Power, passion and subterfuge make for a heady cocktail. And so it is in Opera Australia’s Tosca. It is a compelling thriller with a great deal of bite, being staged at Margaret Court Arena because the State Theatre is closed, while undergoing a three-year upgrade. Amidst the unrelenting drama, stirring arias and evocative set design predominate. With…
Superb staging is a hallmark of Mozart’s dramatic opera Idomeneo, set on the island of Crete shortly after the Trojan War. Ilia, daughter of the defeated Trojan King Priam, expresses conflicting emotions. She has love for her rescuer, Idamante, son of Cretan King Idomeneo, and hatred for her father’s Greek enemies, who killed both her dad and…
It is the 13th century and we are with German poet and singer Tannhäuser (Stefan Vinke). Having left the company of his fellow troubadours, he has given himself over to lust in another world inhabited by the goddess Venus (Anna-Louise Cole). But he longs for his old life and so he leaves, only to find himself…
Opera Australia’s Handa Opera Madama Butterfly sears with emotion. It is a splendid and spectacular offering, with surprises, against the backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The story concerns a US navy lieutenant named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton who takes advantage of a beguiling former Japanese geisha, Cio-Cio-San, in Nagasaki. While she – nicknamed…
Treachery and subterfuge abound in the Australian premiere of a new production of Richard Wagner’s otherworldly romance Lohengrin. It is a big and bold work – a spectacle – headlined by arguably the world’s most in-demand tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, in a lead role he makes his own. We are introduced to the war-torn environment in which…
Soprano Stacey Alleaume is almost ethereal in a scintillating performance as Violetta Valery in Giuseppe Verdi’s fraught, emotion-charged, love story La Traviata (which translates to The Fallen Woman). Her pure voice reaches remarkable highs as she dominates the stage in a bravura showing. Violetta is a Parisian courtesan and the life of every party. Recently returned from…
Honour is at stake in Verdi’s powerful opera Ernani, which features a surfeit of rich, rounded and redolent performances. The music is superb, rousing from the magnificent opening chorus number (with many more to follow), not to overlook a series of emotional arias. The first half, in particular, I found strikingly impactful. The action takes place…
West Side Story debuted in 1957 on Broadway. Four genius artists somehow subdued their egos to collaborate as an ensemble to produce one of the great works in the musical theatre canon: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins. A motion picture version arrived in 1961 winning 10 Academy Awards – it created…
It’s not hard to see why West Side Story has become such a staple. The tale it tells continues to resonate – in fact perhaps even more so today. Whether we’re talking gang violence or racial or religious divisions, the enmity continues unabated. The depth of feeling in the way the story is told –…
