Michael Halliwell

Michael Halliwell studied literature and music at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, at the London Opera Centre, and with Tito Gobbi in Florence. He has sung in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia and was principal baritone for many years with the Netherlands Opera, the Nürnberg Municipal Opera, and the Hamburg State Opera singing over fifty major operatic roles, including several world premiere productions. He has served as Chair of Vocal Studies and Opera, Pro-Dean and Head of School, and Associate Dean (Research) at the Sydney Conservatorium. He is President of the International Association for Word and Music Studies. His publications include the monographs, Opera and the Novel (Rodopi: 2005); and National Identity on Contemporary Australian Opera: myths reconsidered (Routledge, 2018), as well as many chapters and articles. He still performs regularly and recent CDs include When the Empire Calls (ABC Classics, 2005); O for a Muse of Fire: Australian Shakespeare Settings (Vox Australis, 2013); Amy Woodforde-Finden: The Oriental Song-Cycles (Toccata Classics, 2014); That Bloody Game; Australian WWI Songs (Wirripang, 2015).

'The Tales of Hoffmann: A fascinating production of Offenbach’s classic' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 13 July 2023

On the morning of 5 October 1880, the elderly comic actor Léonce called at the apartment of his old friend Jacques Offenbach near the Paris Opéra. The door was opened by Mathurin, Offenbach’s manservant.‘How is he?’‘Monsieur Offenbach is dead; he died quite peacefully, without knowing anything about it.’‘Ah! – he will be very surprised when he finds out.’ Whether apocryphal ... (read more)

'Otello, Hamlet, War and Peace: Three nights at the opera in Munich' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 04 July 2023

Many would regard Verdi’s late masterpiece, Otello, as the most successful operatic adaptation of Shakespeare. Some have also even opined that it is better than the play. There is no doubting that it is a remarkable work and a towering landmark in nineteenth-century opera. It was a remarkable alignment of fate for this reviewer to able to see the Verdi work a day before a third viewing of perhap ... (read more)

'Adriana Lecouvreur: A new production of Cilea’s lustrous melodrama' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 21 February 2023

Francesco Cilea’s (1866–1950) most successful opera, Adriana Lecouvreur (1902), is a work steeped in melodrama and the theatrical, but there was perhaps a little too much ‘drama’ at the première of Opera Australia’s production on Monday night. Cilea’s opera must rank highly among those works that commentators frequently disparage, while audiences continue to stream into theatres to e ... (read more)

'Antarctica: Mary Finsterer’s new opera' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 10 January 2023

Picture the scene … A space. Empty. A fall of white ash which covers all surfaces, enveloping in a fine whiteness. A party of futuristic explorers trudge through the frozen steppes. They are in the colours of artificial, twenty-first century Antarctic wear – bright red, yellows oranges. they come across a figure, buried in the whiteness, near to death, frozen. It is a girl, dressed in ninet ... (read more)

'Fidelio: A stirring case of two Leonores' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 25 November 2022

Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, was one of his most troublesome compositions; the work has never ceased to engender critical controversy, yet remains deeply revered and popular. Thursday’s concert performance at the Sydney Opera House proved no exception in terms of troublesome complications, but more of that later. Similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fidelio exists in three versions – 1805 ... (read more)

'Awakening Shadow: The indefatigable Sydney Chamber Opera' by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 03 October 2022

Understandably, the focal point of musical interest in Sydney in recent months has been Bennelong Point, more specifically the newly revamped Concert Hall at the Opera House. Central here has been the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the new leadership of Simone Young, offering a series of wide-ranging and exhilarating concerts. But there has been other music making. Sydney’s indefatigable Sydney ... (read more)

‘Bo Skovhus and Brahms’ German Requiem: SSO serves up a Viennese feast’ by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 09 August 2022

Over the years, the demise of the solo art song recital has often been predicted, yet the format lives on, sometimes reflecting new approaches and variations on tried and tested practices, but generally remaining within the parameters of a singer and pianist in evening wear on an empty stage. It evolved from informal house concerts in Europe in the late eighteenth century, probably reaching its ... (read more)

‘Voss and The Turn of the Screw: Two outstanding adaptations of literary classics’ by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 09 May 2022

‘What we do not know the air will tell us’(Laura Trevelyan in Voss) In the program for the première of Voss in Adelaide in 1986, David Malouf observed: No libretto can reproduce the novel from which it is drawn. A novel, especially a great one, is itself: unique, irreplaceable. The best a libretto can do is reproduce the experience of the book in a new and radically different form, al ... (read more)

‘La Juive: Halévy’s rare and controversial opera’ by Michael Halliwell

ABR Arts • 11 March 2022

To say that Fromental Halévy’s opera La Juive (The Jewess) is a problematic work is a gross understatement. From the time of its successful première at the Paris Opéra in 1835 – it is one of the finest examples of French Grand Opera – it has been surrounded by controversy, periods of neglect, particularly during the 1930s, and even outright banning; its subject matter has been found confr ... (read more)

‘Otello’: A welcome revival of Harry Kupfer’s production

ABR Arts • 21 February 2022

Devotees of Giuseppe Verdi often suggest that the composer’s version of Shakespeare’s Othello is ‘greater’ than the original; a fruitless assertion, but indicative of the esteem in which Verdi’s penultimate opera is held. After Aida (1871), Verdi was enjoying the life of a gentleman farmer. Italian opera of the 1870s and 1880s, however, was facing something of a crisis, threatened by the ... (read more)