The big backdate (March 2023)
The Who’s Tommy
Victorian Opera
22 February 2022
Palais Theatre
victorianopera.com.au
My review is in Time Out.
Mostly Melbourne theatre reviews
Showing posts with label Victorian Opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victorian Opera. Show all posts
24 February 2022
Review: Tommy
My review is in Time Out.
03 December 2019
What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 4
Today we go to indie, funded and opera stages with three SM regulars.
To share your love, all you have to do is fill in this form. The trend this year is long; be free to buck the trend if you want. If you've sent me one and it hasn't been published, please let me know because there are gremlins in the internet.
Fleur Kilpatrick
Playwright, librettist, director, pot plant parent and person who chats about theatre on the radio
Favourite moments in 2019.
Robot Song’s (Theatre Works) warm tenderness and compassion was theatre at its best. It met its audience where they were, be they children or adults. I think back in particular to the parent characters, who spent most of the play as back up musicians to their child, watching her struggle with the cruelties of the world and unable to make it all right. The gentle ways in which they tried to make magic for and around her as she stood in the centre of the stage will stay with me. I learnt a lot about love watching it.
The beautiful, dreamlike way in which Love/Chamberlain’s (also Theatre Works) script and set spoke to each other still gives me a little shudder. The audience were so still, tipping forward in their seats, leaning into this gentle grief world where two blamed and shamed women – Courtney Love and Lindy Chamberlain – met and shared a moment in a dream desert.
Emma Hall’s World Problems use of past tense, dragging us through time and the gorgeous image of her labouring away to create a trampoline. The sight of her bouncing gently up and down brought back so many memories of childhood hours spent in airborne storytelling. To go straight from this play into a practical response – the night I saw it, a workshop on energy saving in your home – was such a beautiful way to make her imagined world part of our real one.
Looking forward to in 2020.
I don't know. But I hope everyone is nice to each other and we all get some rest.
SM: I recently asked someone "What was the name of Fleur's play about whales that had a whale in it?". "You mean Whale." Yes I did. I loved it. I might not remember names and titles but I remember how I felt during Whale and how I felt after and that Fleur and her team of amazing creators trusted that an audience of strangers would step up every night to make this piece of theatre.
Katie Purvis
Theatregoer, comedy and cabaret lover, sometime critic, radio presenter
Favourite moments in 2019.
In theatres: Barbara and the Camp Dogs at Malthouse broke my heart into tiny pieces; I was thrilled by MTC's A View From A Bridge; Come From Away at the Comedy Theatre made me leap to my feet to applaud and cheer; and I laughed till my face hurt at Nakkiah Lui's Black is the New White at MTC.
At the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Larry Dean's Bampot was face-achingly funny and unexpectedly poignant; Jude Perl's I Have a Face was seriously great; and I literally laughed till I cried at Lano and Woodley's brilliantly silly Fly.
Musical highlights: It was a privilege to be at Hamer Hall for Deborah Cheetham's Eumeralla : A Requiem for Peace, sung entirely in dialects of the Gunditjmara people and featuring a huge cast of performers (including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Dhungala Children’s Choir); the prolonged standing ovation was hugely deserved. And it was a joy to see piano man Trevor Jones doing his thing at the 2019 Melbourne Cabaret Festival Closing Party – simply superb, and the best night I had in a performance space all year.
Looking forward to in 2020.
Haus of Hans:Disco Spektaculär at MICF; Grey Arias at Malthouse, featuring Le Gateau Chocolat and Adrienne Truscott; Conchita Wurst and Trevor Ashley in concert at Hamer Hall; and Fun Home at MTC.
SM: Katie is my go-to editor and reader. She understands why I despair because program notes almost never seem to be proofed and are usually filled with grammar mistakes that change the meaning of what the writer is trying to say. Katie also hosts Miss Chatelaine on Joy 94.9 on Sunday mornings; she knows me well enough to know that I am never awake to listen live, but I do listen to some of the on-demand recordings. Yay for on demand.
Paul Selar
Opera critic, the Opera Chaser
Favourite moments in 2019.
Melbourne has generally supported a rather good balance of opera on a variety of scales. The year produced many highlights; however, from the all-important small independent players, it didn’t feel like it was buzzing with the same kind of optimism of recent years. Apart from a sympathetic re-staging of Australian composer Barry Conyngham's 1984 Fly, Lyric Opera of Melbourne have been unaccustomedly quiet and BK Opera seem to epitomise what living hand to mouth from one show to the next is like.
It’s all to do with money. Isn’t it always? Gertrude Opera’s much appreciated hard work behind the scenes is paying off with simple, effective and increasingly impressive production quality. Every opera-loving soul should’ve clogged the roads to get to the company’s Yarra Valley Opera Festival, now in its second year. Two of the year’s best small independent works could have been seen on one day! Jonathan Dove’s, The Enchanted Pig, in its Australian premiere, was a gorgeously slick, infectiously entertaining and superbly sung work. Monteverdi’s almost 370 year-old early baroque opera, Poppea, looked, felt and sounded as fresh as any new theatre. Both were directed with an acute eye for drawing meaningful characters by Gale Edwards.
On a far larger scale, a Rossini rarity got masterpiece treatment, literally, in Opera Australia’s Il Viaggio a Reims from director Damiano Michieletto, whose ingeniously devised production and inventive angle came with a long list of radiant performances. The company also stood out on top in a concert performance of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, a work often criticised for its thin plot but more than compensated for by splendid musicality. It helped that international star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who deserves every glowing superlative showered upon him, was there giving layers of magnificently coloured and carved vocals.
Melbourne’s continuing love affair with Wagner resulted in two memorable outings. In Victorian Opera’s Parsifal, director Roger Hodgman brought clarity to every character and subtlety to its strong symbolic and religious overtones and Melbourne Opera, without a penny of taxpayer funding, got the year off to a brilliant start with The Flying Dutchman. Darren Jeffery’s performance as the Dutchman had thunderous heft and stature and the large chorus of sailors and weavers won’t be forgotten. It’ll be hard to forget the company’s production of Bellini’s Norma as well. I saw it three times. Anyone who knows how precious an experience it is to hear soprano Helena Dix sing her proud and glorious high notes would count themselves lucky. And she’s a devilishly good gestural magnet.
Looking forward to in 2020
More Wagner! I feel enormously lucky to live in a city that is up to the challenge of staging Wagner’s sprawling works. We’ll be getting Opera Australia’s Lohengrin, a co-production with Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, with English heldon tenor David Butt Philip making his company debut in the title role. And Melbourne Opera, who have been instrumental in presenting Wagner’s works, have a new production of Das Rheingold up their sleeves. My prediction (it’s already a year old) is that this will be the start of another Ring Cycle for Melbourne. There’s also Victorian Opera’s Salome, Gertrude Opera’s Yarra Valley Festival and news from Lyric that they haven’t fallen by the wayside.
You can also join me for my 5th Annual OperaChaser Awards on Twitter party to celebrate and honour the exceptional work of opera companies and individuals. It starts at 5 pm on 28 December.
