Ottone in Villa, Barbican Hall

Vivaldi's very first opera proves too much of a good thing

A beloved regular of concert hall, radio and recording, the music of Vivaldi has more or less failed to find its way into the contemporary opera house. If we are to believe his own claims, the composer died with over 90 operas to his credit – double the output of even the extraordinarily prolific Handel – making the omission all the more striking. And suspicious. In a field in which "lost" gems are resurrected every day, a measure of cynicism must inevitably accompany so apparently rich a furrow that so many have left untouched. Applying themselves with characteristic energy, Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico last night made a compelling case for the defence in their concert performance of Vivaldi’s very first opera – Ottone in villa.

Madrigals and Scarlatti, Lufthansa Baroque Festival

Stunning ensemble performance from I Fagiolini

"Is it music or just a bit weird?" Robert Hollingworth, director of Baroque vocal specialists I Fagiolini, was posing the question of Gesualdo, the infamous oddball composer of the late 16th century - a sort of musical Caravaggio - whose capricious way with just about every aspect of composition (and social norms: he was a murderer) made him a poster boy for the 20th century. It's a question, however, that could quite easily apply to any great pioneer. The best music is always on the cusp of making no sense at all. And therefore it could also apply to much of the Lufthansa Baroque Festival this year, which focuses on the great Italian game-changers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Yesterday the is-it-music-or-just-a-bit-weird focus was on the Italian madrigalists and Domenico Scarlatti.
 

Vincere Special 1: Fascism is Dead, Long Live Il Duce

Man or monster: the humanising of Mussolini

Applauded by the audiences at Cannes last year, where it was the only Italian film in the competition, and nominated for a Palme d’Or, awarded four prizes at the Chicago International Film Festival, and favourably received at home, Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere is now being released in the UK, increasingly a rare event for films of Italian origin.

Vincere Special 2: Interview with Filippo Timi

Italy's electric actor - now playing the young Mussolini - tells his astonishing story

Filippo Timi plays the young Mussolini of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere as a glowering, virile force of nature. Watching this and his other recent films, it was hard not to think of the Brando of the early 1950s. Timi, too, combines bullish masculine power and delicate sensitivity - he's combustible and magnetic. I was still more sure he was someone special when Gabriele Salvatores, who directed him in As God Commands, mentioned that Timi has a terrible stammer and eyesight so bad he's "almost blind. He can't see and can't speak - the two things an actor needs most," Salvatores said. "But he has an iron will."

One Night in Turin

ONE NIGHT IN TURIN Will tonight's big game wipe away the tears?

Gazza Agonistes: Italia 90 explained on film

Why make a documentary about Italia 90? It’s just another tournament that England didn’t win, isn't it? If the World Cup hosted by Italy in 1990 deserves exhumation, it’s for its trickle-down impact on football as we live and breathe it now. Hence the subtitle that won't make it onto the billboard outside cinemas: The Inside Story of a World Cup that Changed Our Footballing Nation Forever.

theartsdesk in the Vatican: In an Audience with the Pope

Haydn privately performed for Benedict XVI

At the Vatican, recently, the Pope attended a concert in his honour in the Sala Clementina. This is the great double-height room which stands at the entrance to the private papal apartments; it is where Pope John Paul II’s body lay in state almost exactly five years ago. I was one of about 150 guests, at least a third of whom were cardinals, bishops and other senior clerical figures. As we arrived there was the most ornate and intricate gavotte of seat-taking, lasting a good 40 minutes.

Women Beware Women, National Theatre

Thomas Middleton’s blood-soaked tragedy smolders but doesn't catch fire

The recent fuss about British culture being anti-Catholic just because some civil servant wrote a spoof memo satirising the Pope’s upcoming visit may have been overblown, but it is certainly true that, in the past, Italy was a byword for rank corruption. To doughty English Protestants, Rome was a stew of sin and Italians were Machiavellian plotters and idolators. Little wonder that Thomas Middleton’s 1621 tragedy, a large-stage revival of which opened yesterday, is brimful of illicit sex, cunning intrigues and vicious revenge - and set in Renaissance Italy.

Greatest Cities of the World, ITV1

When in Griffland, do as Griff does: grimace, chortle, frown

You always know where you are with Griff. You may be up a mountain or on a river or visiting any of the various topographical options the various TV companies deem it essential to send him. You may be doing up his house with him in Wales, where he freely admits he doesn’t really come from, or nosing round London, Paris or New York, as he did in the last series of Greatest Cities of the World. You may, as with the new series, be in Rome. But in the end, you never leave the Land of Griff.

I Am Love

Tilda Swinton glistens in a baroque saga of love and death amid the Milanese upper crust

Somehow the title sounds more sonorous in Italian. Io Sono l'Amore is a big, fat, full-blown melodrama, a film with the button marked "passione" forced up to 11. It looks exquisite, is a glittering showcase for Tilda Swinton as the restless Russian trophy wife of a wealthy Milanese industrialist and is elegant in spades: the cuisine, the couture, the shoes, the decor, the diamonds, the lipstick, they're all to die for. So what if it's also just a bit kitschy around the edges?

Angela de la Cruz/ Anna Maria Maiolino, Camden Arts Centre

Intimations of death and renewal in an evocative survey of two artists

Acts of wanton destruction appear to have taken place at Camden Arts Centre, as canvases lie crushed, ripped, crumpled and broken. Monochrome and minimalist works have had their stretchers, their very backbones, ripped and cracked in two, and their once taut, painted surfaces hang, in some instances, like flayed skin. Their broken carcasses are arranged in a seemingly haphazard fashion, hanging precariously from walls or stuffed into corners. They lie forlornly on the floor, or are pushed with some force into armchairs. The gallery looks like the scene of a crime, as if we have chanced upon acts of malicious sabotage. Just who is responsible for this mayhem?
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