Royal Opera House, London David McVicar’s 2015 staging of Giordano’s French Revolution opera is the final production of Antonio Pappano’s tenure as music director of the Royal Opera. With leads Jonas Kaufmann and Sondra Radvanovsky, it is an exciting, affecting eveningAntonio Pappano’s final production as the Royal Opera’s music director is a revival...

Promoting his book at Hay festival, comedian says his mother and grandparents’ flight from Nazi Germany affected later generationsDavid Baddiel has said he makes comedy to process the intergenerational trauma passed on through the experiences of his mother and grandparents of fleeing the Holocaust.Baddiel’s mother was born in Nazi Germany and arrived...

Her literary debut was a smash-hit tale of female self-discovery. As it gets its long-awaited television debut, the author talks breakups, Bridget Jones and why Ian McEwan gets an easier ride than she doesA few minutes into my chat with Candice Carty-Williams, she receives a text message. “It’s Emerald Fennell,” she says, stealing a glance at her phone...

It will be a real shame if George Miller doesn’t get to make his mooted follow-up, The Wasteland, because of the low takings of such a creatively ambitious and oddball film as FuriosaThe film industry is obsessed with box office figures. The Tinseltown trades spend far more time focusing on whichever recent blockbuster has lost $200m than they do on...

From ballet-dancing in New York to playing a Bond villain, Trinidad-born brothers Boscoe and Geoffrey Holder led extraordinary lives. But it’s as trailblazing painters of black portraits and nudes that they will be rememberedThe first time I ever saw a black male nude was in a Boscoe Holder painting in a private collection in Trinidad. It was beautiful...

The Beninese-Nigerian singer-songwriter puts her big voice to work on a set of songs that are over all too soonBeninese-Nigerian singer-songwriter Ayra Starr has fast become one of the biggest musicians to come out of west Africa. Her debut, 19 and Dangerous, was gutsy, but there’s a noticeable jump in maturity in her latest, The Year I Turned 21. Here,...