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This perfunctory piece suffers from a lack of ambition and a fawning approach to its subject

This film does very much what it says on the tin: if you want to watch a concert featuring acclaimed tenor Jonas Kaufmann sing selections from Puccini, then this is for you. On the stage of La Scala, Milan, in 2015, Kaufmann reduces his audience to ecstatic husks as he goes through the repertoire. As a film, though, this is strictly bog-standard stuff: Classical Concert 101. It’s also prefaced with a tell-me-why-you-are-so-great type of interview with Kaufmann, which seems to go on for an inordinate length; not a great way to begin.

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Enter here for your chance to win two passes to all of the 2016 performances in the Metro Detroit area that are part of the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning Live in HD series of cinema presentations, including Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers), Turandot, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Roberto Devereux, and Elektra.

Go behind the scenes with the Met’s stars! During intermission, interviews with cast, crew, and production teams give a revealing look at what goes into the staging of an opera. Celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series The Met: Live in HD.

For your chance to receive two (2) complimentary passes to all of the performances listed below, just look for the “Enter the Contest” box further down on this page (we’ll ask what city you live in so we know what might be the closest theater to you).

But,...

I used to work at a store where some of us employees liked to dress up for Halloween. One year the young woman I worked with that day dressed in her full Goth regalia (this is someone with a spiderweb tattoo), and when one customer said to her, "I love your costume," she replied, coldly and seriously, "It's not a costume." Ever since then I have thought of Halloween as the one day each year when Goths "fit in."

From whence does "Goth" come as a description of this subculture? Not from the original Goths, Germanic barbarians who sacked Rome and later founded the kingdom that eventually became Spain and Portugal. Rather, it comes from "Gothic fiction," an English literary movement (so called in reference to the architecture of castles) that dates from Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.

Such famed literature as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,...

Casanova Variations has released its first trailer.

John Malkovich plays Giacomo Casanova and himself in Michael Sturminger's film.

The film tells two stories from the life of the famous lothario, whose name is synonymous with romance and seduction.

It also tells a tale of the production of The Giacomo Variations stage play, which Sturminger directed and Malkovich starred in.

Malkovich famously played a fictionalised version of himself once before in Spike Jonze's 1999 film Being John Malkovich.

Veronica Ferres, Florian Boesch, Miah Persson, Anna Prohaska, Maria João Bastos, Lola Naymark, Kerstin Avemo, Kate Lindsey, Fanny Ardant and Jonas Kaufmann also feature in the film.

Casanova Variations is expected to be released in 2015.

The same team that brought you The Met’s recent hit production of Carmen returns with Massenet’s tragic romance Werther. The sublime new production comes to cinemas nationwide live on March 15th. For more information and participating theaters, visit http://www.fathomevents.com/event/werther

Two of opera’s greatest artists—Jonas Kaufmann and Sophie Koch—appear together for the first time at the Met in Massenet’s sublime adaptation of Goethe’s revolutionary and tragic romance. It is directed and designed by Richard Eyre and Rob Howell, the same team that created the Met’s recent hit production of Carmen. Rising young maestro Alain Altinoglu conducts.

Don’t miss the chance to experience the excitement of the Metropolitan Opera, including interviews and behind-the-scenes features exclusive to The Met: Live in HD series, all at your neighborhood movie theater!

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A Pair Of Tickets To See This...

Which music stars went home with awards at the 2014 Grammy Awards? Find out with this full winners list.

Winners in each category are bolded.

Record of the Year

"Get Lucky" -- Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers

"Radioactive" -- Imagine Dragons

"Royals" -- Lorde

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Bruno Mars

"Blurred Lines" -- Robin Thick feat. T.I. and Pharrell

Album of the year

"The Blessed Unrest" -- Sara Bareilles

"Random Access Memories" -- Daft Punk

"Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" -- Kendrick Lamar

"The Heist" -- Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

"Red" -- Taylor Swift

Song of the year

"Just Give Me a Reason" -- Jeff Bhasker, Pink and Nate Ruess (Pink feat. Nate Ruess)

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine and Bruno Mars (Bruno Mars)

"Roar" -- Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, Katy Perry and Henry Walter (Katy Perry)

"Royals...

Angelina Jolie takes on Sleeping Beauty while Terry Gilliam tackles Berlioz as the stars come out to confound our expectations in the coming year

Film

Angelina Jolie in Maleficent

Hollywood's most formidable leading lady is back after a relatively quiet spell, in a role playing on her scariness and seniority. This reinvented fairytale is a twist on The Sleeping Beauty, and Jolie is not playing the insipid dormant heroine with her crybaby attitude to finger-pricking but the evilly magnificent Maleficent, the sorceress who casts a spell on the demure young Princess Aurora. How did she get that way? Everything will depend on the script – but Jolie is always a great turn. Peter Bradshaw 30 May.

Natalie Portman in Jane Got a Gun

Natalie Portman is a Hollywood A-lister who first came to prominence in George Lucas's Star Wars prequel trilogy. She was compellingly vulnerable in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan,...

As we head into March, the Emmy® and Peabody award-winning “The Met: Live in HD” series is in full swing in U.S. cinemas for a seventh season featuring 12 live operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012-13 season.

The next one is the broadcast of Wagner’s Parsifal. It will be presented live for only one day on Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 11:00 Am Et in the St. Louis area.

