Too much flighty drama in mezzo-soprano's performance

This moving and scrupulous history recreates a world on the edge of its extinction.

The actress Patricia Medina was a beautiful brunette whose striking features were ideally suited to costume melodrama. British-born, she had a modest career in the UK before moving to Hollywood with her first husband, the actor Richard Greene. Though she played leading lady to such stars as Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Alan Ladd, she never attained major-star status, though she was a spirited performer and voluptuous siren in several swashbucklers and occasionally revealed a latent flair for comedy. Her second husband was another actor, Joseph Cotten, whose prolific career included Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Duel in the Sun and The Third Man, and theirs was considered one of Hollywood's happiest marriages, lasting until his death in 1995.

Starring: Thomas Schubert, Karin Lishka

Roll up, a chic circus is in town

Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas

"Fighting fit" George Michael will return to the stage later this year following his battle for life with pneumonia.

Given that she had had a two-year affair with the married Albert Einstein when she was 23 and he was 44, and that she was a Jew desperate to escape an Austria overrun by the Nazis, what resounds down the years about the letter Betty Neumann sent to Einstein in America is its restraint and delicacy.

An archive of Einstein's letters reveal his thoughts on a problem he couldn't solve: how Arabs and Jews can live together. From Jerusalem, Donald Macintyre reports

For the New York Philharmonic to have embarked upon a London residency without Mahler in their portfolio would have been unconscionable.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accused the Syrian regime of potential crimes against humanity as activists reported fresh violence in Daraa, the city where the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted 11 months ago.

Rangers yesterday confirmed that Norwich City had turned down an attempt to sign the striker Grant Holt. The Ibrox manager, Ally McCoist, made a move for the Canaries' captain as the top goalscorer Nikica Jelavic was set to complete his switch to Everton.

The Viennese Ball, regarded as a highlight of Vienna's social calendar, has been struck off a Unesco list of celebrated Austrian traditions after being linked with Neo-Nazi groups.