SM: Paul has a job that lets him fly all over the world and see the kind of opera that leaves many of us seething with jealousy. There are so few opera critics in Australia. Without people who know an art form inside out, it's so hard to share why we love it to new audiences and to people who think of opera as stuffy and boring. Some of it IS stuffy and boring, but so much of is isn't. You can read Paul's reviews at operachaser.blogspot.com.
To share your love, all you have to do is fill in this form. The trend this year is long; be free to buck the trend if you want. If you've sent me one and it hasn't been published, please let me know because there are gremlins in the internet.
Fleur Kilpatrick
Playwright, librettist, director, pot plant parent and person who chats about theatre on the radio
 |
| Fleur Kilpatrick. Photo by Sarah Walker |
Favourite moments in 2019.
Robot Song’s (Theatre Works) warm tenderness and compassion was theatre at its best. It met its audience where they were, be they children or adults. I think back in particular to the parent characters, who spent most of the play as back up musicians to their child, watching her struggle with the cruelties of the world and unable to make it all right. The gentle ways in which they tried to make magic for and around her as she stood in the centre of the stage will stay with me. I learnt a lot about love watching it.
The beautiful, dreamlike way in which Love/Chamberlain’s (also Theatre Works) script and set spoke to each other still gives me a little shudder. The audience were so still, tipping forward in their seats, leaning into this gentle grief world where two blamed and shamed women – Courtney Love and Lindy Chamberlain – met and shared a moment in a dream desert.
Emma Hall’s World Problems use of past tense, dragging us through time and the gorgeous image of her labouring away to create a trampoline. The sight of her bouncing gently up and down brought back so many memories of childhood hours spent in airborne storytelling. To go straight from this play into a practical response – the night I saw it, a workshop on energy saving in your home – was such a beautiful way to make her imagined world part of our real one.
Looking forward to in 2020.
I don't know. But I hope everyone is nice to each other and we all get some rest.
SM: I recently asked someone "What was the name of Fleur's play about whales that had a whale in it?". "You mean Whale." Yes I did. I loved it. I might not remember names and titles but I remember how I felt during Whale and how I felt after and that Fleur and her team of amazing creators trusted that an audience of strangers would step up every night to make this piece of theatre.
Katie Purvis
Theatregoer, comedy and cabaret lover, sometime critic, radio presenter
 |
| Katie Purvis. Photo by Betty Sujecki |
Favourite moments in 2019.
In theatres: Barbara and the Camp Dogs at Malthouse broke my heart into tiny pieces; I was thrilled by MTC's A View From A Bridge; Come From Away at the Comedy Theatre made me leap to my feet to applaud and cheer; and I laughed till my face hurt at Nakkiah Lui's Black is the New White at MTC.
At the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Larry Dean's Bampot was face-achingly funny and unexpectedly poignant; Jude Perl's I Have a Face was seriously great; and I literally laughed till I cried at Lano and Woodley's brilliantly silly Fly.
Musical highlights: It was a privilege to be at Hamer Hall for Deborah Cheetham's Eumeralla : A Requiem for Peace, sung entirely in dialects of the Gunditjmara people and featuring a huge cast of performers (including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Dhungala Children’s Choir); the prolonged standing ovation was hugely deserved. And it was a joy to see piano man Trevor Jones doing his thing at the 2019 Melbourne Cabaret Festival Closing Party – simply superb, and the best night I had in a performance space all year.
Looking forward to in 2020.
Haus of Hans:Disco Spektaculär at MICF; Grey Arias at Malthouse, featuring Le Gateau Chocolat and Adrienne Truscott; Conchita Wurst and Trevor Ashley in concert at Hamer Hall; and Fun Home at MTC.
SM: Katie is my go-to editor and reader. She understands why I despair because program notes almost never seem to be proofed and are usually filled with grammar mistakes that change the meaning of what the writer is trying to say. Katie also hosts Miss Chatelaine on Joy 94.9 on Sunday mornings; she knows me well enough to know that I am never awake to listen live, but I do listen to some of the on-demand recordings. Yay for on demand.
Paul Selar
Opera critic, the Opera Chaser
 |
| Paul Selar. Selfie |
Favourite moments in 2019.
Melbourne has generally supported a rather good balance of opera on a variety of scales. The year produced many highlights; however, from the all-important small independent players, it didn’t feel like it was buzzing with the same kind of optimism of recent years. Apart from a sympathetic re-staging of Australian composer Barry Conyngham's 1984 Fly, Lyric Opera of Melbourne have been unaccustomedly quiet and BK Opera seem to epitomise what living hand to mouth from one show to the next is like.
It’s all to do with money. Isn’t it always? Gertrude Opera’s much appreciated hard work behind the scenes is paying off with simple, effective and increasingly impressive production quality. Every opera-loving soul should’ve clogged the roads to get to the company’s Yarra Valley Opera Festival, now in its second year. Two of the year’s best small independent works could have been seen on one day! Jonathan Dove’s, The Enchanted Pig, in its Australian premiere, was a gorgeously slick, infectiously entertaining and superbly sung work. Monteverdi’s almost 370 year-old early baroque opera, Poppea, looked, felt and sounded as fresh as any new theatre. Both were directed with an acute eye for drawing meaningful characters by Gale Edwards.
On a far larger scale, a Rossini rarity got masterpiece treatment, literally, in Opera Australia’s Il Viaggio a Reims from director Damiano Michieletto, whose ingeniously devised production and inventive angle came with a long list of radiant performances. The company also stood out on top in a concert performance of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, a work often criticised for its thin plot but more than compensated for by splendid musicality. It helped that international star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who deserves every glowing superlative showered upon him, was there giving layers of magnificently coloured and carved vocals.
Melbourne’s continuing love affair with Wagner resulted in two memorable outings. In Victorian Opera’s Parsifal, director Roger Hodgman brought clarity to every character and subtlety to its strong symbolic and religious overtones and Melbourne Opera, without a penny of taxpayer funding, got the year off to a brilliant start with The Flying Dutchman. Darren Jeffery’s performance as the Dutchman had thunderous heft and stature and the large chorus of sailors and weavers won’t be forgotten. It’ll be hard to forget the company’s production of Bellini’s Norma as well. I saw it three times. Anyone who knows how precious an experience it is to hear soprano Helena Dix sing her proud and glorious high notes would count themselves lucky. And she’s a devilishly good gestural magnet.
Looking forward to in 2020
More Wagner! I feel enormously lucky to live in a city that is up to the challenge of staging Wagner’s sprawling works. We’ll be getting Opera Australia’s Lohengrin, a co-production with Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, with English heldon tenor David Butt Philip making his company debut in the title role. And Melbourne Opera, who have been instrumental in presenting Wagner’s works, have a new production of Das Rheingold up their sleeves. My prediction (it’s already a year old) is that this will be the start of another Ring Cycle for Melbourne. There’s also Victorian Opera’s Salome, Gertrude Opera’s Yarra Valley Festival and news from Lyric that they haven’t fallen by the wayside.
You can also join me for my 5th Annual OperaChaser Awards on Twitter party to celebrate and honour the exceptional work of opera companies and individuals. It starts at 5 pm on 28 December.
