Barbican, London
Rolf Hind’s opera about the 13th-century poet is mostly hard to follow, but countertenor James Hall and baritone Yannis François come into their own when the drama is clearer

The life and writings of the 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, better known as Rumi , provide the inspiration for Rolf Hind’s opera. First seen in Copenhagen last month, Sky in a Small Cage was brought to the Barbican in the same Mahogany Opera production, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker.

The relationship between the poet, who was born in 1207 in what is now Anatolian Turkey, and the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi, with whom he is said to have spent 40 days that changed the course of his life, provides the 90-minute opera with its emotional core, and, it turns out, with its most powerful, most conventionally operatic moments. Around that event Dante Micheaux’s libretto, which incorporates Rumi’s own poetry, presents the story of his life in a series of disconnected episodes, which are mostly conveyed through a narrator, Elaine Mitchener, whose delivery ranges between speech, declamation and, at one point, a fully fledged operatic scena including a loud hailer.

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Born in 1944, Horn’s surreal and witty work used birds, mechanics and masks to create ‘art machines’ and visual representations of sound

Rebecca Horn, the German installation artist known for her surreal and sensual “art machines” incorporating musical instruments, bird feathers and mechanical engineering, has died aged 80, her foundation has confirmed.

According to the Moontower Foundation , Horn’s death was on Friday evening in Bad König, in her native western German Odenwald region.

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New exhibition, named after ‘theatrical encyclopedia’ Gabrielle Enthoven, showcases British stage history from the Restoration to Fleabag

She was an avid collector of playbills, programmes and props who kickstarted the largest theatrical archive of the nation, now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Without Gabrielle Enthoven, we would not have theatre studies as a discipline today, according to Simon Sladen, the museum’s senior curator of modern and contemporary theatre and performance.

Yet many will never have heard of Enthoven. That is about to change as the V&A has named a new exhibition in her honour, celebrating a century of the national archive, which is now protected by law.

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(Domino)
Originally written for an installation with mind-altering intentions, the producer’s seventh album is occasionally engaging but dissolves into drift

No one could claim that Jon Hopkins has undersold his seventh album. The 45-year-old electronic producer, soundtrack composer and sometime collaborator with Brian Eno and Coldplay has described the music on Ritual as “a tool … for opening portals within your inner world”, and stated: “It doesn’t feel like an album therefore: more a process to go through, something that works on you.”

Perhaps that’s because the music on Ritual has lofty origins. Hopkins isn’t the first musician to attempt to soundtrack the experiences wrought by beat writer and William Burroughs associate Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine, a device that emits flickering light which, when looked at through closed eyelids, induces an alpha-wave mental state and hallucinations: Gysin himself favoured listening to the Master Musicians of Joujouka or – crikey – Throbbing Gristle’s 1980 live album Heathen Earth while doing so. But Hopkins is the first to do it on such a scale. Ritual was originally music commissioned for a Dreamachine installation (that transformed something that can apparently be constructed at home using a turntable, a lightbulb and some cardboard into a “multi-sensory experience”) which took up the entirety of Edinburgh’s Murrayfield ice rink, as part of Unboxed, originally known as the Festival of Brexit. The effect was described in this newspaper as being: “as close to state-funded hallucinogens as you can get.”

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Ahead of Abel Tesfaye’s livestreamed concert in Brazil to launch his new era, we rate his path from cult mixtape star to pop icon

Abel Tesfaye’s first album proper was released to a muted reception and middling sales – a relative misstep. But it’s not without its charms, among them the seven-minute, two-part title track: too opaque and ambitious to release as a single, perhaps, but with a dark power to its churning synth backing.

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And Nothing Is Forever and I Can Never Say Goodbye will be available on 1 October, using the ‘most recyclable’ plastic available, part of a Naked Record Club project to benefit the EarthPercent charity

The Cure are set to release live recordings of two new, previously unreleased songs on an environmentally friendly vinyl edition.

Featuring the songs And Nothing Is Forever and I Can Never Say Goodbye, The Cure – Novembre: Live in France 2022 will be released on eco-vinyl on 1 October, with all profits to benefit the climate charity EarthPercent , founded by Brian Eno.

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Actor says ‘we all have dark sides’ and criticises ‘public shaming’ before premiere of Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer

Cate Blanchett has spoken about the “distinct lack of shame” in modern society during a discussion about her new Apple TV+ series, Disclaimer.

Blanchett’s character, Catherine Ravenscroft, faces a public shaming in the seven-episode psychological thriller. Asked at the Venice film festival if the way society shames women has changed in recent years, and how she approached this role as a woman, the Australian actor and film-maker said: “I always approach every role as a woman, because I am one. I don’t really think about that.

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Singer shares ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ at end of European leg of Eras tour, saying she is grateful ‘we were grieving concerts and not lives’

Taylor Swift has spoken for the first time about the three Vienna shows on her blockbuster Eras tour that were cancelled earlier this month after a foiled terror attack, saying she felt “a new sense of fear” and a “tremendous amount of guilt”.

The planned terror attack was uncovered by Austrian authorities who eventually arrested three teenaged suspects – aged 17, 18 and 19 – for allegedly planning an Islamist attack in the Vienna region, with Swift’s shows being the “focus” of the plot.

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Main venue remains closed but Courtauld Gallery reopens having not been affected by Saturday’s blaze

Parts of the Somerset House complex in central London remain open to the public despite 125 firefighters being required to tackle a blaze at the venue on Saturday.

While the main venue is closed until further notice, the Courtauld Gallery – home toworks including Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 self-portrait showing him with a bandaged ear – reopened on Sunday.

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