Wamg invites you to enter to win tickets to see Parsifal This Saturday! We have one pair of tickets – Good For Two – to this event. Tickets are good at the AMC Chesterfield 14 and will be mailed.

To Qualify:

1. You Must Be In The St. Louis Area On Saturday.

2. Send Your Full Name To michelle@wearemoviegeeks.com .

3. Winners Will Be Chosen Through A Random Drawing Of Qualifying Contestants. No Purchase Necessary.

“The Met has assembled about the best Parsifal cast available today…...

It seems that increasingly the cinema is not just a venue to enjoy films in any more. Live sporting events, concerts, ballet, opera and theatre are just some of the alternative programming that has started to be streamed onto cinema screens, and with some degree of success too. Ahead of their new season (presented by The Royal Opera House), which promises “a breatht4King spectacle of opera, ballet and theatre” we were invited by Vue cinemas to sample this unique experience for ourselves by watching some opera in a plush screen at their Westfield London site.

Now, being a film nut, this humble reviewer had to admit to not knowing a jot about opera before arriving. We were to be watching a recorded version of Puccini’s Tosca, which had been streamed live into cinemas from The Royal Opera House in July last year. The production starred Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann...

From Snow White to Jack White, and Cumbria to Cannes, the Observer's critics pick the season's highlights. What are you most looking forward to? Post your comments below

Download the spring arts calendar 2012

April

2 Pop Dr John The New Orleans legend decamps to Nashville to record with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach; excellence ensues on the Locked Down LP.

4 Art Damien Hirst The world's richest living artist enjoys a major survey of more than 20 years of his work, including medicine cabinets, diamond skull and a certain preserved shark. Tate Modern, London until 9 September.

6 Film This Must Be the Place Sean Penn plays a retired rock star scouring America for the fugitive Nazi who tormented his father in Auschwitz. Paolo Sorrentino escapes from the art house in his first English-language film.

7 Theatre Where Have I Been All My Life? Following the success of London Road, her verbatim musical at the National,...

Our critics' picks of this week's openings, plus your last chance to see and what to book now

• Which cultural events are in your diary this week? Tell us in the comments below

Opening this week

Theatre

Red Light Winter

The UK premiere of Adam Rapp's Obie Award-winning play about two successful New Yorkers, once college room mates, whose trip to the Red Light district of Amsterdam comes back to haunt them. Part of an ambitious season of contemporary American work.

Ustinov, Bath (01225 448844), to 31 March.

Me, Myself and Miss Gibbs

In 2003, Francesca Millican Slater bought an old postcard of Lincoln Cathedral that had been posted to a Miss Gibbs at a London address in 1910. The message said: Be careful tomorrow. What did Miss Gibbs have to fear? Brilliant solo show about identity and obsession.

Drill Hall, Lincoln (01522 873894), Thursday to 9 March.

Sprint

Brilliant festival of emerging and experimental work. Highlights...

Last week our critics picked their highlights of 2011. Did they get it right? Readers respond with their own highs (and lows)

MattB75

One Man, Two Guvnors was the most fun I've had in a theatre for years – easily the best play of 2011, and James Corden best performer. The National theatre largely misfired for me: A Woman Killed with Kindness, Cherry Orchard, 13, The Kitchen, Frankenstein and Greenland were all largely disappointing.

The RSC's Homecoming was the best revival. Rupert Goold's Merchant of Venice was great fun, even if the inconsistency in Portia's characterisation (from ditzy blond Glee fan to brilliant prosecutor, hm) took the edge off it.

Tom Brooke was my favourite actor of the year – in The Kitchen, and I Am the Wind.

oogin

Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are still two of my least-admired starchitects. However, credit where it's due. I had the pleasure of wandering Toronto's Ago...

The Observer's critics pick the season's highlights, from Degas to Depp, and Britney to the Bard

September

1 Theatre: Decade In a former trading hall on London's St Katharine Docks, Rupert Goold's production evokes the legacy of 9/11, with the help of Simon Schama and Abi Morgan. Until 15 October.

4 Pop: Adele After her summer to die for (No1 album, ubiquitous single), Adele starts her UK tour in Plymouth. She's in London on the 19th and 20th and ends in Glasgow (25).

6 Dance: Tezuka New evening-length piece by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, inspired by the work of renowned Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka. Starring Daniel Proietto, the piece features a specially commissioned score by Nitin Sawhney. At Sadler's Wells until 10 September.

8 Pop: Bestival The Isle of Wight weekender always has a hefty line-up: this yearboasts new kids James Blake and Odd Future alongside the Cure, Brian Wilson and Björk.

9 Theatre: We are Three Sisters...

Goethe cursed attempts to set Faust to music – but composers kept trying regardless. As Terry Gilliam's version opens, Stuart Jeffries recounts a litany of depression, devils and duels

There is a curse on any composer rash enough to set Goethe's Faust to music. The German literary genius declared only Mozart capable of adapting his epic drama of damnation, sexual betrayal, witchcraft and freeform philosophic meditation. Selfishly, Mozart had died in 1791, almost 20 years before Goethe completed part one. So forever after, we have been doomed to suffer Faustian adaptations that the author would have disdained.

Perhaps Goethe's curse was issued because of That Thing he had with Beethoven. When Goethe met Beethoven (What a film! Hugh Bonneville as genteel, bewigged Goethe; Russell Crowe as Beethoven, surly and spoiling for a fight), the former bowed like a courtier; the latter didn't even remove his hat. You can see how...