SM: Paul has a job that lets him fly all over the world and see the kind of opera that leaves many of us seething with jealousy. There are so few opera critics in Australia. Without people who know an art form inside out, it's so hard to share why we love it to new audiences and to people who think of opera as stuffy and boring. Some of it IS stuffy and boring, but so much of is isn't. You can read Paul's reviews at operachaser.blogspot.com.
08 January 2019
What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 13
One more latecomer; extra late because I ignored email for a couple of weeks. If there are any more late ones, send them through and I'll add them here.
Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg
Favourite moments in 2018
Brother’s Wreck by Jada Alberts at Malthouse located you inside a very difficult and unguarded family dynamic,. Taking place during the Darwin build up, it was interrupted with bursts of rage in a powerful performance by Dion William, deep grief just able to be weathered with community, and tough warmth of the auntie kind dispensed by Lisa Flanagan. All finally released as the rain came. Moved and shook me.
Trustees by Belarus Free Theatre at Melbourne Festival and Malthouse. There were moments in this layered work where you had to hold your breath, particularly the charged exchanges between Tammy Anderson and Daniel Schlusser dredging up the underlying colonialism which still snakes between us all and underpins everything in this country. Schlusser stood in for the dominant white men like John Howard and Anderson demanded that we really see her as a black woman comfortable in her own skin and a playwright, while dismissing and tolerating his extravagant and vocal guilt. The sequence that most struck me was driven by Niharika Senapati who started from a very relaxed place but then was able to escalate and carry the whole audience with her exuberance until they were nearly dancing out of their chairs before she was brutally thrown down and oppressed.
Aurum choreographed by Alice Topp, Australian Ballet. Dance so intoxicating that I couldn’t take in enough with my eyes; unlike anything I’ve ever seen the Australian Ballet make.
Nether choreographed by Lauren Langlois for Next Move 11 at Chunky Move. Like witnessing a new language take form and be articulated through the body. (Reminded me of the film Arrival )
Calamity Jane from One Eyed Man, Arts Centre Melbourne. Recklessly hectic, hugely joyous and delightfully queer, though I badly wanted Calamity to make a home with Katie and depart wildly from the original, heteronormative ending! Seeing it again soon when it moves to the Comedy Theatre. Can’t wait!!
The Crucible at VCA directed by Adena Jacobs. They rediscovered the motif of contamination in witchcraft through a design element of something strange and viscous that looked like maple syrup dripping dow; made me apprehend this play in an utterly new way. Potent gender-blind casting too, Sam Rowe as Mary Warren was quite remarkable, as was Lucy Ansell as John Proctor.
The Nightingale & The Rose, by Little Ones Theatre at Theatre Works, for the astonishing dynamic between Jennifer Vuletic as the Nightingale and Yuchen Wang as the Rose; a strange, sexy impossible yearning between an older woman and younger man (which reminded me of Simon Callow’s book Love is Where it Falls)
Strangers in Between by Tommy Murphy at fortyfivedownstairs for Midsumma directed by Daniel Lammin. It felt so much like Sydney in the 90s, so movingly honouring the families we find for ourselves.
I also really dug Morgan Rose’s The Bachelor S17 E5 at Mechanics – totally inspired. I was there crushed in on the closing night and really loved having the space to contemplate the absurdity of the culture of giving the alpha male so much space and pitting all the female-identified characters against him. Will Bride’s absent minded sense of natural entitlement was absolute gold.
Although I worked on both of these last two shows, I can’t keep from sneakily mentioning them as they were amazing pieces of theatre incorporating music and sound in totally new ways.
Dybbuks from Chamber Made at Theatre Works, conceived and directed by Samara Hersch. This layered work was a truly extraordinary and haunting exploration of how we can live with the dead drawing on the Jewish myth of the Dybbuk who possesses a living person and uses their voice to resolve what can never truly be resolved. Incredible vocal and physical improvisation, it was both visually and aurally overwhelming. A truly unique work to experience, it persists in the memory for its complicated beauty and concentrated consideration of difficult, dark and erotic areas of human experience.
Lorelei by Victorian Opera. A feminist opera featuring gorgeous frocks to make Ru Paul drool by Marg Horwell illuminated by Paul Jackson, directed with virtuosic talent and a superb sense of humour and humanity by Sarah Giles, libretto by Casey Benedetto and Gillian Cosgriff and lush, liquid music by Julian Langdon performed brilliantly by literal sirens Ali McGregor, Antoinette Halloran and Dimity Shepherd.
Looking forward to in 2019
Finally getting to see Blackie Blackie Brown at the Malthouse!
Control by Keziah Warner on as part of Red Stitch; I read some earlier drafts so am really interested to see the final work.
The Australian Premiere of Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill directed by the formidable and phenomenal Jenny Kemp
Also very excited to see Mr Burns, a post-electric play by Anne Washburn at fortyfivedownstairs as I’ve been wanting to see it for a while.
Lady Example by Alice Will and Caroline as I missed it in Next Wave and heard such good things.
Biladurang by Joel Bray sounds really intriguing, performed in a hotel room. I liked his work Dharawungara in Next Move 11.
I’m looking forward to seeing The Selfish Giant for Victorian Opera composed by Simon Bruckard, based on Oscar Wilde’s fairytale.
At MTC, A View From the Bridge directed by Iain Sinclair; heard great things about his production of this play in Sydney.
Also keen to see Golden Shield by Anchuli Felicia King.
And I might be lured back to Arts Centre Melbourne for the return of Merciless Gods.
SM: My favourite thing from Cathy this year is this looking forward to list. A list like this – including shows that are indie, funded, emerging, established, huge, intimate, scripted, developed, adapted, sung, danced – reminds us just how vast and diverse theatre and performance is in Melbourne. If you're looking for a list of shows to see, start here.
Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg
 |
| Cathy Hunt |
Favourite moments in 2018
Brother’s Wreck by Jada Alberts at Malthouse located you inside a very difficult and unguarded family dynamic,. Taking place during the Darwin build up, it was interrupted with bursts of rage in a powerful performance by Dion William, deep grief just able to be weathered with community, and tough warmth of the auntie kind dispensed by Lisa Flanagan. All finally released as the rain came. Moved and shook me.
Trustees by Belarus Free Theatre at Melbourne Festival and Malthouse. There were moments in this layered work where you had to hold your breath, particularly the charged exchanges between Tammy Anderson and Daniel Schlusser dredging up the underlying colonialism which still snakes between us all and underpins everything in this country. Schlusser stood in for the dominant white men like John Howard and Anderson demanded that we really see her as a black woman comfortable in her own skin and a playwright, while dismissing and tolerating his extravagant and vocal guilt. The sequence that most struck me was driven by Niharika Senapati who started from a very relaxed place but then was able to escalate and carry the whole audience with her exuberance until they were nearly dancing out of their chairs before she was brutally thrown down and oppressed.
Aurum choreographed by Alice Topp, Australian Ballet. Dance so intoxicating that I couldn’t take in enough with my eyes; unlike anything I’ve ever seen the Australian Ballet make.
Nether choreographed by Lauren Langlois for Next Move 11 at Chunky Move. Like witnessing a new language take form and be articulated through the body. (Reminded me of the film Arrival )
Calamity Jane from One Eyed Man, Arts Centre Melbourne. Recklessly hectic, hugely joyous and delightfully queer, though I badly wanted Calamity to make a home with Katie and depart wildly from the original, heteronormative ending! Seeing it again soon when it moves to the Comedy Theatre. Can’t wait!!
