Canadian-born Mel Cooper first came to the UK to study English Literature at Oxford University and stayed. He was captivated by the culture and history of Britain, which he found to be a welcoming and tolerant country. After working in highly illustrated, non-fiction publishing for over a decade, he founded and edited the magazine Opera Now. Since then he has worked as a consultant to the Japanese broadcaster NHK, a broadcaster on British Satellite Broadcasting, a maker of audio shows and arts critic for several airlines, and as one of the team that started Britain’s first commercial classical music radio station, Classic FM, on which he was both a classical music DJ and creator and presenter of shows like Classic America and Authentic
Performance. Throughout this period, he also lectured in music and literature in London and Oxford and published short stories in Canada. After working with the Genesis Foundation on helping to fund arts projects, he continues to write, review and lecture on music and literature. His first novel has just been published as an e-book. The title is City of Dreams. It is the first volume of a projected saga called The Dream Bearers. You can find the Kindle version of the book on Amazon.
Sometimes a production comes along that makes you rethink your preconceptions of a classic play, and in the case of Benedict Andrews’ A Streetcar Name...
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy” are the appropriate first words to sing at this outdoor production on a night when the weather was balmy and one c...
A lot of trouble has been taken to make this 25th Anniversary touring show of Buddy a really energizing theatrical experience—and it all works. You ca...
This is a captivating, often hilarious, sometimes poignant and always engaging two hours with Dawn French. I started by thinking I might write about a...
The main thing I came away with from seeing the three programmes of Noel Coward One-Acters collected under the title Tonight at 8.30 is what really br...
Joseph Heller’s own script for a theatrical version of his large 1961 novel, Catch-22, is evocatively set more or less in the guts of a WWII airplane....
Konchalovsky is not only a legendary film-maker but, on the evidence of his productions now in London, a great theatre director. The two productions o...
If you have any interest at all in contemporary dance, try not to miss Ballet Rambert wherever and whenever it appears near you. One of the oldest and...
This new production of one of the central Handel operas has had unstinted praise from every quarter, as far as I can tell. I find that I can stint a l...
