Category: Sydney Opera House

  Picture: Jon Hopkins   PURE SCENIUS part of the Luminous Festival, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Just for the continuity of my diary…. I attended two of the three concerts as part of Brian Eno’s final event for the recent Luminous Festival. The ‘theatre’ of improvising musicians (presumably within some parameters) was an attractive promise. Certainly the musicians that Mr Eno had gathered were worth attending too. The Necks: pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Tony Buck were the outstanding “genius” of the night. Individually and collectively. The other artists included Jon Hopkins, Karl Hyde, Leo Abrahams…

Picture: Sasha Rozhdestvensky Sydney Symphony; 2009 Season, Great Classics. RUSSIAN TRIBUTE. At the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Music is not my field of expertise, however it is part of my theatre going diary. Hence… This program called RUSSIAN TRIBUTE has the Violin Concerto No 1 in A minor, Op.99 by Dmitri Shostakovich (my favourite composer {at this time}) followed by Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The violin soloist is Russian: Sasha Rozhdestvensky and the conductor is Russian: Vladimir Ashkenazy. Russians playing and interpreting Russian. Blissful expectations. And so it was. I bought my…

Lana Jones and Kevin Jackson (the ballet dancer… not the blogger.) The Australian Ballet presents FIREBIRD AND OTHER LEGENDS at the Sydney Opera House. This season of ballets is the conclusion of the Australian Ballet’s celebration of the Ballets Russes.”FIREBIRD AND OTHER LEGENDS features three works that were performed in the first three years of Diaghliev’s Paris seasons in 1909.” LES SYLPHIDES, choreography by Mikhail Fokine, music by Frederic Chopin arranged by Roy Douglas. This is a ballet that for most represents the image of what ballet is in most people’s eyes. A ballet danced by the female dancers in…

  You can see the quote in context in Kevin Jackson’s blog on FLOATING. The Sydney Opera House charges an extra $5 for tickets purchased over the box office counter. Do you think this is fair? Have your say in our online poll. → Pearl (Moderator)

TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard was first presented in 1974 at the Aldwych Theatre in London for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stoppard’s work was last seen in Sydney in the MTC’s production of ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at the Sydney Theatre as part of the STC season last year. TRAVESTIES is a relatively early play by Stoppard, who is regarded, by some, to be one of the great living playwrights. Each of his plays is highly anticipated and highly debated. Like most of Stoppard’s work this is “History rewritten as fiction (and) it is the motif of TRAVESTIES, a work that exploits…

Hoipolloi’s FLOATING with Hugh Hughes, presented in association with TEN DAYS ON THE ISLAND (Tasmania) and ARTS HOUSE (City of Melbourne) at the Sydney Opera House Playhouse.   This show apparently (I will explain the “apparently” in a moment or two) begins with a quote from Luis Bunuel on a screen “about lies becoming truth if they are told often enough.” In fact the quote appears several times on the screen. It is about imagination and memory interacting to create fictionalised events that over time may become our truths. Mr Hughes the, co-creator of this show in the program notes…