The Crucible at VCA directed by Adena Jacobs. They rediscovered the motif of contamination in witchcraft through a design element of something strange and viscous that looked like maple syrup dripping dow; made me apprehend this play in an utterly new way. Potent gender-blind casting too, Sam Rowe as Mary Warren was quite remarkable, as was Lucy Ansell as John Proctor.
The Nightingale & The Rose, by Little Ones Theatre at Theatre Works, for the astonishing dynamic between Jennifer Vuletic as the Nightingale and Yuchen Wang as the Rose; a strange, sexy impossible yearning between an older woman and younger man (which reminded me of Simon Callow’s book Love is Where it Falls)
Strangers in Between by Tommy Murphy at fortyfivedownstairs for Midsumma directed by Daniel Lammin. It felt so much like Sydney in the 90s, so movingly honouring the families we find for ourselves.
I also really dug Morgan Rose’s The Bachelor S17 E5 at Mechanics – totally inspired. I was there crushed in on the closing night and really loved having the space to contemplate the absurdity of the culture of giving the alpha male so much space and pitting all the female-identified characters against him. Will Bride’s absent minded sense of natural entitlement was absolute gold.
Although I worked on both of these last two shows, I can’t keep from sneakily mentioning them as they were amazing pieces of theatre incorporating music and sound in totally new ways.
Dybbuks from Chamber Made at Theatre Works, conceived and directed by Samara Hersch. This layered work was a truly extraordinary and haunting exploration of how we can live with the dead drawing on the Jewish myth of the Dybbuk who possesses a living person and uses their voice to resolve what can never truly be resolved. Incredible vocal and physical improvisation, it was both visually and aurally overwhelming. A truly unique work to experience, it persists in the memory for its complicated beauty and concentrated consideration of difficult, dark and erotic areas of human experience.
Lorelei by Victorian Opera. A feminist opera featuring gorgeous frocks to make Ru Paul drool by Marg Horwell illuminated by Paul Jackson, directed with virtuosic talent and a superb sense of humour and humanity by Sarah Giles, libretto by Casey Benedetto and Gillian Cosgriff and lush, liquid music by Julian Langdon performed brilliantly by literal sirens Ali McGregor, Antoinette Halloran and Dimity Shepherd.
Looking forward to in 2019
Finally getting to see Blackie Blackie Brown at the Malthouse!
Control by Keziah Warner on as part of Red Stitch; I read some earlier drafts so am really interested to see the final work.
The Australian Premiere of Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill directed by the formidable and phenomenal Jenny Kemp
Also very excited to see Mr Burns, a post-electric play by Anne Washburn at fortyfivedownstairs as I’ve been wanting to see it for a while.
Lady Example by Alice Will and Caroline as I missed it in Next Wave and heard such good things.
Biladurang by Joel Bray sounds really intriguing, performed in a hotel room. I liked his work Dharawungara in Next Move 11.
I’m looking forward to seeing The Selfish Giant for Victorian Opera composed by Simon Bruckard, based on Oscar Wilde’s fairytale.
At MTC, A View From the Bridge directed by Iain Sinclair; heard great things about his production of this play in Sydney.
Also keen to see Golden Shield by Anchuli Felicia King.
And I might be lured back to Arts Centre Melbourne for the return of Merciless Gods.
SM: My favourite thing from Cathy this year is this looking forward to list. A list like this – including shows that are indie, funded, emerging, established, huge, intimate, scripted, developed, adapted, sung, danced – reminds us just how vast and diverse theatre and performance is in Melbourne. If you're looking for a list of shows to see, start here.
21 December 2018
What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 9
Today we move from the comedy festival to the the Fringe and celebrate all the opera that's made in Melbourne.
Lou Wall
Lou (lol)
Favourite moments in 2018
Witnessing Natalie Palamides live swallow 17 raw eggs dressed as a chicken in Laid at MICF was probably the best and filthiest piece of theatre I have ever seen – a life highlight. Honourable mentions go to Nakkiah Lui's fierce as fuck Blackie Blackie Brown at Malty, a mind-blowing production of The Fall at Arts Centre Melbourne and I Wanna Know What Love Is at Chapel off Chapel. And, obv, Virginia Gay as Calamity Jane was everything.
Looking forward to in 2019
Alberto Di Troia's Truly Madly Britney at Theatre Works is 100% going to be the gay christmas my January needs. After seeing a reading of it at MTC's Cybec this year I can't wait for the full production. (Tbh I am in it, but I'm still damn excited to see it from the wings lol). Also keen to see Golden Shields at MTC and finally catch Muriel's Wedding when it makes its way to the superior city.
SM: 2018 has been a pretty amazing year for Lou Wall. I saw her in the return seasons of Romeo is not the only fruit and It's not me, it's Lou at MICF – she did two different shows most nights! – and the wonderful Lou Wall's Drag Race at Melbourne Fringe. This, too, has to come back; it was the show where she found her voice as an artist – while showing us how some fucked attitudes to gender are going to disappear as the next generations take over our stages. My favourite moment was talking with her about Betty Grumble and her telling me how she took her mum to the show. As I walked away, I realised that I am possibly older than her mum.
Danny Delahunty
Festival Producer, Melbourne Fringe
Favourite moments in 2018
So hard to choose just one! So here are my two. Break Up [We Need To Talk] by New Zealand ensemble Binge Culture. It was a five hour (improvised) durational performance, with five actors playing out an argument that ends a long-term relationship. They rotated between playing either the protagonist, or as part of a four-person chorus of their partner. Beautiful, funny, touching, and very very moreish.
Just as much a standout moment in my year was Bighouse Dreaming. Technically excellent – writing (Declan Furber Gillick), direction (Mark Wilson), performances, vision, execution – it all had it for me. But more than that it was such an incredibly powerful work that knocked me down for days.
Looking forward to in 2019
Ah, it's so early! But from things I've already got tickets to, I'm super looking forward to The Legend of Queen Kong at Arts Centre Melbourne! Oh, and finding out why they had to rip out and rebuild the whole Princess Theatre stage to accommodate special effects in Harry Potter and The Cursed Child! I have tix in the middle of Row E for the second week that cost me as much as a house deposit, so I don't have long to wait!
SM: I sat with Danny for the end of Break Up [We Need To Talk]; I wish I'd seen more of it.
Paul Selar
Opera critic
Favourite moments in 2018
As far as opera went, a rather well-balanced season of works fired up the local scene. I’m not giving too much away right now because all will be revealed in my humble Twitter evening on 27 December in the Fouth Annual OperaChaser Awards, my fun way of acknowledging the production achievements and breadth of talent across the medium.
Of the government-funded companies, Opera Australia pulled off a riveting little masterpiece for its first foot in the door with Malthouse Theatre for Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis. I haven’t ever experienced the Malthouse feel so capacious and director Tama Matheson brought together an insightful fusion of disturbing drama and discordant soundscape and transformed it into an extraordinary and inquiring theatrical experience.
