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The term ‘filmed opera’ in no way describes this phantasmagoria. Powell & Pressburger re-envisions the Offenbach work with dance sequences refracted through a cinematic prism. It’s high art made for the movies, without the condescenscion seen in Disney’s Fantasia. The stars are Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann. Powell perfects techniques from Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes to fuse music, theater, dance and cinema; Martin Scorsese calls it a ‘composed film.’ This full restoration reinstates footage not seen since the first previews in 1951.

The Tales of Hoffmann

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 317

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 133 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars, Pamela Brown, Léonide Massine, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth, Robert Rounseville;

— And the voices of: Robert Rounseville, Monica Sinclair, Bruce Dargavel, Fisher Morgan, Rene Soames, Dorothy Bond, Grahame Clifford, Murry Dickie, Margherita Grandi, Owen Brannigan, Ann Ayars, Joan Alexander...

Ncm Fathom Events, Mr. Wolf, Arts Alliance Media and the Royal Opera House invite you to journey to an enchanted world of princesses, fairy godmothers and magic spells with the captivating Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty as it comes to the big screen in a special one-night event on Thursday, March 20 at 7:00pm (local time) to select cinemas nationwide.

Don’t miss Marius Petipa’s enchanting ballet as a wicked fairy places a fatal curse on the baby Princess Aurora, which the good Lilac Fairy softens to a sleep of 100 years and only a prince’s kiss can break the spell.

Like Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty is instantly recognizable to those unfamiliar with ballet. The princess will be played by American Sarah Lamb who danced in The Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in November of 2013.

Marius Petipa’s classic 19th-century choreography is combined with newly created sections by Frederick Ashton,...

Derek Jarman is remembered as an innovative film-maker and artist but his stage work is key to his career – even his own residence was a performance

Derek Jarman wandered into theatre, as he did into much of his creative life. The stage design department at the Slade School of Art in 1963 was casually structured, and, for the era, an uncloseted zone of gaiety. He'd previously slapped a distemper brush on scenes for Lorca's Blood Wedding and other plays put on by fellow students at King's College, London. He had not seen much theatre, as movies – even concerts – came cheaper; the first production that really excited him was Peter Brook's short and gory staging of Antonin Artaud's Spurt of Blood in the RSC's 1964 Theatre of Cruelty season.

Jarman put a lot of effort into his design course, outlining a surreal play, The Billboard Promised Land (a mashup of The Wizard of Oz...

A major star of the post-Diaghilev Ballets Russes, he was celebrated for his romantic roles

Frederic Franklin, who has died aged 98, was one of the best loved figures in the dance world. Always genial, always helpful, he possessed a razor-sharp memory of all the ballets he had appeared in. Franklin played an important part in the preservation of many early ballets by George Balanchine, and in 2002 was able to reconstruct episodes from Devil's Holiday, a ballet created by Frederick Ashton in 1939, never revived since and never seen on stage by Ashton.

Franklin, known as Freddie, was a major star of the post-Diaghilev Ballets Russes, forming a memorable and long-lasting partnership with the ballerina Alexandra Danilova; her champagne personality and his good looks and charisma combined to stunning effect. This was especially true in such ballets as Léonide Massine's Le Beau Danube and especially Gâité Parisienne. But Franklin also danced...

Composer and pianist whose work included film scores, opera and jazz cabaret

The composer Richard Rodney Bennett, who has died in New York aged 76, pursued multiple musical lives with extraordinary success. He was one of the more distinguished soundtrack composers of his era, having contributed to some 50 films and winning Oscar nominations for his work on Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

But it scarcely seemed credible that this knack for writing for a mainstream audience in a melodic, romantic style co-existed with his mastery of serialism and 12-tone techniques. From 1957 to 1959, Bennett was a scholarship student with Pierre Boulez in Paris and soaked up the latter's total serialism techniques as well as his infatuation with the German avant garde. He also attended the summer schools at Darmstadt, the mecca for diehard atonalists.

His tremendous facility as a pianist would prompt the...

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

Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad

Shakespeare's epic love tragedy relocated to present day Iraq, a society riven by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia. In Arabic with English surtitles. Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon (0844 800 1110), Thursday to 5 May; Riverside Studios, London W6 (020-8237 1111), 28 June until 30 June.

Enquirer

A new site-specific production from the National Theatre of Scotland based on interviews with leading figures in the newspaper industry, from editors to retailers. Andrew O'Hagan co-edits with directors John Tiffany and Vicky Featherstone. Hub at Pacific Quay, Glasgow (0141 429 0022), 26 April until 12 May.

Film

Marley (dir. Kevin Macdonald)

A documentary about the life and times of Bob Marley. He was a musical legend, but a flawed and vulnerable human being.

Read our top-rated entries to the Guardian's annual competition to find the best young talent in arts writing

Overall Winner

Visual art, under 14

Freddie Holker, 12 – Homage to Lucian Freud, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Disgusting. That's what I'm thinking; that's my gut instinct. It's reminiscent of the swimming-pool changing rooms back at school, where I'm scared to look at anything in case it offends someone. This is the Homage to Lucian Freud, one of Britain's best modern artists, who died on 20 July 2011. Seventeen paintings by Freud are displayed. I'm standing in an eerily plain room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 3,000 miles away from where I'm comfortable.

