Jeweller reunites with her ex after $200k jaunt around Europe with another man. Plus, forgotten friends of dentist's widow reveal the past she doesn't talk about: THE GROUP CHAT
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Gluck's famous opera with acrobats? It's surprisingly bloodless
A female aerial artist wearing a striking red dress tumbles down from the ceiling on a rope, symbolising the descent of the ill-fated Eurydice into the underworld. This is how Yaron Lifschitz's modern staging of Gluck's popular 1762 opera Orpheus and Eurydice begins. The show's concept, combining opera with circus, is an intriguing one, but this production from Opera Queensland – with acrobats from the Brisbane-based Circa company – feels misconceived and oddly clinical. The subterranean afterlife into which Eurydice has fallen – having been killed by a snakebite – is visualised by Lifschitz (who also designs) as a place of almost antiseptic, white minimalism. When we meet her bereft lover Orpheus – who follows her into the underworld in an attempt to persuade Hades, king of the dead, to restore his beloved to life – he is seemingly in an asylum, resting on a white table-cum-bed. It looks like something Jasper Conran might have designed for a rehab centre for Hollywood A-listers. As the fine British countertenor Iestyn Davies (playing Orpheus in a white shirt and black business suit) begins to sing of his anguish, his words appear and evaporate in smoke on the wall behind him. It isn't long before Eurydice (sung beautifully by Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke) is appearing inside a small greenhouse (which, one assumes, is supposed to be a symbol of confinement). As the opera unfolds, Gluck's splendid late-Baroque score and Ranieri de' Calzabigi's libretto are accompanied by a small army of gymnastic artists from Brisbane company Circa. When the chorus of Scottish Opera arrive they are clad in black boiler suits. The difficulty with all of this – from the circus performance to the modish graphics and consciously fashionable design – is that it fails to make the necessary emotional connection either with Gluck's opera or the ancient myth upon which it is based. The greenhouse, in particular, reminds one of the period in the 1990s and early-2000s when every other trendy live art show – usually by students or graduates of Dartington College of Arts – seemed to feature a small glasshouse. The great frustration of the production, which premiered in Brisbane in 2019, is that the tremendous capacities of the performers – from the lead singers, the chorus and the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra (under the baton of Laurence Cummings) to the circus artists – are never in doubt. However, as Circa's performers slide on silks in mid-air or turn themselves into a human staircase for Orpheus to climb, the music seems almost to be at the service of the circus work, much as Ravel's Bolero served the British ice skaters Torvill and Dean in the 1980s. When, at the end, Davies's Orpheus writes the words 'The triumph of love' in blood on the wall, it seems like a moment of self-parody, so anodyne and bloodless is Lifschitz's production. Truth to tell, the piece was cheered to the rafters by sections of the audience. Had we been in Vienna in 1913 (the year of Schoenberg's famous 'scandal concert'), I suspect booing might have ensued from those who were unimpressed. Alas, Edinburgh International Festival audiences are not given to such expressions of discontent. Until Aug 16;
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
The heart triumphs over all things: why ‘anti-capitalist romcom' Materialists isn't just a fantasy
Like all love triangles, Celine Song's new film Materialists places you at a fateful fork in the road, peering at two points in the distance and evaluating the different futures that lie in wait. In Materialists, the first destination looks like this: a glossy Manhattan penthouse; regular dinner dates at five-star restaurants; few if no apparent friends; a lot of money, and being the object of envy of New York's society women. What you lack in warmth you make up for in status. The second, meanwhile, is much less glamorous: a dingy shared apartment in south Brooklyn with two slob flatmates; arguments about money; takeaway meals from food trucks. But perhaps you'd have a lot more fun. It's the question driving many of our romantic stories, the choice animating everything from Jane Austen's novels to the climax of reality television show The Bachelor: love or money? Song's films seem to be more interested in love. Her first feature, the double Oscar nominated Past Lives, was a wistful story about star-crossed love that brought audiences to tears. There is a lot less wist in this follow-up, a satire-tinged drama about the indignities of modern dating in our renewed gilded age. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, an unapologetic materialist and high-end matchmaker who is instantly charmed by Harry (Pedro Pascal), a banker who is what those in her business call a 'unicorn': rich, tall, handsome, smart. At the same time, she reconnects with ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), who still looks at her with a puppy-eyed devotion and nurses his inability to provide her the life she wants like a sore wound. Except for John, the film's characters tend to talk to each other with the performative coldness of businesspeople. Potential partners are evaluated for their ability to make one feel 'valuable'. Harry declares an interest in Lucy's 'immaterial assets'. Lucy's clients demand their dates have a minimum salary (the women) or a maximum age (the men). Everybody speaks as if they are angling themselves as contestants on The Apprentice, without any of the messily fun theatrics of reality TV. The marketing of Materialists has placed the film firmly in the elevated world of Harry's penthouse over John's grungy flat. There is the cast, drawn from the most in-demand stars in Hollywood; there is its cult US distributor, A24; there is Song's 'syllabus' for the film, replete with the works of Mike Leigh and Merchant Ivory and Martin Scorsese; the understated, quiet luxury wardrobe; the soundtrack featuring the Velvet Underground and Cat Power. Though when I watched it, I thought not so much of Leigh, but rather the less cool big-budget 2000s romcoms that also set out the same fundamental premise of Materialists: an ambitious young woman tries to make it in the big city, makes mistakes