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…
Olivia Ruggiero is talented. No doubt about it. She is operatic and she is adept at musical theatre, but at times there is a struggle between the two. I noted that very early on in Broadway Diva, when she sang a medley of show tunes. The operatic tended to overwhelm what I would call traditional musical theatre 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…
This re-imagined production of Peter Schaffer’s Tony Award winning drama about the fictional rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri is being staged as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations for the Sydney Opera House. Classical music and opera are incorporated into Schaffer’s drama. Snippets of Mozart’s famous compositions and his operas, such as…
This enjoyable if somewhat formulaic romantic comedy comes from Australian filmmaker Ben Lewin, who gave us The Sessions with Helen Hunt and John Hawkes in 2012. Successful and ambitious fund manager Millie (Danielle Macdonald,) quits her job just as she receives a promotion and sets out to become an opera singer. This despite having no…
Think of the notoriously sinful cities Sodom and Gomorrah referenced in the bible that were destroyed by sulphur and fire because of their wickedness. That is the starting point for the satirical opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Premiering in Germany in March 1930, with text by Bertolt Brecht, Elizabeth Hauptmann and…
The opening night of Opera Australia’s spectacular staging of Verdi’s dramatic opera Aida was blighted by a major technical failure. The surtitles, which were to appear above the stage and translate the lyrics into English, were nowhere to be seen for the first 20 minutes or so. So, if you didn’t happen to know the story you…
Somehow, even when Rufus Wainwright was getting a lot of buzz for the sophisticated sound on his self-titled debut (’98) and his sophomore outing, Poses, he felt like an old soul, someone who’s idea of pop music came from Cole Porter’s prestigious catalog in the 1930’s, and prone to quoting lines from the plays of…
