LONDON (Reuters) – Three sisters from Los Angeles producing fun and infectious folk-pop could be the tonic that chart music needs to lift it from what some experts are calling a creative slump.

As music channels, journalists and record labels step up their search for the “next big thing” in 2013, the Fleetwood Mac-inspired Haim sisters have appeared in a growing number of lists produced at the start of each year.

LONDON (Reuters) – Three sisters from Los Angeles producing fun and infectious folk-pop could be the tonic that chart music needs to lift it from what some experts are calling a creative slump.

As music channels, journalists and record labels step up their search for the “next big thing” in 2013, the Fleetwood Mac-inspired Haim sisters have appeared in a growing number of lists produced at the start of each year.

LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The Spice Girls took to the stage
on Tuesday after the world premiere of a new musical loosely
based on their meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s, earning huge
cheers from an audience that only really got going at the
encore.

“Viva Forever!” was the brainchild of producer Judy Craymer,
whose “Mamma Mia!” musical based on the hits of ABBA has earned
nearly $2 billion worldwide and spawned a hit movie starring
Meryl Streep.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Spice Girls hit the red carpet in London on Tuesday for the world premiere of a musical based on their meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s, and will discover if “Girl Power” still appeals to the next generation.

“Viva Forever!” opens at the Piccadilly Theatre with a star-studded launch including all five members of the band, and hundreds of die-hard fans are expected to block the streets to get a glimpse of the girls who once ruled the charts.

LONDON (Reuters) – One of Britain’s top directors Michael Grandage is targeting the next generation of theatre-goers by offering one quarter of all tickets to his upcoming, star-studded season for 10 pounds ($16) each, a fraction of what they would normally cost.

The award-winning 50-year-old has just set up the Michael Grandage Company after a successful 10-year tenure at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and has announced a five-play season that opens on Monday with wartime drama “Privates on Parade”.

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Thomas Gainsborough, J.M.W. Turner
and John Constable are among Britain’s most revered artists,
admired for their ability to capture a native landscape long
dismissed by the establishment as a subject unworthy of great
painters.

A new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, unusually
drawn entirely from its own collection, traces how the three
artists helped pave the way for greater acceptance of a genre
now considered one of Britain’s greatest artistic achievements.

LONDON (Reuters) – The audience at London’s Royal Opera House is in for a big surprise on Thursday night.

They will witness German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 grand opera “Robert le Diable” (Robert the Devil), a work so rarely performed that virtually no one has seen it, let alone sung it or played it.

LONDON (Reuters) – The audience at London’s Royal Opera House is in for a big surprise on Thursday night.

They will witness German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 grand opera “Robert le Diable” (Robert the Devil), a work so rarely performed that virtually no one has seen it, let alone sung it or played it.

LONDON (Reuters) – One of the greatest drawings by Renaissance master Raphael still in private hands sold for 29.7 million pounds ($47.9 million) on Wednesday, an auction record for the artist in sterling terms and double pre-sale expectations.

Sotheby’s auctioneers had high hopes for the 16th century “Head of an Apostle”, a study for Raphael’s last painting “Transfiguration” which is on display at the Vatican Museum in Rome.

LONDON (Reuters) – Michael Palin was deadly serious, Terry Jones yawned and Eric Idle looked like he was half asleep.

At London’s High Court on Wednesday, proceedings in a case over royalties from the hit musical “Spamalot” were distinctly humorless, despite the presence of three out of six members of the surreal comedy troupe Monty Python.