Turco inspired many a great opera director in the past; understandably, as it offers plenty of splendid comic situations. Simon Phillips' hilarious 2014 production is revived by Opera Australia.
Davide Livermore's digital set for Opera Australia's new production of Aida ushers in a new type of staging to the Sydney Opera House, and backs up a stellar performance from Amber Wagner in the title role.
In a selection of modern and balletic works spanning several decades, the Australian Ballet pays tribute to one of Australia's best-loved choreographers.
Massanet’s Don Quichotte is mounted by Opera Australia, in a production which creaks but is held together by fine singing from Ferruccio Furlanetto and Warwick Fyfe.
Kosky’s The Nose hits Sydney, sweeping the audience along with hallucinogenic energy. Led by the outstanding Martin Winkler and John Tomlinson, singers and musicians deliver a wild evening's entertainment.
Damiano Michieletto's inspired intertwining of the standard double-bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci makes for vivid storytelling, the whole supported by an excellent cast solidly directed by Andrea Licata.
Verdi's most political opera feels particularly relevant in 2016, and the Opera Australia production convinces, thanks to the outstanding George Petean in the title role and an excellent supporting cast.
Not just a jolly romp through the inconstancies of the heart, Sir David McVicar takes Così fan tutte through a dark lesson for lovers while leaving the music ravishingly intact.
A revival of Francesca Zambello's production of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges at the Sydney Opera House is a joy, thanks to the antics of Kanen Breen at the head of a strong cast.
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.
A well-worked revival of Elijah Moshinsky's production of Rossini's Barber of Seville offers gales of laughter and vocal delights at the Sydney Opera House, with starring roles for Paolo Bordogna, Anna Dowsley and Warwick Fyfe
Beautiful sets and a fine cast led by Guillaume Tourniaire can't quite compensate for the dramatic weaknesses in Opera Australia's new production of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles.
The ever-popular La bohème returns in Gale Edwards' adaptation which features a change to the final months of the 1930s Weimar Republic as featured in the musical Cabaret.
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.
While the billboard advertisements focussed on the presence of the ‘hit aria “Nessun dorma”’, there was much else to enjoy in this Turandot revival in Sydney: a lively, rich production and a strong cast headed by Lise Lindstrom and Yonghoon Lee.
David McVicar's Don Giovanni for Opera Australia takes its cue from the brutally grim opening of the opera, yet remains true to Mozart’s own description of a “jocular” work (dramma giocoso).
On Harry Kupfer's dramatic set, strong performances by Simon O'Neill (Otello), Lianna Haroutounian (Desdemona) and especially Claudio Sgura (Iago) make Opera Australia's Otello a memorable revival.
Rigoletto contains some of Verdi’s greatest melodies, and Opera Australia’s new production brings out the mixture of passion and darkness the heart of this story.
Pia Savoie reviews the Australian Ballet in Imperial Suite at the Sydney Opera House, combining the two classics Ballet Imperial by Balanchine and Lifar's Suite en Blanc.
Pia Savoie reviews the Australian Ballet in Chroma at the Sydney Opera House, including works by Wayne McGregor, Jiři Kylián, and a new choreography by Stephen Baynes.
‘To lose one singer, Mr Terracini, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two, one of them in the title role, looks like … a disaster’. Such were the thoughts running through my head when the Artistic Director of Opera Australia made the pre-performance announcement.
I left the Sydney Opera House last night feeling vaguely dissatisfied, and yet a bit puzzled at my dissatisfaction. La Traviata is chock-full of Verdi’s most glorious music, and well though I know the score, I wasn’t feeling in the least jaded to begin with.
I’ve never been to a sing-along Sound of Music, but apparently audience etiquette requires pantomime booing of the Nazis. More than a few attendees at the opening night of Opera Australia’s new production of Tosca responded in a similar fashion at the curtain call, and it had nothing to do with a generally excellent performance. For yes, there were Nazis.
Destiny, Fate, Providence: different ways of describing the sense of an external agency shaping our ends. Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, based on a Spanish play by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, is a sprawling tale in which the characters’ lives are irrevocably shaped by a fatal accident.
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.
Tragedy seems to age better than comedy. The works of Aeschylus have been more influential than those of Aristophanes, and Shakespeare’s darker plays are far more popular than his pure comedies. This same propensity for gloomy subjects can also be seen in the opera world.
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.
“I would ask what the management’s drama has in common with mine. The title? No. The poet? No. The period? No. The place? No. The characters? No.”
This excerpt from Verdi’s legal proceedings against the management of San Carlo, who were trying to foist changes on Un Ballo in Maschera, came vividly to my mind last night at Sydney Opera House.
There is nowhere to hide in Madama Butterfly. It is a well-known opera, contains very little in terms of stage action and changing scenery, is intensely lyrical in its vocal writing, and its orchestral writing is exposed. None of these factors bothered Opera Australia in their latest production, which was superb from beginning to end in every respect.
Salome was a huge, scandalous success at its 1905 première, and stagings of this, Richard Strauss’ third opera, have continued to shock audiences over the past century. This is hardly to be wondered at: after all, the title character’s final monologue ends with her kissing the severed head of John the Baptist, whom she has had executed for spurning her advances.
For many opera fans, especially here in Australia, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor is indelibly connected with the late, much lamented Joan Sutherland. She made her breakthrough as Lucia in a Covent Garden production of 1959, and continued to sing the part for over three decades, thankfully leaving several celebrated recordings.
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.
Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is an extraordinary opera, an often underrated masterpiece of the 20th century. On the face of it, it has a simple plot – the protagonist Paul, unable to overcome the death of his wife, falls in love with another woman, Marietta, similar to his dead wife in many ways.
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.
Another Mozart opera and another intriguing modern production from Opera Australia. The whole opera was presented as entertainment for a wedding reception, with a bride and bridegroom sitting at two corners of the stage, their sole purpose for the production to observe the unfolding comedy on stage.
From the opening bars of the Overture of Opera Australia’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro it was clear that this was going to be a production with a difference. As the orchestra began, the curtain raised to reveal a room, painted in brilliant white, with clothes rails at either end containing maids’ costumes.
Opera Australia pulled out all the stops for their latest production of Puccini’s Turandot: an excellent cast, fabulous choreography, amazing costumes and a great sense of drama all combined to make it a wonderful production at Sydney Opera House. The Opera Theatre is comparatively small by modern standards and is a very intimate venue in which to see an opera.