I also loved director Kasper Holten’s wildly imaginative interpretation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Opera Australia’s big-budget co-production with London’s Royal Opera. What was so rewarding about this production was how Holten’s hybrid storytelling mixed theatrical illusion with characters reinterpreted as part of the theatre and it still leaves so much to ponder.
As state company Victorian Opera’s appearances on the calendar in Melbourne were thin, it seemed so wasteful that such a seductive and ethereal quality that was created for Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande was all but over in just two performances. A superlative cast, creatives and young musicians from ANAM worked marvellously together to produce a work of exceptionally high standard.
On the independent scene, Melbourne Opera continued to pull off some ambitious and exquisitely staged hard-hitting work. In particular, there’ll be mentions for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
Smaller independent players were less prominent but Gertrude Opera made history in bringing Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale to the stage in its Australian premiere. Ruders’s score is a spectacular conglomeration of sonic form and director Linda Thompson gave its disturbing story an absolutely thrilling account in a knockout simple production as part of her inaugural Yarra Valley Opera Festival.
For more, come join me with champagne on Twitter @OperaChaser at 5 pm 27 December for the enjoyment it gives me to announce all.
Looking forward to in 2019
I’m looking forward to everything Melbourne can do in showcasing the art of opera. At least the year will be starting well with more Wagner in February with not one, but two fully staged productions: Melbourne Opera’s The Flying Dutchman and Victorian Opera’s Parsifal. It’s 2020 I’m concerned about. After so much gorgeously produced Wagner works Melbourne has been treated to in the last few years, what will it be like without him?
SM: I see shows vicariously though Paul. He sees work I'll never have the chance to see (os) but I feel like I have when I read his reviews.
Lou Wall
Lou (lol)
Favourite moments in 2018
Witnessing Natalie Palamides live swallow 17 raw eggs dressed as a chicken in Laid at MICF was probably the best and filthiest piece of theatre I have ever seen – a life highlight. Honourable mentions go to Nakkiah Lui's fierce as fuck Blackie Blackie Brown at Malty, a mind-blowing production of The Fall at Arts Centre Melbourne and I Wanna Know What Love Is at Chapel off Chapel. And, obv, Virginia Gay as Calamity Jane was everything.
Looking forward to in 2019
Alberto Di Troia's Truly Madly Britney at Theatre Works is 100% going to be the gay christmas my January needs. After seeing a reading of it at MTC's Cybec this year I can't wait for the full production. (Tbh I am in it, but I'm still damn excited to see it from the wings lol). Also keen to see Golden Shields at MTC and finally catch Muriel's Wedding when it makes its way to the superior city.
SM: 2018 has been a pretty amazing year for Lou Wall. I saw her in the return seasons of Romeo is not the only fruit and It's not me, it's Lou at MICF – she did two different shows most nights! – and the wonderful Lou Wall's Drag Race at Melbourne Fringe. This, too, has to come back; it was the show where she found her voice as an artist – while showing us how some fucked attitudes to gender are going to disappear as the next generations take over our stages. My favourite moment was talking with her about Betty Grumble and her telling me how she took her mum to the show. As I walked away, I realised that I am possibly older than her mum.
Danny Delahunty
Festival Producer, Melbourne Fringe
 |
| Danny Delahunty. Photo by Sarah Walker |
Favourite moments in 2018
So hard to choose just one! So here are my two. Break Up [We Need To Talk] by New Zealand ensemble Binge Culture. It was a five hour (improvised) durational performance, with five actors playing out an argument that ends a long-term relationship. They rotated between playing either the protagonist, or as part of a four-person chorus of their partner. Beautiful, funny, touching, and very very moreish.
Just as much a standout moment in my year was Bighouse Dreaming. Technically excellent – writing (Declan Furber Gillick), direction (Mark Wilson), performances, vision, execution – it all had it for me. But more than that it was such an incredibly powerful work that knocked me down for days.
Looking forward to in 2019
Ah, it's so early! But from things I've already got tickets to, I'm super looking forward to The Legend of Queen Kong at Arts Centre Melbourne! Oh, and finding out why they had to rip out and rebuild the whole Princess Theatre stage to accommodate special effects in Harry Potter and The Cursed Child! I have tix in the middle of Row E for the second week that cost me as much as a house deposit, so I don't have long to wait!
SM: I sat with Danny for the end of Break Up [We Need To Talk]; I wish I'd seen more of it.
Paul Selar
Opera critic
 |
| Paul Selar |
Favourite moments in 2018
As far as opera went, a rather well-balanced season of works fired up the local scene. I’m not giving too much away right now because all will be revealed in my humble Twitter evening on 27 December in the Fouth Annual OperaChaser Awards, my fun way of acknowledging the production achievements and breadth of talent across the medium.
Of the government-funded companies, Opera Australia pulled off a riveting little masterpiece for its first foot in the door with Malthouse Theatre for Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis. I haven’t ever experienced the Malthouse feel so capacious and director Tama Matheson brought together an insightful fusion of disturbing drama and discordant soundscape and transformed it into an extraordinary and inquiring theatrical experience.
I also loved director Kasper Holten’s wildly imaginative interpretation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Opera Australia’s big-budget co-production with London’s Royal Opera. What was so rewarding about this production was how Holten’s hybrid storytelling mixed theatrical illusion with characters reinterpreted as part of the theatre and it still leaves so much to ponder.
As state company Victorian Opera’s appearances on the calendar in Melbourne were thin, it seemed so wasteful that such a seductive and ethereal quality that was created for Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande was all but over in just two performances. A superlative cast, creatives and young musicians from ANAM worked marvellously together to produce a work of exceptionally high standard.
On the independent scene, Melbourne Opera continued to pull off some ambitious and exquisitely staged hard-hitting work. In particular, there’ll be mentions for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
Smaller independent players were less prominent but Gertrude Opera made history in bringing Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale to the stage in its Australian premiere. Ruders’s score is a spectacular conglomeration of sonic form and director Linda Thompson gave its disturbing story an absolutely thrilling account in a knockout simple production as part of her inaugural Yarra Valley Opera Festival.
For more, come join me with champagne on Twitter @OperaChaser at 5 pm 27 December for the enjoyment it gives me to announce all.
Looking forward to in 2019
I’m looking forward to everything Melbourne can do in showcasing the art of opera. At least the year will be starting well with more Wagner in February with not one, but two fully staged productions: Melbourne Opera’s The Flying Dutchman and Victorian Opera’s Parsifal. It’s 2020 I’m concerned about. After so much gorgeously produced Wagner works Melbourne has been treated to in the last few years, what will it be like without him?
SM: I see shows vicariously though Paul. He sees work I'll never have the chance to see (os) but I feel like I have when I read his reviews.
20 December 2018
What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 8
Declan, Joshua and Rohan would make for strange dinner party, but I wouldn't miss it. Today we go from tiny Fringe venues to opera stages, and three more great pics.
