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).

Artaserse (Pinchgut Opera)

ABR Arts • 30 November 2018

Géraud Corbiau’s rather schlocky biopic, Farinelli (1994) covers an important phase in the career of this most celebrated singer of the early eighteenth century. The establishment of the Opera of the Nobility in the 1730s, with Niccolò Porpora as the main composer, was a direct challenge to Handel’s (second) Royal Academy of Music, Farinelli, the celebrated castrato singer, was drafted as th ... (read more)

Metamorphosis (Opera Australia)

ABR Arts • 27 September 2018

'When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.’ It is surely one of the most celebrated, and arresting, opening lines in all literature – very ‘Kafkaesque’, in fact! It was just a matter of time before The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung), this profoundly unsettling novella by Franz Kafka, found its way into dramat ... (read more)

Dry River Run (Queensland Conservatorium)

ABR Arts • 04 September 2018

Australian operas set in the outback are not uncommon, though urban backgrounds are far more prevalent in recent works. Contemporary fiction and cinema, by contrast, often have outback and regional Australia as their setting. Several operas engage with the most enduring myths of the mysterious centre; most significantly in Richard Meale and David Malouf’s adaptation of Patrick White’s novel Vo ... (read more)

Parsifal and The Flying Dutchman (Bavarian State Opera)

ABR Arts • 09 July 2018

Seldom is one able to see Wagner’s first successful repertoire opera and his final masterpiece within the space of twenty-four hours. After a few anxious moments with a delayed flight from Warsaw to Munich, a high-speed taxi ride to the National Theatre in the centre of the city, this reviewer, heart pounding and blood racing, settled into the first act of Parsifal (1 July ★★★★1/2), in w ... (read more)

Don Quichotte (Opera Australia)

ABR Arts • 20 March 2018

Desdemona’s plangent, soaring phrase at the end of the ‘Willow Song’ in Verdi’s penultimate opera, Otello, has been described as the last despairing cry of the bel canto. After many years of relentless tragedies, Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, would be a bubbling and effervescent comedy – only his second in his illustrious career. Yet it is autumnal work as well. The great actress Elea ... (read more)

Hamlet (Adelaide Festival)

ABR Arts • 08 March 2018

It is the fate of nearly all new operas to disappear quickly after an initial run of performances, so it was with much anticipation that Australian audiences had the opportunity to see Brett Dean’s Hamlet, triumphantly premièred at Glyndebourne in June 2017 (I reviewed the opening night for Australian Book Review). The centrepiece of the 2018 Adelaide Festival, the opera has created a real buzz ... (read more)

La Traviata (Opera Australia)

ABR Arts • 02 March 2018

It is a particular pleasure for an opera lover, even a hard-bitten critic, to watch a career develop and blossom. Nicole Car, making her role début as Violetta for Opera Australia, is one such singer. Audiences have enjoyed her in a series of important roles, among them Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Micaëla in Carmen, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Luisa in V ... (read more)

Michael Halliwell reviews 'The Politics of Opera: A History from Monteverdi to Mozart' by Mitchell Cohen

January–February 2018, no. 398 • 27 December 2017

A major new exhibition opened at the end of September at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London: Opera: Passion, Power and Politics. The first of the three qualifying terms needs little explanation as a potential subject; as the title of Peter Conrad’s book A Song of Love and Death (1987) has it, opera is popularly seen as the supreme dramatic embodiment of passion in its various forms. The ar ... (read more)

Coronation of Poppea (Pinchgut Opera)

ABR Arts • 01 December 2017

The political and sexual machinations on the stage at Angel Place in Sydney, ostensibly depicting an event during the inglorious reign of Emperor Nero in 54–68 CE, might be interpreted in a very contemporary light in terms of politics and society. An opera that represents ruthless political ambition allied to lust, cruelty, corruption, and general amorality, can certainly find any number of pres ... (read more)

Woyzeck In Winter (Landmark Productions / Galway International Arts Festival)

ABR Arts • 19 September 2017

The jukebox musical is a fairly recent phenomenon on theatre stages, but has proven to be a popular, and lucrative, method of stringing together a group of popular songs loosely held together by a sometimes attenuated narrative. Mamma Mia! – the collection of ABBA hits that has been running in London since 1999 – is one of the most successful in this genre, but there are many others which expl ... (read more)