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Opera

Simone Young conducts Gurrelieder 

Sydney Symphony Orchestra
by
18 March 2024

What is Gurrelieder? Arnold Schoenberg’s massive cantata, or oratorio, or symphonic psychodrama, is technically a song cycle, presenting ‘Songs of Gurre’, a small Danish settlement best known for its crumbling medieval castle. A five-part sequence of naturalist poems, by the Danish ‘Modern Breakthrough’ writer and botanist Jens Peter Jacobsen, became the text of Schoenberg’s cycle, in a lacklustre German translation by Robert Franz Arnold, to which Schoenberg made few revisions.

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Candide 

Victorian Opera
by
09 February 2024
What fortuitous programming it was by Victorian Opera to have a new production of Candide (1956) open just as interest in the composer of its delicious score peaks in the wake of Bradley Cooper’s biopic Maestro. Just as fortuitously, the production is a triumph; an auspicious start for incoming artistic director, Stuart Maunder. It makes as strong a case as one might for the value of opera companies taking on such repertoire. ... (read more)

The Magic Flute 

Opera Australia
by
02 February 2024
The heyday of the opera film – a film made of an opera to be shown in cinemas, and not necessarily filmed in a theatre – occurred in the final three decades of the twentieth century. Films emerged with regularity, often from well-known opera directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, Jean-Pierre Ponelle, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, and others. However, the advent of live opera HD broadcasts early in the twenty-first century, pioneered and still dominated by the New York Metropolitan Opera, in many ways put paid to this genre, and as the technology of live and recorded performances improved exponentially, a film of an opera became increasingly rare. ... (read more)

The great German director Götz Friedrich asserted that the action of Richard Wagner’s Ring takes place not in thirteenth-century Scandinavia nor in nineteenth-century Germany, but here and now in whichever theatre we are currently located. What he was producing was Welttheater, a piece of theatre which holds up a mirror to the world: ‘Every artistic realization must establish its “today” and “here”, the better to understand the time span which Wagner projects from a mythical past through his own epoch and on into the distant future.’

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Maria Callas

by
05 December 2023

More over-heated gush has been written about the Greek-American singer Maria Callas than about any other performer, with the possible exception of Greta Garbo. Given that Callas’s centenary has just occurred (2 December), we can expect much more of the same. Steven Knight is shooting a biopic, Maria, with Angelina Jolie, which one hopes will fare better than Franco Zeffirelli’s cringe-making version, Callas Forever (2002), which starred the unfortunate Fanny Ardant.

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Staging Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen is the ultimate achievement for any opera company worthy of the name. Nearly sixteen hours of music, more than thirty characters, not to mention an enlarged orchestra, monumental settings, as well as chorus and extras; all these demands drain the resources of every company, be it the mighty New York Metropolitan Opera or the tradition-laden Vienna State Opera, or any of the much smaller companies that attempt it – a notable recent example being Melbourne Opera’s Ring in Bendigo. ... (read more)

Juan Diego Flórez in Recital 

Castiglione Arts & Culture
by
06 November 2023

Juan Diego Flórez, now fifty, rose to prominence in his early twenties. His first La Scala success, in 1996, was promptly followed by débuts at Covent Garden (1997), the Vienna State Opera (1999), and the Metropolitan Opera (2002), houses where he still performs regularly. His major roles have included Count Almaviva and Nemorino. Alfredo Germont, in La Traviata, is a new addition; he was singing it in Vienna during the recent ABR tour.

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The ABR/Academy Travel Vienna tour, now drawing to a close, has revealed some of the riches in this monumental city – the architecture, the art collections (especially the mighty Kunsthistorisches Museum and the brilliant, newish Leopold Museum, with its host of Schieles and Klimts), Emperor Franz Joseph’s Ringstrasse, the general ambience of the city, not to mention the Kardinalschnitte at Gerstner Konditorei.

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The Visitors 

Victorian Opera
by
24 October 2023

The birth of a new opera is always exciting. Unlike a play or a sonata, an opera brings together a variety of art forms, with performers and creatives drawn from many different backgrounds. The libretto of Christopher Sainsbury’s The Visitors draws on a new, more gender-balanced version of an existing play, Jane Harrison’s The Visitors (2020), currently running in Sydney and Wollongong.

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The Makropulos Case 

Opéra National de Paris
by
10 October 2023
A week in Paris (Billy Strayhorn’s moody panacea) gave ABR Arts a perfect opportunity to savour some of the city’s abundant musical life. We’ll start with an important revival at the Opéra National de Paris, performed at the Bastille. ... (read more)