Few singers make riveting autobiographers, it must be said, but one who should have penned her memoirs was Sybil Sanderson (1864–1903). She seems to have been too busy, on and off the stage. Hers was the kind of short, turbulent life that Puccini might have done something with ...

The Merchant of Venice is a troublesome play. I have seen productions that have played up the comic aspects to an absurd and irritating degree while confining Shylock to the stereotype that bears his name. Some interpretations exploit the play as anti-Semitic propaganda ...

In this fortnight's Update: Kafmann in Parsifal, The Feuerle Collection, Pieter Wispelwey, MONA's anti-casino, The Pop-Up Globe, Kestin Indigenous Illustrator Award, Australian Dance Awards, SALA Festival, Australian Shorts at MIFF, Boîte Millennium Chorus, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, La Sonnambula on demand, and giveaways from Melbourne Opera, Melbourne Recital Centre, and Transmission Films ...

Louis Nowra’s latest play, his first in ten years because apparently and appallingly no major company in Australia has asked him for one, is the third in his semi-autobiographical Lewis trilogy. In Summer of the Aliens (1992), the young Lewis, growing up in housing-commission ...

Clive, a splendid chappie, has taken up the white man’s burden in darkest Africa and is attempting to bring some British order to the lesser breeds without the law, even though the ungrateful blighters are getting a bit restless. He’s accompanied by that jolly good stick of a wife of his ...

Britain’s illustrious Royal Ballet has brought extraordinary gifts to QPAC audiences in Brisbane this year: two huge, exciting ballets which, in different ways, are game-changers in the creation of full-length narrative ballets. They are Woolf Works by the company’s resident ...

In this fortnight's Update: Peter Rose writes from Berlin, Martha Argerich, Turangalîla-Symphonie, La Mama turns fifty!, SAFC partners with Umbrella Entertainment, ATYP at Griffin Theatre, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, AGNSW's Sydney Modern Project, Alina Ibragimova, Lohengrin, Short Film Fellowships, Due West: Immersive Arts Festival, Badu Gili, The Antidote, The Power Within, Art On The Page, and giveaways from Australian World Orchestra and Entertainment One ...

Schubert’s most famous ‘unfinished’ work, the Eighth Symphony, is unconventional in a number of ways, its B minor key and the opening movement’s 3/4 pulse not least of them. Mahler’s grand Lied is a match in strangeness – setting, as it does, a miscellany of ancient ...

Merrily We Roll Along (1981) isn’t Stephen Sondheim’s biggest flop. That honour goes to Anyone Can Whistle (1964), which closed after nine performances. Merrily outlasted it by seven performances, and of the two shows has since gone on to much greater critical acclaim ...

It is not every day that Sydney audiences witness the première of a composition by a major twentieth-century composer, yet this is what happened on 30 June in the Opera House: one of Igor Stravinsky’s earliest works, the Funeral Song, op.5, received its first performance on ...