What’s on in Europe this month

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo come face to face in Rome, the US dancer David Hallberg makes his stage debut at Russia’s Bolshoi and African photography stars at the Paris Photo fair. Paul Auster and J.M Coetze headline the film festival jury in Lisbon, haute cuisine meets haute couture with a taste-defying Berlin photo exhibit and the sweet-toothed get a treat in Belgium with a history of confectionery.

Austria

Art: More than 150 works by Rene Magritte go on show at the Albertina in Vienna, showcasing all the Belgian artist’s creative phases and addressing hitherto little-explored aspects of his life and artistic activity. From November 9 to February 26.

www.albertina.at/en

Opera: German Christian Thielemann conducts a new production of Wagner’s opera cycle at the Vienna State Opera. Die Walkuere on Sunday, Siegfried on November 9 and Goetterdaemmerung on November 13.

www.wiener-staatsoper.at

France

Archaeology: Meet the Gauls. Feisty forest-dwellers in winged helmets, with a fondness for roast boar and Roman-bashing? Not quite. Drawing on three decades of archaeology, Les Gaulois debunks popular myths about the Celtic people, revealing them to be sophisticated farmers, traders and craftsmen. Until September 2, 2012.

www.cite-sciences.fr/francais/ala_cite/expositions/gaulois/

Photography: African photography, from Bamako to Cape Town, is guest of honour at the annual Paris Photo fair, bringing together 117 galleries from 23 countries under the glass and steel vaults of the capital’s Grand Palais, for a panorama of world photography from the 19th century to the present day. From November 10 to 13.

www.parisphoto.fr/?lg=en

Photography: Iconic New York photographer Diane Arbus revolutionised her field in the 1950s and 1960s with her shots of middle-class families, children, carnival performers, nudists or religious zealots. Some 200 shots are brought together for the first-ever French retrospective of Arbus’s powerful, disturbing work. Until February 5.

www.jeudepaume.org

Belgium

Architecture: Brussels celebrates its genius of Art Nouveau architecture, Victor Horta, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Victor Horta revisited! The Art Of Living & Shopping is on until December 5, with shows, tours and conferences on his works and the importance of his heritage.

Horta built grand townhouses, large stores, country residences, the main railway station and more. He also reformed the teaching of architecture and is credited with inspiring Belgium’s current generation of talented designers.

www.belvue.be

Sweet candy: From candied nuts to caramel, liquorice to lollipops, Brussels’ windmill and food museum hosts a history of confectionery in Europe, from the honeyed almonds that delighted the sweet-toothed in antiquity, to recent imports from around the world – sesame treats from Asia or Brazilian brigadeiros truffles – or Belgium’s home-grown candy, the cone-shaped, fruity sweets called cuberdons. Until August 31, 2012.

www.moulindevere.be

Bulgaria

Film: The Sofia Independent Film Festival will show over 20 of the best new American independent films and documentaries, picked from the selections of the Sundance and Tribeca festivals. Until Sunday.

http://soindependentfilmfest.com/2011/bg

Film: Bulgaria’s 25th Cinemania Film Festival will give audiences a chance to see some of this season’s most-rewarded movies and documentaries from around the world. Special sections will focus on movie classics, British, Italian and French cinema, children’s, nature and culinary movies. From November 9 to 22.

www.kinomania.bg

Britain

The recently restored Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci.

Art: Landmark exhibition focusing on Leonardo da Vinci’s career as a court painter in Milan, working for the city’s ruler Ludovico Maria Sforza, known as il Moro (the Moor) in the 1480s and 1490s.

The National Gallery promises the show will feature the largest ever number of the artist’s surviving paintings, including the gallery’s own recently restored Virgin of the Rocks.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan runs from November 9 to February 5, 2012.

www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Norway

Music: The annual Oslo World Music Festival draws more than 300 musicians from around the globe, including Asa of Nigeria, Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal (Mali/France, Juju (Britain/Gambia) and Paco de Lucia (Spain). Until Sunday, in 13 venues across Oslo.

www.osloworldmusicfestival.no

Italy

Art: Italian Renaissance masters Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo come face to face for the first time with a new exhibition at Rome’s Capitoline Museums focusing on both their drawings and Roman works. Until February 12, 2012.

www.museicapitolini.org.

Art: Masterpieces by Raphael and Michelangelo highlight a new exhibition at the Fondazione Roma museum, exploring the 16th century’s artistic course from High Renaissance to religious spirituality. Until February 12, 2012.

www.fondazioneromamuseo.it

Portugal

Film: US writers Paul Auster and Don DeLillo and South Africa’s Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetze headline the jury at the Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival, which is expanding this year into the capital from its roots in the nearby resort of Estoril. The festival’s official selection focuses on young European film-makers and ones from “less-visible” parts of Europe.

Photographic exhibitions and conferences on copyright and the future of film in the digital era will run alongside the film. Until November 13.

www.leffest.com/en

The Netherlands

Film: The first-ever Amsterdam Film Week opens with a preview of Roman Polanski’s Carnage, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September. Viewers will have a chance to see this year’s Oscar and Golden Globe winners, but also those of the Cannes, Berlin and Tribeca festivals, as well as exclusive previews. Until Sunday.

www.amsterdamfilmweek.com

Germany

Ai Weiwei outside Tompkins Square, New York in 1986. The photo is one of 220 taken by the artist and which is currently on show at Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau museum.

Fashion, food, photography: Move over Lady Gaga and your meat dress. Fashion Food brings haute couture and haute cuisine together in a series of photographs, featuring models draped in octopus tunics, squid ink pasta suits and salmon-strip tank tops. The creations by Austrian Michelin-starred chef Roland Trettl and advertising photographer Helge Kirchberger form the core of the exhibition at Berlin’s Communication Museum, and are captured in a delectable catalogue with a foreword by the original fashion rebel, Vivienne Westwood. Until January 29, 2012.

www.mfk-berlin.de

Art: An exhibition of photos taken in New York by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, recently named the world’s most powerful art figure, draws crowds at Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau museum. Featuring more than 220 photos that Ai took when he was in his 20s and 30s, the show captures the city through an enamoured stranger’s eyes with street fights in Tompkins Square Park, transvestites at the Wigstock festival and portraits of Chinese and American artists. However Ai, who curated the show, could not be in Berlin to introduce the work, saying in a short video message that he regretted his absence without hinting at whether he was free to travel. Until March 18, 2012.