Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Christopher Hillier

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour returns with La bohème, in a fine production by Andy Morton, with star turns from Iulia Maria Dan and Ho-Yoon Chung in the lead roles.

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

Director John Bell's chosen associations for his Carmen with Strindberg's Dance of Death and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf underlined an emphasis upon the fated couple's joint knowledge that nothing they can do will turn the tsunami that's leading to their deaths.

Would Britain enjoy 'The Rabbits'? For that's how the new Australian family opera allegorises the colonial Poms who came to this Terra Nullius  Downunder, denying the existence of the native Aborigines - appearing as Marsupials in this opera. 

In his director’s note, Jonathan Biggins writes, ‘All I can hope for is that you go out of the theatre feeling a bit more cheerful than when you came in’. If that was the opera’s aim, then few could claim that it was not successful in achieving it.

Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, written some ten years before Carmen, does not enjoy as much recognition as the latter opera. Composed at the age of 25, the opera received harsh criticism from many contemporary critics, although not from Hector Berlioz, who clearly recognised something of Bizet's genius in the work.