Prom 71, Seong-Jin Cho review - refined Romantic journeys

★★★ PROM 71, SEONG-JIN CHO Refined journeys in Ravel and Liszr

Taste and grace from the Korean prize-winner in Ravel and Liszt

Out of emergencies may come revelations. Sir András Schiff has broken his leg, and we wish him a super-speedy recovery. At the Proms, his promised Art of Fugue will have to wait. Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, a past winner of the Chopin Prize, stepped in yesterday with a late-night recital programme that at first glance could hardly have looked more alien to the austere grandeur of Bach’s contrapuntal epic.

The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent production

 THE FABULIST, CHARING CROSS THEATRE Plenty of ambition, but achieves very little

Beautiful music, but curious decisions in scripting and staging sink the show

On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side of the fourth wall, I can tell you that there’s plenty of crackling expectation and a touch of fear in the stalls, too. None more so than when the show is billed as a new musical.

Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history

★★★★ DOMINIQUE WHITE: DEADWEIGHT, WHITECHAPEL Sculptures feel timeless

Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless

It’s been a long time since the Whitechapel Gallery has presented three seriously good exhibitions at the same time. Already reviewed are Gavin Jantjes’ paintings on show in the main gallery. He is now joined, in gallery 2, by Dominique White, winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in galleries 5, 6 & 7, by Peter Kennard.

ll Segreto di Susanna/Pagliacci, Opera Holland Park review - on with the motley, out with the fags

★★★★ IL SEGRETO DI SUSANNA / PAGLIACCI, OPERA HOLLAND PARK An intriguing comic partner for the great backstage melodrama

An intriguing comic partner for the great backstage melodrama

Could “Cav and Pag” give way to “Sue and Pag”? As a double-bill partner for Leoncavallo’s backstage shocker Pagliacci, Opera Holland Park have scheduled not the standard Cavalleria Rusticana but an entirely different one-act work. Premiered in Munich in 1909, Wolf-Ferrari’s Il Segreto di Susanna plays droll, even farcical, variations on the same theme of male jealousy as newlywed Count Gil suspects his bride Countess Susanna of having an affair. 

Album: Jack Savoretti - Miss Italia

★★ JACK SAVORETTI - MISS ITALIA Singer embraces family history with an album of Italian pop

Middle of the road singer embraces family history with an album of Italian pop

It’s a long way to the middle. Jack Savoretti has worked hard to get there. He’s grafted. His first album, 2007’s Between the Minds, hinted that his musical DNA bestrode early-Seventies Los Angeles, those Topanga Canyon strummers and such, but melded to something much more BBC Radio 2. It took a while for his core audience, the Dermot O’Leary mum-core massive, to find him. A nice fella and a looker, by about five years ago, they had. His last two albums were chart-toppers. But now he’s challenging the fanbase with an Italian language album. “Challenging” may be the wrong word.

La Chimera review - magical realism with a touch of Fellini

★★★★ LA CHIMERA Magical realism with a touch of Fellini

Josh O’Connor excels as an archaeologist turned graverobber in the Italian countryside

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (The WondersHappy as Lazarro), ploughs a charmingly idiosyncratic furrow that might be described as magical realism, combining as it does vivid depictions of rural communities with shafts of fantasy and fable.

theartsdesk Q&A: Marco Bellocchio - the last maestro

Q&A: MARCO BELLOCCHIO Italian cinema's vigorous grand old man discusses 'Kidnapped'

Italian cinema's vigorous grand old man discusses Kidnapped, conversion, anarchy and faith in cinema

The last of the old maestros is standing tall. Marco Bellocchio was a Marxist firebrand when he made his iconoclastic debut with Fists in the Pocket (1965). Now aged 84, he makes intellectually and emotionally muscular, hit epics about abused Italian power.

Aci by the River, London Handel Festival, Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse review - myths for the #MeToo age

★★★ ACI BY THE RIVER, LONDON HANDEL FESTIVAL Myths for the #MeToo age

Star singers shine in a Handel rarity

“Site-specific” performance locations rarely come more atmospheric, or evocative, than this one. Beyond the East India Dock basin, with the hedgehog-backed dome of the O2 looming just across the Thames on a gusty spring evening, a cavernous “chain store” abuts the Trinity Buoy Lighthouse. For the London Handel Festival, director Jack Furness transforms this haunting (and haunted) chunk of early-Victorian dockland architecture into the studios of “Cyclops Pictures”.