Category: Sydney Opera House

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…

THE TORRENTS, is an Australian play written by Oriel Gray. It was the joint winner of a prestigious playwriting award from the Playwright Advisory Board (PAB) in 1955, sharing with SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL, by Ray Lawler. The Lawler play began a rich Australian production history in 1955 that took it onto the National and International stages: London, New York, and, still appears regularly today as part of the Australian Theatre Companies repertoire. On the other hand, Ms Gray’s play was almost entirely neglected, forgotten, and did not receive a professional stage production until 1996 in Adelaide. Although, there…

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…

I first knew of William Yang when he was Willie Young and part of the cast of the iconic original production of THE LEGEND OF KING O’MALLEY, written by Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis, in 1970, and recently re-staged at the Seymour Centre in 2014. Willie was part of the troupe that created, under the Direction of John Bell, as an an actor/singer/musician. Later, I remember him as part of the Rex Cramphorn Company in his Studio experiments on some of the Classical repertoire. Willie was never an actor really. Then, other than seeing photographs of him at dinners at…

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’…

Sydney Theatre Company presents, A CHEERY SOUL, by Patrick White, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 5th November – 15 December. A CHEERY SOUL, is an Australian play by Patrick White, written in 1963. It is a re-visit to the suburb of Sarsaparilla, first introduced to us in Mr White’s 1962 play, THE SEASON AT SARSAPARILLA. Next year is the 40th Anniversary of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), and A CHEERY SOUL was its first production in 1979, Directed by Jim Sharman, upon the invitation of John Clark and Elizabeth Butcher who were the founders/creative artists of…