa from the delicate bo...

Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon star in The Current War, as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. It's the electrifying story about the race to supply people with electricity and power. The film has had a turbulent production, plagued with unfavourable reviews at 2017 Toronto Film festival premier and then caught up in the scandal surrounding the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Film Critic...

To mark the 20th anniversary of her best-selling debut album, Macy Gray performs her smash hit I Try, and talks frankly to Kirsty about the challenges she faced after achieving fame and success. She also sings from her latest album, Ruby. Tomorrow hundreds of Morris dancers will gather outside the Houses of Parliament to protest against the cancellation of next year's early May bank holiday. Gordo...

Hip hop pioneer and art lover Fred Brathwaite, aka Fab 5 Freddy, hunts for the hidden black figures of Italian Renaissance art in a new BBC2 documentary, A Fresh Guide To Florence. He reveals some of the ground-breaking images he discovered of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society that have slipped through the cracks of art history. Artist Laurie Anderson discusses her new VR artwork To the Moon...

Illuminated River is a major new art project on the River Thames claiming to be the world’s longest artwork. 15 bridges across the river will be lit up by a series of LED displays for the next 10 years. Kirsty talks to director Sarah Gaventa and light artist Leo Villareal. Twenty-five years since Disney’s animated film The Lion King broke records and won Oscars, a new live action version is roarin...

Karina Canellakis will be launching this year's BBC Proms on Friday, conducting Janáček's monumental Glagolitic Mass. She talks to John Wilson about her approach to this daunting task, why she loves the spiritual drama of the piece and how since early childhood her head has been filled with music. Vicky McClure, Gemma Chan and Samantha Morton star in a series of stand alone television dramas focus...

American composer Philip Glass is often cited as one of the most influential composers alive, combining minimalist, spare music with the harmonic tradition of Bach, Schubert and Mozart. Now, for the Manchester International Festival, he's teamed up with British performer and director Phelim McDermott to produce a very personal work with ten new pieces of music and ten meditations on life, death an...

Dominic Dromgoole, used to run Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, he tried take a production of Hamlet to every country in the world (and very nearly succeeded), and he brought a year-long season of Oscar Wilde’s work to the West End. and now he's directed is debut feature film, Making Noise Quietly. It began life as stageplay, a triptych of stories, each involving the meeting of strangers and...

Novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach whose eighteen novels include Heartbreak Hotel, Tulip Fever and These Foolish Things - made into the hit film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - talks to Stig Abell about her new novel The Carer, a poignant story about age, sibling rivalry and having to grow up – at last. Stig is joined by Jordan Erica Webber to play a new computer game based on the world of...

Oscar winning director Ron Howard has made an in-depth look at the life and career of singer Luciano Pavarotti, featuring interviews with his family and other stars such as Placido Domingo and Angela Gheorghiu. Classical music critic Fiona Maddocks reviews. The latest British Attitudes Survey is published today, but how are attitudes reflected and influenced by the culture we consume? Research Dir...

Peter Gynt is a new version of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt written by David Hare and starring James McArdle in the title role. Susannah Clapp reviews the National Theatre and Edinburgh International Festival's production. How to appreciate opera is the latest in our series of beginners' guides to art forms that are new to us. Stig, who has not spent much time at the opera, asks soprano Danielle de Ni...

Cressida Cowell is announced as the new Waterstones Children’s Laureate. We speak to the How to Train Your Dragon writer about her plans for the role which is mainly focused on encouraging primary school age children to read. With recent attempts by the USA to rekindle the Israeli-Palestinian peace process having foundered on the rocks, we talk to Cherie Blair about her role as Executive Producer...

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason talks about her love for the music of Clara Schumann, who in the 19th Century was famous as a virtuoso pianist but overshadowed as a composer by her husband Robert Schumann. Isata has recorded Clara's music for her debut album, Romance. Tree, a major production of the Manchester International Festival, is embroiled in controversy. The Festival states that Tree is a new w...

In the week of Pride and following his Glastonbury speech about LGBTQ rights, Olly Alexander of Years & Years talks about writing lyrics that are overtly about gay relationships. Ari Aster's horror film Midsommar starring Florence Pugh has allegedly given its own stars nightmares. Isabel Stevens reviews. 17th century artists Joan Carlile, Mary Beale and Anne Killigrew were the first profession...

We last saw the work of the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera when she was commissioned for the turbine hall of Tate Modern. She’s known for facing down police interrogation of her work in her native Havana. Now she’s harnessed Manchester’s international community for what she calls a School of Integration. In May, Ibrahim Mahama was one of the six Ghanaian artists chosen to represent the country as it...

Filmmaker Chanya Button talks about Vita & Virginia, which explores the relationship between Virginia Woolf and fellow writer Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration for the protagonist of Woolf’s novel Orlando. Based on the correspondence between the two women, the film stars Elizabeth Debicki and Gemma Arterton. Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, hailed as one of the funniest plays ever written, was f...

Howard Jacobson is renowned for his comic novels, winning the 2010 Booker Prize for The Finkler Question . Now he’s published a funny but also tender novel about life and love in older age: Live a Little. He talks to Front Row about his trademark wit, insight and irreverence. Othello: Remixed locates Shakespeare’s play into a London boxing club in 2019. Staged by Intermission Theatre Company, thei...

Inkheart writer Cornelia Funke discusses Pan's Labyrinth, her new collaboration with director Guillermo del Toro, who approached her to write an adult novel based on his 2006 dark fantasy film. The filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck discusses his latest work Never Look Away, which has blurred the line between fiction and biography. The Oscar-nominated epic historical drama follows 30 years...

50 years ago, on July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first people to set foot on the moon. A new film documentary, Apollo 11, charts that historic event using unseen archive footage and some of the 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings. The film’s director Todd Douglas Miller discusses the challenge of bringing NASA’s monumental achievement to the big screen. We conclud...

Kate Atkinson discusses her new novel, Big Sky. For Jackson Brodie fans it’s been a long nine years but finally he’s back. After the first four books in this crime fiction series, the acclaimed writer turned her attention to World War II resulting in two prize-winning novels, Life After Life and A God In Ruins. She explains how almost a decade later she was ready to return to Jackson and why the s...

A killer dress is on the hunt in Peter Strickland’s new kitsch horror film In Fabric, which stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as an innocent sales shopper. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews. We continue our exploration of LGBT literature marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The events of 28th June 1969 were a key moment in the birth of the gay rights movement. Today novelist and salon host Da...