Declan Greene
Half o' Sisters Grimm + Resident Artist at Malthouse Theatre
Favourite moments in 2018
This year was crazy, and I didn’t get to see as much stuff as I normally do – totally missed most of Midsumma, Melbourne Fringe, MIAF. But these three shows below stuck with me, in a really peculiar way, because I’m a playwright and they’re all nearly wordless. IDK why. Maybe it was the glut of contradictory think-pieces in my newsfeed or politicians skull-fucking us with doublespeak, but at some point this year I think I started feeling exhausted by language and its limitations.
Carrion – Justin Shoulder at Arts House.
The visual and sonic design of this piece of post-human performance on evolution and adaption was fucking astounding start to finish, with an incredible performance by Justin Shoulder.
The Howling Girls – Damien Ricketson and Adena Jacobs at Carriage Works.
Mind-blowing contemporary opera about the effect of trauma on language, performed for the first 20 minutes in near total darkness – and then midway it suddenly detonated into explosive light and non-verbal vocal scoring. When it ended I realised I’d been tensing my whole body for its entire 50-minute duration.
friendships at Hugs&Kisses.
OK this was a music gig so not technically a piece of theatre, but it still felt more complete as a work of live art than a lot of stuff I saw this year. No single moment I can remember as a stand-out. It was one set of unbroken sound and live video-mixing that journeyed from soundscapes of cyborg voices struggling to speak into crushing, mind-melting beats, with fragments of language rising to the surface: ‘was i good’, ‘are u still there’ ‘i forgot where i am’. Video of mutating children in a digital soup giving way to rushing 3-D landscapes. I can’t explain it properly but it took me out of my body, totally transporting.
Also loved Vic Opera's Lorelei a lot, as well as the Next Move double-bill – Nether and Dharawungara – at Chunky Move. Incred.
Looking forward to in 2019
The whole Malthouse 2019 season but especially Zoey Dawson’s amazingly cooked mainstage debut Australian Realness. Krishna Istha’s Beast for Midsumma. Melanie Lane’s Nightdance for Dance Massive. The Very Good Looking Initiative’s incredibly named Poopy Tum Tums at the Comedy Festival. And Ivo Van Hoove’s queer All About Eve on the West End with Gillian Anderson and PJ Harvey, after I find a wealthy benefactor who will fly me over to see it (just putting it into the ether thnxxxxxx). (SM: as long as you bring me as your chaperone.)
SM: Dec directed Blackie Blackie Brown: it's one of those shows that people are going to talk about in the years to come and a lot of us can say, "Yeah, I saw it". It's back next year.
Joshua Ladgrove
Neal Portenza
Favourite moments in 2018
Born Prepared: 1980s Brownie Guide – Megan McKay at Melbourne Fringe.
Looking forward to in 2019
I'm not sure. I tend to not look too far into the future. I'm hoping for the complete downfall of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the subsequent musical that follows.
SM: I don't like the star-rating system for shows – read the words – but I take it seriously when I give stars. If I add them up, Josh/Neal have had the most stars from me. Fafenefenoiby II: Return of the Ghost Boy was his last show. But, last shows don't stick for the good ones. As for a moment: I saw Fafenefenoiby twice and it was every time he guessed the names of the audience. Fuck his sophisticated, heart-breaking, fuck-yeah comedy, give me a mind-reading trick every time!
Rohan Shearn
Managing Editor, Australian Arts Review
Favourite moments in 2018
Once again, we were spoilt for choice this year as the commercial and independent sector delivered a mixed bag of delights. But three shows have resonated with me this year:
Calamity Jane
Big, bold, brash and brassy, Richard Carroll’s exuberant re-imagining of the 1950’s cult film hits its target in every department. Central to its success is Virginia Gay’s brilliant performance as Calamity Jane. A gift that keeps on giving, it is currently playing a sold out encore season at Arts Centre Melbourne before transferring to the Comedy Theatre in January.
Colossus
Commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Fringe Take Over! initiative, Colossus was excitingly compelling and mesmerising as 50 dancers converged on the Fairfax stage. A surprise hit of the Melbourne Fringe, Stephanie Lake’s work was worthy of a main-stage festival offering.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
A co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera Australia’s new production by celebrated director Kasper Holten was a grand and extravagant night in the State Theatre. Wagner aficionados were not disappointed with an all-star cast and Mia Stensgaard’s set – that was one of the largest ever seen in Melbourne.
Looking forward to in 2019
Muriel’s Wedding the Musical
Directed by Simon Phillips, a theatrical version of PJ Hogan’s iconic hit film features music and lyrics by Australian award winning songwriters Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall. I was lucky to see MW during its premiere Sydney run in late 2017. With a new cast, it will look absolutely gorgeous in Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Come From Away
This Tony Award–winning musical tells the true story of the 38 planes and more than 6500 passengers who were unexpectedly forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland in Canada after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff used hundreds of interviews taken from the community in Gander to deliver a powerful message about the kindness of strangers. A terrific all-Australian cast will bring this show to life at the Comedy Theatre in July.
The Lady in the Van
Alan Bennett’s mostly true story of the fascinating relationship between the award-winning British writer and his long-term guest. Starring the effervescent Miriam Margolyes as the eccentric and cantankerous Miss Shepherd – The Lady in the Van will be a great opener for MTC in 2019.
Cloudstreet
It has been 20 years since the stage adaptation of Tim Winton’s award-winning novel, Cloudstreet has been presented on the Merlyn Stage. Matthew Lutton directs an all-star cast in this epic production that chronicles the lives of two working class families in Perth in –World War II Australia.
SM: Rohan and I don't agree about a lot of shows, but he's still the person I totally trust if I'm not sure if I should see a musical. Or if I need to know anything about any show that's been on in the last 30 to 40 years. Australian Arts Review is another independent arts media site that keeps covering more shows and artists than any of the mastheads. Maybe 2019 needs to be the year when indie arts media gets the love it deserves.
Declan Greene
Half o' Sisters Grimm + Resident Artist at Malthouse Theatre
 |
| Declan Greene in Hills Hoist and fake Birkenstocks |
Favourite moments in 2018
This year was crazy, and I didn’t get to see as much stuff as I normally do – totally missed most of Midsumma, Melbourne Fringe, MIAF. But these three shows below stuck with me, in a really peculiar way, because I’m a playwright and they’re all nearly wordless. IDK why. Maybe it was the glut of contradictory think-pieces in my newsfeed or politicians skull-fucking us with doublespeak, but at some point this year I think I started feeling exhausted by language and its limitations.
Carrion – Justin Shoulder at Arts House.
The visual and sonic design of this piece of post-human performance on evolution and adaption was fucking astounding start to finish, with an incredible performance by Justin Shoulder.
The Howling Girls – Damien Ricketson and Adena Jacobs at Carriage Works.
Mind-blowing contemporary opera about the effect of trauma on language, performed for the first 20 minutes in near total darkness – and then midway it suddenly detonated into explosive light and non-verbal vocal scoring. When it ended I realised I’d been tensing my whole body for its entire 50-minute duration.
friendships at Hugs&Kisses.
OK this was a music gig so not technically a piece of theatre, but it still felt more complete as a work of live art than a lot of stuff I saw this year. No single moment I can remember as a stand-out. It was one set of unbroken sound and live video-mixing that journeyed from soundscapes of cyborg voices struggling to speak into crushing, mind-melting beats, with fragments of language rising to the surface: ‘was i good’, ‘are u still there’ ‘i forgot where i am’. Video of mutating children in a digital soup giving way to rushing 3-D landscapes. I can’t explain it properly but it took me out of my body, totally transporting.
