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Francesca Zambello's hip-hop graffiti staging of Aida comes to Seattle. 

A vividly dramatic take on Verdi's Requiem by Opera Australia allows chorus and orchestra to shine under Renato Palumbo, and reminds us why the work has been called “opera in church clothing”.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos has finally arrived, for the first time in the 21st century, as a much anticipated highlight of Opera Australia’s current season. 

Camels, fireworks, and a gigantic head of Nefertiti: the Sydney Harbour production of Aida is not short on spectacle. Among the cast, Latonia Moore is outstanding in the title role, with good support from Miljana Nikolic as Amneris and Michael Honeyman as Amonasro.

Simultaneously one of the most loved and most mocked operas in the canon, Il trovatore has some of Verdi’s catchiest melodies set to one of his silliest plots. Against the backdrop of a 15th-century Spanish war, a cast of nobles, gypsies, nuns and soldiers enact a drama which hinges on that hoariest of dramatic clichés: children swapped at birth.

Virtually every reviewer of Aida mentions elephants, generally only to note their absence: the elephant not in the room, as it were. Like most others, the current Opera Australia production was lacking in pachyderms, but few of last night’s audience will have felt short-changed.

Much anticipated, ten years in the making, interrupted by some fairly momentous bumpy bits at Opera Australia such as the removal of Music Director Simone Young who comissionned the work in the first place, Bliss has finally arrived. And the good news is that audiences in Sydney received it warmly: the season of just five performances sold out.