The only painting I can easily look at is, funnily enough, Naked Man, Back View. The only one that doesn't contain full-frontal nudity offers full dorsal nudity. It shows a fat man plonked on a footstool. His sitting position pushing out roll...

From an illicit Pixies gig to a Mesopotamian ziggurat, Guardian critics recall their biggest moment of inspiration in their respective fields

How to enter this year's competition

Pop: Alexis Petridis

Can any gig you see as a critic ever match the ones you saw as a teenager? Bizarrely, going to a gig when I was 17 was harder work than writing reviews has ever been. It involved not merely getting to London, but lying to my parents about where I was going, lying to my friend's parents about where my parents thought I was going, bunking off school, and then convincing somebody who looked 18 to go to the bar on my behalf.

But none of that mattered the night I saw the Pixies supported by My Bloody Valentine, in September 1988. It's not every night you see arguably the two most important guitar bands of the era on the same stage at...

To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the film’s original release, Optimum Releasing have restored the classic ballet film: Tales Of Beatrix Potter, written and choreographed by legendary founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton, and directed by Reginald Mills (editor of Tales of Hoffmann, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death). We’ve been given three copies of the Double-Play to give away! The movie came out this Monday, 4th April so you can click here to buy your copy now or scroll down to enter our competition.

Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Mrs. Tiggywinkle, Jemina Puddleduck, Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland and all the beloved characters created by Beatrix Potter come to life in this colourful and imaginative musical interpretation of her tales, beautifully danced by the Royal Ballet.

You can click the images to enlarge or scroll down to enter.

To be in with...

To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the film’s original release, Optimum Releasing have restored the classic ballet film Tales of Beatrix Potter, written and choreographed by legendary founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton, and directed by Reginald Mills (editor of Tales of Hoffmann, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death).

Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Mrs. Tiggywinkle, Jemina Puddleduck, Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland and all the beloved characters created by Beatrix Potter come to life in this colourful and imaginative musical interpretation of her tales, beautifully danced by the Royal Ballet.

We have teamed up with Optimum Releasing to offer you, our beloved readers, the chance to win a copy of Tales of Beatrix Potter on Double Play Blu-ray (released on April 4th). All you have to do is answer this simple question:

What is the name of the Rabbit in ‘Tales of Beatrix Potter...

Ever since the pioneering dance play "Contact" hit the Great White Way in 2000, the notion of a Broadway musical has expanded to include shows that resemble evenings of pure concert dance. With this innovation has come an influx of concert-dance performers and choreographers to Broadway, where they have been strutting their stuff in traditional musicals as well as these genre-defying dance-theater productions.Maverick modern-dance choreographer Twyla Tharp thrilled Broadway audiences with her 2002 hit dance musical "Movin' Out," in which a cast of concert dancers performed to Billy Joel songs. In her latest Broadway outing, "Come Fly Away," Tharp has concocted a full evening of dazzling choreography to the songs of Frank Sinatra. A "danced-through" musical, "Come Fly Away" is performed by distinguished terps from the concert stage, some of whom are making their first foray onto Broadway. Back Stage recently spoke with seven of the show's principal performers to find...

Dance and theatre critic Clive Barnes has lost his battle with liver cancer, aged 81.

Barnes passed away on Wednesday after experiencing complications relating to the disease, according to his wife Valerie Taylor Barnes.

His critiques reigned in Britain, The New York Times and later the New York Post - where he had worked for the last 31 years as its chief drama and dance critic.

The London-born writer began penning ballet reviews in 1949 for the Oxford University magazine, Isis.

He published his first book, Ballet in Britain Since the War, in 1953 - and would later contribute to other books including Frederick Ashton and His Ballets, Dance Scene U.S.A. and Nureyev.

In 1956, The Daily Express hired him to review dance, theatre, film and television.

Barnes would later move on to write for The Spectator and The Times of London, which hired him as its first full-time dance critic -a post he held for 13 years before he was hired at The New York Times in 1965.

He also wrote the Attitudes column for Dance Magazine from 1989, and contributed to the French magazine Ballet 2000 and British magazine The Stage.

His last review for the New York Post appeared on 31 October, when he celebrated new talent at the American Ballet.

In addition to his wife, Barnes is survived by two children, Chris and Maya, from his second marriage to Patricia Winckley, and two grandchildren.

Ballerina Nadia Nerina has died at her home on the French Riviera. She was 80.

The revered dancer was one of the leading ballet figures of the 1950s and 1960s, when she starred in a series of productions at London's Sadler's Wells theatre.

Her beauty and talents inspired choreographer Frederick Ashton to create La Fille Mal Gardee.

Nerina was born Nadine Judd in South Africa and took up ballet as a child to strengthen her feet. She initially danced under the name Nadine Moore.

She danced with the Kirov Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet before retiring to France with her banker husband in the late 1960s.