in love and in work, and learns hard lessons about life in the process. Two decades have passed since these films – How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Bridget Jones's Diary, Maid in Manhattan – commanded the box office, and a lot has changed since, not least the collapse of the blockbuster romcom film and the genre's move to low-budget fare on the streamers. It's interesting, still, to see how Materialists has reengaged with the genre's tropes. It struck me, for example, that John – an avatar of unconditional devotion, unfailingly loyal if a void of any edge – is a Duckie from Pretty in Pink kind of figure, the prospective love interest the protagonist considers before choosing someone more alpha and more interesting (in effect, a Harry). Perhaps after the post-#MeToo reckoning and the ongoing crisis in masculinity, our view of the ideal man has softened – though it helps, I imagine, if the man in question looks like Chris Evans. Meanwhile, the film's affect of extremely mannered and self-aware cynicism seems firmly out of our current age rather than the cheery turn-of-the-millennium sugariness of, say, Love Actually. The world has hardened since, our lives are angrier and more isolated. The internet has sharpened individualist hustle culture, and the most powerful man in the world is a status-obsessed dealmaker incapable of seeing anything beyond the lens of his own ego. And so the characters of Materialists scramble to ascend the marketplace, keeping an eye on where they stand in the pecking order. In today's US, the bottom can be a terrifying place. Watching these largely rich, largely lonely people talk about love through the language of the market, I thought: what a sad way to see other people, and what a sad way to be. The film thinks this, too, judging from (spoiler warning!) its sudden about-turn ending, in which love wins over money and the heart triumphs over cold, calculating reason. It is a conventional fairytale romcom ending, but perhaps with everything that's passed since, this retro callback is the point: a bid for a new sincerity after decades of status-conscious cynical individualism. Duckie has finally won over the rich alpha male; the biggest prize today is someone who will love you unconditionally. I didn't find this final triumph in Materialists particularly convincing: its characters were too cold, too unspecific and lacking in vitality to really make me root for their final reconciliation. (I did appreciate, though, the film's contemporary twist on the romcom fantasy: Lucy's realisation that her dream job is ethically murky and of indeterminate value to the world.) But it did make me want to see more romcoms on the big screen, ones with intellectual curiosity and seriousness that command the space that Materialists – against prevailing movie industry trends – has been given. The beauty of love, after all, is that it can break through our solipsism and radically reshape ourselves. It is a hopeful, radical practice that finds in other people not cause for anger, defence, or hatred, but possibility for mutual wisdom and growth. 'The whole movie is about fighting the way that capitalism is trying to colonise our hearts and colonise love,' Song said recently. Maybe finding space for life outside capitalism's relentless onward march is increasingly a fantasy – but what a beautiful, frothy fantasy that can be.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Abbie Chatfield shares 'wedding song' boyfriend Adam Hyde has written about her - after sparking engagement rumours
Abbie Chatfield has again sparked engagement rumours with boyfriend Adam Hyde after sharing a song he has written for her. The musician, who goes by the stage name Keli Holiday, has dropped the new single, called Dancing 2 - and Abbie was quick to endorse it. She shared the lyrics to her Instagram Stories on Thursday, with the words seemingly inspired by the early days of the couple's romance. 'You got 28 years just to work it all out, another 28 years just to figure out what it meant to you,' the lyrics read. 'Now I'm next to you, and we're dancing too. You were dancing, yeah you were dancing. And I was dancing too.' After sharing the track, Abbie also shared a message from a fan who said they wished they'd used the song at their wedding. 'It's such a wedding song!' Abbie enthused, perhaps hinting she may play it at her own wedding. It comes after Abbie sparked engagement rumours after showing off some bling she received on her 30th birthday. The Bachelor star shared a video to Instagram in which she revealed the custom-made ring Adam gifted her for her birthday. 'So my 30th birthday and I was wondering what he is going to do for me. We were in Greece for my actual birthday so I only recently got my present but it's so cute,' she said. 'For context, he calls me bug because one day we were in bed and he said "you're like a little bug". Ever since then, [he calls me bug]. So me being buggy he got me this custom made,' Abbie explained before opening a heart-shaped box to reveal the ring. She then placed the band on her ring finger and held it up towards the camera. 'It's a bug ring. Is that not the cutest, coolest, sickest 30th birthday present? It's so weird... I thought you would all be wondering what he got me and I just wanted to show it off,' she added. Many fans flocked to the comments to question whether she was wearing the ring on her engagement finger. 'Hahahaha I did see the left hand engagement ring finger,' one person commented. 'Little do you know, you're now engaged,' another said while a third wrote: 'She did pop it on that finger.' The podcaster immediately shut down speculation, explaining she was wearing the ring on her right hand but the camera flipped the image to make it appear as though it was on her left hand. Abbie and Adam have been going from strength to strength since debuting their romance in June 2024 and she has even featured in his on-stage performances. She told Stellar Magazine that her relationship with Adam is the best she's ever had. 'It isn't like other people I've had flings with. And this is gonna sound a bit w**ky, but he's had a bigger career than me,' she said after concerns from fans that Adam is 'using her' for fame. 'I don't think he's using me for anything. He's successful in his own right. 'I think I'm cool for being with him, not the other way around.' Abbie was friends with Adam for two years before they started dating, which she said has added to the trust between them.
