Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Snobbery is vital for a healthy artistic culture. But even more vital is snobbery of snobbery. Looking down on J Strauss II - one of the most low-rent snobberies out there - shd ofc itself be looked down upon This is excellent: spectator.co.uk/article/why-ha…

Wrote about the unstoppable rise of Leithianism. And Rebecca Saunders’s new opera with Ed Atkins spectator.co.uk/article/a-star…

Astonishing new Wael Shawky show in Arles. Aix should be getting Shawky to direct opera not aesthetic simpletons like Robert Icke!

Robert Icke's Aix Don Giovanni is one of the most cretinous things I've ever seen

Yasunao Tone, what a legend. His performance at LCMF 2017 was one of the most intense things we’ve ever programmed. RIP

I've never considered asking how Bach died but I learned that it was from a stroke or sepsis after spending months in agony from a series of botched cataract surgeries by a charlatan in the mid-1700s who used pigeon's blood for eyedrops and put baked apples into his eye bandages

RIP Pierre Audi - 80s festival at Almeida Theatre some of the greatest music/opera programming this country has ever witnessed

Wrote about the toxic musicality of Satie's Vexations – and why Levit's performance annoyed me but Abramovic's choreography didn't spectator.co.uk/article/igor-l…

So Levit’s just done the fastest Vexations on record - 13hr, inc several ILLEGAL loo breaks. Something very fishy going on here

BREAKING: Igor Levit has left the stage

Came across some very interesting Ian Hamilton Finlay works in the Tate archives yesterday: 'The Arts Council Must be Utterly Destroyed' (1982), 'Death to the Arts Council' (1982), 'Death to Strathclyde Region' (1983). Shame they never organised a centenary retrospective

Feeling sorry for AI: how could it ever hope to compete with this master of slop

RIP Another composer shamefully rarely heard in Britain. We performed a beautiful piece by him this January for Luigi Russolo’s intonarumori