Brian is a lover of opera, and has enjoyed attending operas for over forty years. Brian has very catholic tastes; favourite classic composers are Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, contemporary composers John Adams and Jake Heggie, and a curiosity about Stockhausen’s music. He is always seeking opportunities to expand his appreciation of the world of music and opera.
Breaking the Waves is a remarkable opera. Scottish Opera has brought a thrilling cast, orchestra and team to Adelaide, and its audiences are all the richer for it.
A work designed to be performed in church has become a dramatic music theatre event that captured and held me enthralled throughout in a meditation on both death and life.
The State Opera of South Australia launch a beautifully sung, dramatically performed Madama Butterfly conveying a powerfully confrontational telling of the opera.
When two internationally acclaimed sopranos, two internationally acclaimed mezzos, a brilliant world-renowned conductor, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the music of Richard Strauss align all the elements of a magnificent, thrilling evening have gelled.
Lovers of Lewis Carroll’s work would be enthralled by Boojum!, a clever musical quest celebrating the life and inner thoughts of Reverend Charles Dodgson, whose alter-ego was Lewis Carroll.
What do you do when 80 tonnes of water flood your theatre, your sets and costumes? Rescue, reshape and present what you can. That’s what Deutsche Oper am Rhein have had to do in Duisburg.
Performing Carmen in the open works well. This open-air Adelaide event combined wonderful music and delightful singing, making for an impressive evening.
With marvellous cohesion, life and wit the Gabrieli Consort and Players, sponsored by State Opera of South Australia, who thrilled Adelaide audiences with their presentation of English Baroque.
Remarkable singers and magnificent sets successfully transpose Puccini’s Tosca to Nazi-occupied Rome, bringing home the horror of tyranny and how possible it is to occur.
Co-Opera have discovered some treasures of young talent in this carefully crafted La bohème, none more so than Victoria Coxhill, who sang an outstanding Mimì.
Clever casting combined with good singing, classy chorus work and quality ensemble music has produced an enjoyably entertaining Don Pasquale from State Opera of South Australia.
Manuel de Falla’s rarely performed La Vida Breve and Giacomo Puccini’s comic Gianni Schicchi are quite contrasting mini-operas, united by common threads of deception and the clash of class distinction.
