Category: Opera Australia

Three years in the making (not very long, really) Opera Australia (OA) commissioned a new work with Music by Australian Composer, Elena Kats-Chernin, with a Libretto by Australian Playwright, Justin Fleming, focusing on the life of an iconic Australian painter, Brett Whitely. Whitely, in life, was a controversial figure. He is, still, a controversial figure. His art however, has grown more and more powerful as time as moved on. Born in 1932, he died young at the age of 53. The death as a result of a drug overdose. Whitely had become in 1985 an incurable addict. The Opera Australia…

ANNA BOLENA, is an Italian opera written in 1830, by Gaetano Donizetti, using the court of Henry VIII and his forcing of divorce from his second wife Anne Boleyn and the courting of his third wife Jane Seymour as the spine of the narrative. There is very little historical nuance to this libretto by Felice Romain but a great deal of dramatic confabulation to engender as much drama as possible to allow the creation of great dramatic music from orchestra and singers. Solo, duet and other figurations of ensemble, backed by the presence and usage of a large chorus and…

SALOME, an old Old Testament, bible story. SALOME, a sensational poem/play, in French, originally, by Oscar Wilde from 1891 – banned, originally, across most of Europe. SALOME, an outrageously daring composition and adaptation by Richard Strauss written in 1905. Banned, but appreciated and highly lauded, gradually, through the operatic world. SALOME, a contemporary production by the brilliant Gale Edwards, for the what I imagine should be an eternally grateful Opera Australia, that is as outrageous in its intellectual and physical conception and execution, placing this female-‘revenge’ work undeniably in our contemporary era of the ‘revolutionary’ contemplation of the ‘gender bubble’…

Opera Australia and John Frost with Elizabeth Williams, Benjamin Lowy and Adrian Salpeter, Jeanne Arnold, Beckett Swede, Just For laughs Theatricals and Glass Half Full Productions, present MY FAIR LADY. Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, Music by Frederick Loewe. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Play and Gabriel Pascal’s motion picture ‘PYGMALION’. At the Capitol Theatre, Campbell St, Haymarket, Sydney. 27 August – 14 October. I recently read DAZZLER, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOSS HART, a biography by Steven Bach (2001). It was an intriguing and subsequently, easy and enjoyable read giving one a look into the career…

Opera Australia present PARSIFAL, an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, Libretto by the composer, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. August 9,12 (matinee), 14 August. Leading the Opera Australia Orchestra, Pinchas Steinberg, as Conductor, harnessed an impressive cast of performers to give a concert version of this work of real beauty. Jonas Kaufmann sensitively (carefully) sang the leading role of Parsifal, supported by Michelle De Young, as Kundry; supported by an impressively powerful Kwangchul Youn, as Gurnemantz; Michael Honeyman, as Amfortas; and Warwick Fyfe, as Kilngsor (his physical inhabiting of the character and his function…

Opera Australia presents THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES, An opera in four acts and a prologue by Sergei Prokofiev. Libretto by the composer, for Vsevolod Meyerhold’s adaptation of a play by Carlo Gozzi. In the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Sydney Opera House,  June 22 – July 9, 2016. THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES by Sergei Prokofiev, is in a revival season for Opera Australia (OA). This absolutely delightful production by Francesca Zambello premiered in 2005. I saw it then as well. Then, I remember, it was a shock, and a dazzling but confusing experience. Now, under the Revival Direction…