Performer: Mere Boynton

A combination of Western orchestral tradition and traditional Māori culture proves a fascinating and a worthwhile contribution to New Zealand’s orchestral repertoire.

The subject of Songs and Dances of Desire, this new performance piece with music by Auckland Philharmonia composer-in-residence Jack Body, is Carmen Rupe, drag queen extraordinaire, champion of gay rights and one-time mayoral candidate, who died in 2011. She evidently saw herself in the operatic figure of Carmen, and Body’s work is sprinkled with appropriations from Bizet’s opera.