Also loved Vic Opera's Lorelei a lot, as well as the Next Move double-bill – Nether and Dharawungara – at Chunky Move. Incred.
Looking forward to in 2019
The whole Malthouse 2019 season but especially Zoey Dawson’s amazingly cooked mainstage debut Australian Realness. Krishna Istha’s Beast for Midsumma. Melanie Lane’s Nightdance for Dance Massive. The Very Good Looking Initiative’s incredibly named Poopy Tum Tums at the Comedy Festival. And Ivo Van Hoove’s queer All About Eve on the West End with Gillian Anderson and PJ Harvey, after I find a wealthy benefactor who will fly me over to see it (just putting it into the ether thnxxxxxx). (SM: as long as you bring me as your chaperone.)
SM: Dec directed Blackie Blackie Brown: it's one of those shows that people are going to talk about in the years to come and a lot of us can say, "Yeah, I saw it". It's back next year.
Joshua Ladgrove
Neal Portenza
 |
| Joshua Ladgrove |
Favourite moments in 2018
Born Prepared: 1980s Brownie Guide – Megan McKay at Melbourne Fringe.
Looking forward to in 2019
I'm not sure. I tend to not look too far into the future. I'm hoping for the complete downfall of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the subsequent musical that follows.
SM: I don't like the star-rating system for shows – read the words – but I take it seriously when I give stars. If I add them up, Josh/Neal have had the most stars from me. Fafenefenoiby II: Return of the Ghost Boy was his last show. But, last shows don't stick for the good ones. As for a moment: I saw Fafenefenoiby twice and it was every time he guessed the names of the audience. Fuck his sophisticated, heart-breaking, fuck-yeah comedy, give me a mind-reading trick every time!
Rohan Shearn
Managing Editor, Australian Arts Review
 |
| Rohan Peron |
Favourite moments in 2018
Once again, we were spoilt for choice this year as the commercial and independent sector delivered a mixed bag of delights. But three shows have resonated with me this year:
Calamity Jane
Big, bold, brash and brassy, Richard Carroll’s exuberant re-imagining of the 1950’s cult film hits its target in every department. Central to its success is Virginia Gay’s brilliant performance as Calamity Jane. A gift that keeps on giving, it is currently playing a sold out encore season at Arts Centre Melbourne before transferring to the Comedy Theatre in January.
Colossus
Commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Fringe Take Over! initiative, Colossus was excitingly compelling and mesmerising as 50 dancers converged on the Fairfax stage. A surprise hit of the Melbourne Fringe, Stephanie Lake’s work was worthy of a main-stage festival offering.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
A co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera Australia’s new production by celebrated director Kasper Holten was a grand and extravagant night in the State Theatre. Wagner aficionados were not disappointed with an all-star cast and Mia Stensgaard’s set – that was one of the largest ever seen in Melbourne.
Looking forward to in 2019
Muriel’s Wedding the Musical
Directed by Simon Phillips, a theatrical version of PJ Hogan’s iconic hit film features music and lyrics by Australian award winning songwriters Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall. I was lucky to see MW during its premiere Sydney run in late 2017. With a new cast, it will look absolutely gorgeous in Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Come From Away
This Tony Award–winning musical tells the true story of the 38 planes and more than 6500 passengers who were unexpectedly forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland in Canada after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff used hundreds of interviews taken from the community in Gander to deliver a powerful message about the kindness of strangers. A terrific all-Australian cast will bring this show to life at the Comedy Theatre in July.
The Lady in the Van
Alan Bennett’s mostly true story of the fascinating relationship between the award-winning British writer and his long-term guest. Starring the effervescent Miriam Margolyes as the eccentric and cantankerous Miss Shepherd – The Lady in the Van will be a great opener for MTC in 2019.
Cloudstreet
It has been 20 years since the stage adaptation of Tim Winton’s award-winning novel, Cloudstreet has been presented on the Merlyn Stage. Matthew Lutton directs an all-star cast in this epic production that chronicles the lives of two working class families in Perth in –World War II Australia.
SM: Rohan and I don't agree about a lot of shows, but he's still the person I totally trust if I'm not sure if I should see a musical. Or if I need to know anything about any show that's been on in the last 30 to 40 years. Australian Arts Review is another independent arts media site that keeps covering more shows and artists than any of the mastheads. Maybe 2019 needs to be the year when indie arts media gets the love it deserves.
09 February 2017
Review: 'Tis Pity
'Tis Pity: An Operatic Fantasia on Selling the Skin and the Teeth
Victorian Opera
6 February 2017
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
to 8 February
victorianopera.com.au
The 2015 Victorian Opera production of Die Sieben Todsunden with Meow Meow took me as close to seeing how Brecht and Weil must have imagined their work. It was a highlight of that year and the newly devised 'Tis Pity song cycle reunites Meow and director Cameron Menzies, adds the rather divine tenor Kanen Breen and Richard Mills composing for a full orchestra. And it's about exploring the history of prostitution. All the ingredients are brilliant, so what went wrong?
Of course, Meow and Breen's performances are excellent. Their vaudeville-cum-Brechtian-cum-"Alan Cummings in Cabaret" clowns are backed by red velvet, three male dancers and Orchestra Victoria, with cheap shiny-red cardboard hearts on their music stands. The opening moments are full of hope as Breen sings that sex is both the question and the answer.
Sex? Sex.
What follows is ten vignettes about how women have been exploited by men for as long as records exist. Their order is drawn from a hat in convenient chronological order. This device is only slightly less annoying than the alarm screaching the beginning of each vignette.
There’s no consistent theme. From Ancient Greece to contemporary Hollywood, there are narratives – not structured stories with characters – about "whores", men using prostitutes, keeping wives away from whores, keeping women “subjugated”, evil menstrual blood and hypocritical religion.
The narrative voice is almost always male – even when delivered by Meow. When she does speak as a women, it's confirming the male narrative that working girls (with cockney Pygmalion accents) are selling their souls.
With little exploration of a female point of view and research that feels as deep as a Wikipedia introduction, perhaps Mills's boast that "This project was written at breakneck speed in the month of November" says it all.
‘Tis Pity is under developed and needs to find more heart than those cut from cardboard.
Also on AussieTheatre.com.
Victorian Opera
6 February 2017
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
to 8 February
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| 'Tis Pity. Kanen Breen & Meow Meow. Photo by Pia Johnson |
The 2015 Victorian Opera production of Die Sieben Todsunden with Meow Meow took me as close to seeing how Brecht and Weil must have imagined their work. It was a highlight of that year and the newly devised 'Tis Pity song cycle reunites Meow and director Cameron Menzies, adds the rather divine tenor Kanen Breen and Richard Mills composing for a full orchestra. And it's about exploring the history of prostitution. All the ingredients are brilliant, so what went wrong?
Of course, Meow and Breen's performances are excellent. Their vaudeville-cum-Brechtian-cum-"Alan Cummings in Cabaret" clowns are backed by red velvet, three male dancers and Orchestra Victoria, with cheap shiny-red cardboard hearts on their music stands. The opening moments are full of hope as Breen sings that sex is both the question and the answer.
