Sandra Bowdler was born and educated in Sydney, and has pursued a career as an archaeologist since graduating from the University of Sydney in 1970. She is now Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Music. Since attending a production of Handel’s opera Alcina at the Sydney Opera House in 1982, she has become a devotee of the works of GF Handel, and Baroque music generally. In 1996 she began writing opera reviews for online outlets, graduating to more professional sources by 2000. In 2007, she inaugurated Festival Baroque Australia in Perth, Western Australia, Australia’s first Baroque music festival. Under that banner, she curated two festivals and several concerts in Perth.
Vivica Genaux enjoys huge success in a Melbourne concert of Baroque delights, the first venture of Sydney's Pinchgut Opera Company outside its home turf.
Perhaps Pinchgut Opera's finest production to date, a brave presentation of a classic Baroque opera, little heard in Australia apart from Handel, benefits from the star presence of Vivca Genaux in splendid form.
Wagner is a rare bird in Perth; the second *Tristan und Isolde* in 12 years worth the wait, no less for being a concert performance, and for bringing Skelton's masterful interpretation to an Australian audience
Handel's Athalia is a wonderful English oratorio but this production, while musically wonderful, was marred by a problematic staging with infuriating surtitles.
A concert performance of Arianna in Creta at the Halle Handel Festival riveted the audience with the towering talent of Ann Hallenberg and uniformly fine singing, acting and playing.
John Butt’s revisitation of the Handel oratorio Samson at the Halle Handel Festival displayed this treasured work in an illuminating and satisfying light.
This year’s Gala Conzert at Göttingen featured two different works not commonly heard and certainly not together, with excellent soloists and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir
Why is Handel's wonderful oratorio Alexander Balus so rarely performed? A performance at Herzfeld am Harz, as part of the Göttingen Handel festival, was musically splendid, despite cuts.
Laurence Cummings leads the FestspielOrchester Göttingen, the NDR Choir and an exemplary set of soloists led by in a definitive performance of Handel's oratorio.
Brett Dean's Hamlet is an extremely powerful theatrical experience, excelling in all aspects of production, singing and musical values, but is it an opera?
A four-hour concert featuring piano music by Debussy might seem like an excessive ask, but the Perth Festival filled the venue for this stunning and highly entertaining concert by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.
A second concert featuring Jordi Savall at the 2018 Perth Festival comprised much reduced forces - just himself and harpist Andrew Lawrence-King - but was just as rich, varied and captivating.
Jordi Savall, Hespèrian XXI and Tembembe Ensamble Continuo brought an exciting mix of instrumental playing, song and dance presenting Baroque and pre-Baroque music from Spain and the New World.
From emperors and empresses to nymphs, gods and giants by way of faithful wives, sorceresses, knights, dastardly noblemen and dazzling coloratura arias, here's your guide to the master showman of baroque opera.
Pinchgut Opera's L'incoronazione di Poppea is a glorious feast of singing, acting and playing but the production is brutal, taking Monteverdi's vision of corruption in high places to excessive lengths.
