Month: August 2015

Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) present Brahms 3, Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, at the Sydney City Recital Hall, Angel Place, 18 Aug – 22 Aug. The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) in its biggest formation this year, brought some 50 musicians onto the stage. The sound is full and electric. The concert began with an exuberantly passionate ‘reading’ of the Overture from the opera, THE MAGIC FLUTE, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1791). The experience was surprising and arousing taken with a speed that had me hearing the work as if it were the first time. The dramatics of the scoring were delivered with…

JUMP FIRST ASK LATER – PARKOUR FROM THE STREETS OF FAIRFEILD, Produced and Presented by Powerhouse Youth Theatre (PYT) and Force Majeure, at the Fairfield School of Arts, 19-29 August, 2015, a World Premiere. Some Fairfield youth have explored and practised as individuals and, latterly, as an ensemble: The Dauntless Movement Company (DMC), to present a wide range of street physical engagements: B-Boying, Parkour, Free running, Hip-hop dancing, Tricking, a variety of martial arts, calisthenics, and acrobatics. In JUMP FIRST ASK LATER, six individuals, all founding members of DMC: Joseph Carbone, Johnny Do, Patrick Uy, Justin Kilic, Natalie Siri and…

A Late Night Show, FLAME PEAS, by Philippe Klaus, Nicole Shostak, and Griffin Blumer, at the Old Fitz Theatre, under the auspices of Red Line productions, 4 August -15 August. What has happened at the Old Fitz under the management of Red Line Productions is beside producing, presenting, a show at 7.30pm – the Main Event – a series of Late Shows have been curated – variously, 9 – 9.30pm, usually 40-45 minutes in length. This late night showing has attracted and allowed young companies and independent artists to use the space as a place for development of new work…

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents, DANCING WITH THE DEVIL, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody, in the Concert Hall, at the Sydney Opera House, 12 August – 14 & 15 August, 2015. This concert given by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO), conducted by James Gaffigan, had the title: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL. The first offer was the Ballet music from Act III of Verdi’s MACBETH (c.1864). The witches of the opera conjure the imagery of the Devil and the sound composed for the French version of the opera was for the dance around the cauldron of spells. Almost twenty years after the original premiere…

II The New Theatre present THE WOMEN, by Clare Boothe Luce, at the New Theatre, King St, Newtown, 11 August – 12 September. THE WOMEN, by Clare Boothe Luce is a tart comic satire written in 1936. Its famous gimmick is that only women feature in the casting – in the original play some 130 roles – and is a play concerned with the indulged class of the Manhattan rich and their servants, in their homes/apartments/beauty parlours, and inevitably, in the capital city for divorce: Reno. The film, made in1939, Directed by George Cukor, is a comic classic stuffed with…

Opera Australia presents DON CARLOS. An Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi,  Libretto by Joseph Mery and Camille du Locle, based on the dramatic poem Don Carlos, Infant von Spaniel by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1787) and on the play Phillipe II, roi d’Espagne by Eugene Cormon (1846). Libretto of the four-act version revised by Camille de Locle. Performed in the Joan Sutherland Theatre of the Sydney Opera House, July-August, 2015. Giuseppe Verdi’s DON CARLOS. It is a Grand Opera. It is not often performed. I first saw it, searching for new experiences, on screen at an Opera…