Short film falsely depicts actor and other Jewish celebrities opposing recent antisemitic remarks from pop star

Scarlett Johansson has warned of the “imminent dangers of AI” after a deepfake video of her and other prominent Jewish celebrities opposing recent antisemitic remarks from Kanye West went viral this week.

The video contained AI-generated versions of more than a dozen celebrities, including Johansson, David Schwimmer, Jerry Seinfeld, Drake, Adam Sandler, Stephen Spielberg, and Mila Kunis.

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Findon/Rice/Williams/Finnish RSO/Collon
(Ondine)
This is a very distinguished addition to the pantheon of Gerontius recordings, and Christine Rice is as good an Angel as any on disc since Janet Baker

The great majority of the 20-odd recordings to date of this greatest of Elgar’s greatest choral works have been made by British conductors, most of them working with British orchestras and soloists. There are notable exceptions of course, most recently Daniel Barenboim’s version with the Berlin Staatskapelle , there’s even a version conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov with the USSR Symphony Orchestra and British singers, while two of John Barbirolli’s three recordings were made with the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestra of RAI in Rome. But here we have a British conductor, Nicholas Collon , recording Gerontius with a Finnish orchestra and a mixed chorus of Finnish and British singers, in a performance taken from a concert in Helsinki last April.

It’s a very distinguished addition to the pantheon of Gerontius recordings, conducted by Collon with acute sensitivity to the tiniest nuances in Elgar’s score. Timings may suggest that overall it is one of the faster versions on record, but nothing about it feels rushed or overpressed; both the solo sections and the great choral set pieces have just the right spaciousness, and all the necessary dramatic bite when required in sections like the Demons chorus, while the exchanges between Gerontius and the Angel in the second part of the oratorio are never made too overtly operatic nor too piously formal.

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Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontyev felt the responsibility of history upon them when they chose to film the everyday people defending their homeland from the Russian onslaught

The exhausted couple speaking over video from Los Angeles do not look like typical Oscar nominees. The tiredness etched on their faces is not from late nights partying or long days networking. It looks more like the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontyev are ceramics artists from the frontline Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. They have been married for decades and work together, making beautifully intricate painted porcelain beasts no bigger than your fist. When Russian troops invaded in 2022, rather than fleeing, the couple stayed in Kharkiv. Leontyev was a weapons instructor in the Ukrainian special forces, a weapons instructor who trained civilian volunteers. Then he picked up a camera and shot a documentary, Porcelain War . When the film premiered at Sundance in January 2024, the couple flew to the US, expecting to stay for a month.

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Benjamin Appl/Kurtág/Aimard/ Baillieu
(Alpha)
Works by Schubert and Brahms are interwoven with 13 of composer’s own songs in this beautifully realised collection

B enjamin Appl has worked regularly with György Kurtág since 2018, when he first sang the Hungarian’s settings of Hölderlin. Since then the baritone and the composer have performed Schubert and Brahms together, and lieder by both composers are interleaved here with 13 of Kurtág’s own songs. The Hölderlin-Gesange form the centrepiece of the sequence; they are extraordinary, pared-down utterances, all but one of them relying on an unaccompanied voice, the other intensely framed by a trombone and tuba; Appl ensures that every chiselled phrase is freighted with meaning.

For Kurtág’s four Ulrike Schuster songs, Appl is partnered by Pierre-Laurent Aimard; James Baillieu accompanies him in most of the Schubert and the one-off Kurtág settings, while the great man himself, who will celebrate his 99th birthday next week, takes over as pianist for the last two numbers, Schubert’s Der Jüngling an der Quelle, and Brahms’s Sonntag. It’s a beautifully realised collection, not only evidence of Appl’s command of a wide-ranging repertoire, but also a wonderful tribute to one of the greatest composers and musicians of our time.

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With Daft Punk Is Playing at My House turning 20 and a new album being worked on, we select the dance-rock musos’ finest tracks

The most recent LCD Soundsystem single sounded remarkably like a callback to their earliest releases: a minimal backing of rhythm track and synth – playing a riff that recalls their debut single, Losing My Edge – plus a spoken-word vocal that’s alternately creepily stalker-ish and drily funny.

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Questlove’s probing new film looks at the incredible life and works of the one-of-a-kind talent while also taking a broader look at the specific difficulties faced by Black artists

Pop has rarely been able to look away from Sly Stone for both the right and the wrong reasons. At his peak Stone was a supernova, burning bright and fast in the late 60s and early 70s with Sly and the Family Stone hits that shone with glorious optimism and musical virtuosity . Yet Stone’s personal troubles derailed his career as he battled drug addiction, leading to Family feuds, squandered opportunities and decades of obscurity.

Sly’s story and what it says about expectations placed on Black artists is the subject of Sly Lives! (AKA The Burden of Black Genius), a vibrant and probing new documentary from director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and producer Joseph Patel. The release follows Summer of Soul, the pair’s mesmerizing film about 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, which won the best documentary Oscar in 2022. “Our premise is about Sly being the first post-civil rights Black star who has a white audience and a Black audience, and what that specific American burden is on Black artists,” says Patel.

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Grand Theatre, Leeds
A lively revival of James Brining’s occasionally enigmatic staging sees Soraya Mafi make an exceptional role debut as a tenacious and principled Pamina

A child’s fantasy or a skewering of grown-up power games? James Brining’s production of The Magic Flute for Opera North, first seen in 2019 and revived for the second time this season, has a foot in both camps. Initially framed as the dream of the young girl seen heading for bed during the overture – its heroes, villains, and monsters conjured up from her toy box and a fractious family life – things turn starker and darker in Sarastro’s palace, where misogyny and casual corruption undermine any cultish declamations about truth and love.

It’s still not a wholly satisfactory staging – the final tableau in particular is so enigmatic that the audience on opening night were audibly uncertain the show had ended, and forays into feminism also feel underdeveloped – but its humour and dramatic momentum are admirable, and there’s a healthy helping of kooky visual appeal courtesy of Colin Richmond’s sets and Douglas O’Connell’s video designs.

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Archaeologists hail discovery of near-2,000-year-old remains as among most significant recent finds in the city

The remains of London’s earliest Roman basilica have been discovered under an office block, in what archaeologists have described as one of the most significant recent discoveries in the capital.

The almost 2,000-year-old structure was part of the forum, the Roman capital’s social and administrative centre, and built around the late 70s or early 80s CE, just a few decades after the Romans invaded Britain and 20 years after Boudicca sacked and burned the city in 60CE.

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Amid political pressure, Creative Australia says deselecting the Lebanese-born artist will avoid ‘divisive debate’

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Khaled Sabsabi, the western Sydney artist who fled Lebanon’s civil war as a child, has been dropped from representing Australia at the 61st Venice Biennale – just five days after being selected to do so .

Sabsabi selection for the 2026 showcase had caused controversy due to some of the artist’s previous works, including a 2007 depiction of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated last year, and a 2006 video rendering of the 9/11 attacks called Thank You Very Much. Shortly after the announcement, Sabsabi admitted to being shocked at being chosen, telling the Guardian: “I felt that, in this time and in this space, this wouldn’t happen because of who I am.”

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