Music
Six words would suffice to describe Jonas Kaufmann’s Melbourne début. He came, he sang, he conquered.
This was Kaufmann’s second appearance in Australia, after a gala in Sydney (repeated on August 17). It’s not often that an impresario or Opera Australia manages to lure a great tenor to this country. The inimitable Carlo Bergonzi visited in 1979 and g ...
For two non-indigenous artists to take a story that has deep meaning for an indigenous community and turn it into a dramatic cantata is an exploit fraught with danger. Australian culture is littered with attempts by white artists to incorporate indigenous themes into their works; works which have foundered due to their authors’ patronising assumption that they can ...
When culture worships youth, what does an ageing artist make of his myth?
Most viewers of Strictly Ballroom: The Musical will enjoy themselves to a certain extent and for a certain duration. While my own misgivings were frequent, the large audience received the show warmly and rose, albeit half-heartedly, at the curtain call. The show rests on the shapely spray-tanned shoulders of a large and scantily clad ensemble singing and dancing in unison. Whatever the cost to clarity, the effect is impressive and, occasionally, even hypnotic. That said, Strictly Ballroom: The Musical is mostly pretty awful.
... (read more)Hobart is the ideal place in which to have a festival. Big enough to have other attractions but small enough so that the festival becomes a major event rather than just another diversion. A walk through Battery Point, followed by a long lunch at Salamanca Place with congenial fellow festival goers, or a trip out to MONA to wander through the psyche of David Walsh are exceptional ways to spend the day before the next performance.
... (read more)Opera Australia’s spring season in Melbourne opened with two masterpieces by Verdi in his bicentennial year. It was a decidedly rocky pairing.
La Fura dels Baus’s production of Un Ballo in Maschera was first seen in Sydney in January. La Fura is open about its intentions. Assistant director Valenti ...
There was a real buzz in the foyer of Her Majesty’s last night before the Victorian Opera’s latest offering. At last Melbourne was seeing John Adams’s masterly opera Nixon in China, first performed in Houston twenty-six years ago and later seen in Adelaide, during the 1992 Festival.
...There is at least one bravura performance in Melbourne right now, and it warranted a much larger house than we saw last week (February 1), when Southbank Theatre was only half full. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of William Shakespeare’s long poem The Rape of Lucrece was first seen in Australia during the recent Sydney Festival, but it was pre ...
Opera Australia returns to Melbourne for a short season of three operas – one German, two Italian, all notable for their gory finales.
The season opened on 14 November with Moffatt Oxenbould’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which has been entertaining us since 1998. Done well, Puccini’s ‘orientalist’ masterwork is riveting ...