Archive - Arts & Culture

By turns professorial in demeanor when standing to face the audience and a personable performer on the Steinway piano, Clement Acevedo wowed a sparse Sunday audience at the Manila Pianos Inc. Artist Series at the Ronac Lifestyle Center in Paseo de Magallanes, Makati City.

A grand celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birth anniversary unfolds in Manila on Saturday February 22 with the country’s leading artists interpreting some of the composer’s works in special recitals.

This year’s Oscar award-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix reflected the politics of food in his acceptance speech when he said, “We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”

Saturday last week on February 8, 2020 to be exact, Ballet Philippines Foundation president Kathleen L. Liechtenstein issued a memo announcing the appointment of Russian danseur Mikhail Martynyuk as the new artistic director of Ballet Philippines for the 51st and 52nd seasons for the years 2020 to 2022.

Friday night amidst scare of the corona virus, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor -- first performed in 1835 in Naples, Italy -- had a triumphant return at the Cultural Center of the Philippines where it was last seen in Pilipino version in 1976.

Like it or not, the mad scenes in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor pretty much reflect the country’s social and political landscape.

When Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor opera unfolds at the Cultural Center of the Philippines January 30 with French soprano Melody Louledjian in the title role, it will also showcase the vocal artistry of Filipino tenors led by Arthur Espiritu who is singing the role of Sir Edgardo of Ravenswood for the second time after his much-acclaimed South Korean debut last year.

Photographic works of 30 professional photographers, mostly Filipinos, form the core of the Not Visual Noise exhibition at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University. It runs until 29 March 2020.