Sex? Sex.
What follows is ten vignettes about how women have been exploited by men for as long as records exist. Their order is drawn from a hat in convenient chronological order. This device is only slightly less annoying than the alarm screaching the beginning of each vignette.
There’s no consistent theme. From Ancient Greece to contemporary Hollywood, there are narratives – not structured stories with characters – about "whores", men using prostitutes, keeping wives away from whores, keeping women “subjugated”, evil menstrual blood and hypocritical religion.
The narrative voice is almost always male – even when delivered by Meow. When she does speak as a women, it's confirming the male narrative that working girls (with cockney Pygmalion accents) are selling their souls.
With little exploration of a female point of view and research that feels as deep as a Wikipedia introduction, perhaps Mills's boast that "This project was written at breakneck speed in the month of November" says it all.
‘Tis Pity is under developed and needs to find more heart than those cut from cardboard.
Also on AussieTheatre.com.
19 December 2016
What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 13
The "Lovies" will be ending this week, but if you send me some today, I'll make sure they get in.
Today we hear from Mama Alto and the Opera Chaser, Paul Selar.
Mama Alto
diva (in the most magnificent sense of the word)
MA's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Hot Brown Honey, at Arts Centre Melbourne, was affirming, daring, excoriating, exciting, irreverent, holy and empowering. It was joyous and emotional for me to see – for a change – so many people of colour, not just on stage but in the audience, too. This show, and the direct expressions of these artists, is a complete revelation. And it provided words to live by: "Moisturise, decolonise… stand up, speak up, rise up, make noise!".
Between Two Lines (Anna Nalpantidis with Elizabeth Brennan), at Embiggen Books,was my absolute pick of the Melbourne Fringe. Intimacy, stillness, presence, tenderness and the astoundingly profound depth of a one-on-one live art experience: the esoteric and curious ritual of bibliotherapy in a bath tub, and the feeling of balancing in an enormous snow globe, floating like a bubble in a precarious world.
Retrofuturismus (Maude Davies, Anni Davies and ensemble) at fortyfivedownstairs, which was equal parts shocking, tender, insightful, powerful and interrogative. A collision of the then, the now, and the yet to come, posing questions and explorations of environmental catastrophe, history repeating, queer possibilities, feminist futures and human nature.
Lisa Fischer at the Melbourne Recital Centre gave us the magic of unadulterated storytelling, with utter focus, dedication, talent, skill and sheer musical honesty. Lisa Fischer pours forth a fluid, breathtaking, all-encompassing and limitless voice with a warmth and generosity of storytelling, empathy and healing that is crystalline and rare.
Honourable mentions:
Blaque Showgirls (Nakkiah Lui and company) at Malthouse: a damning, hilarious, uncomfortable, layered spectacle of the state of this nation.
Lilith, the Jungle Girl (Sisters Grimm) at MTC Neon: a nuanced, raucous and provocative exploration of colonisation, culture, gender and the body.
Meow Meow's The Little Mermaid at The Malthouse: there are no words for the scintillating, glimmering madness of this diva’s unleashed psyche.
Frock Hudson FURRlesque at the Melba Spiegeltent: in the midst of a queer circus of silliness, humour, glamour and camp, Dean Arcuri in a glorious state of disarray delivered a poignant, raw, honest, tragically beautiful, emotional and heartbreaking sung rendition of "Will You Still Love Me When I’m No Longer Young And Beautiful" that spoke volumes about what it means to be queer and in love today.
The Color Purple (StageArt) at Chapel off Chapel: a stunning and passionate rendition of this Broadway icon-in-the-making, with a star turn by Thando Sikwila as Shug Avery. "It takes a grain of love to build a mighty tree – even the smallest voice can make a harmony."
Vanishing Act (Candace Miles and Rosie Clynes) at The Butterfly Club for Melbourne Fringe: a fabulous and unique cabaret journey through life with influences as diverse as Weimar, Grace Jones, Klaus Nomi, Kander and Ebb, and more, but syncretically combined to create a postmodern mishmash spectacle.
Lastly, powerful, eccentric, (rightfully) unashamed, (rightfully) unapologetic,authentic voices from women in cabaret comedy, two highlights of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: the irrepressible local legend Geraldine Quinn in a brilliant retrospective revue Could You Repeat That at Malthouse, and emerging feminist rabble rousers Pink Flappy Bits in their eponymous shows.
What MA is looking forward to in 2017: Particularly, Pamela Rabe in The Testament of Mary, DisColourNation’s second iteration of The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, and the new Jackie Smith play directed by Moira Finucane, The Exotic Lives of Lola Montez.
And more generally, anything involving the extraordinary talents and stories of people of colour, people experiencing disability, queer people, trans and gender diverse people, non-binary people and women.
mamaalto.com
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
part 10
part 11
part 12
2014
2013
2012
Today we hear from Mama Alto and the Opera Chaser, Paul Selar.
Mama Alto
diva (in the most magnificent sense of the word)
 |
| Mama Alto. Photo by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea |
MA's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Hot Brown Honey, at Arts Centre Melbourne, was affirming, daring, excoriating, exciting, irreverent, holy and empowering. It was joyous and emotional for me to see – for a change – so many people of colour, not just on stage but in the audience, too. This show, and the direct expressions of these artists, is a complete revelation. And it provided words to live by: "Moisturise, decolonise… stand up, speak up, rise up, make noise!".
Between Two Lines (Anna Nalpantidis with Elizabeth Brennan), at Embiggen Books,was my absolute pick of the Melbourne Fringe. Intimacy, stillness, presence, tenderness and the astoundingly profound depth of a one-on-one live art experience: the esoteric and curious ritual of bibliotherapy in a bath tub, and the feeling of balancing in an enormous snow globe, floating like a bubble in a precarious world.
Retrofuturismus (Maude Davies, Anni Davies and ensemble) at fortyfivedownstairs, which was equal parts shocking, tender, insightful, powerful and interrogative. A collision of the then, the now, and the yet to come, posing questions and explorations of environmental catastrophe, history repeating, queer possibilities, feminist futures and human nature.
Lisa Fischer at the Melbourne Recital Centre gave us the magic of unadulterated storytelling, with utter focus, dedication, talent, skill and sheer musical honesty. Lisa Fischer pours forth a fluid, breathtaking, all-encompassing and limitless voice with a warmth and generosity of storytelling, empathy and healing that is crystalline and rare.
Honourable mentions:
Blaque Showgirls (Nakkiah Lui and company) at Malthouse: a damning, hilarious, uncomfortable, layered spectacle of the state of this nation.
Lilith, the Jungle Girl (Sisters Grimm) at MTC Neon: a nuanced, raucous and provocative exploration of colonisation, culture, gender and the body.
Meow Meow's The Little Mermaid at The Malthouse: there are no words for the scintillating, glimmering madness of this diva’s unleashed psyche.
Frock Hudson FURRlesque at the Melba Spiegeltent: in the midst of a queer circus of silliness, humour, glamour and camp, Dean Arcuri in a glorious state of disarray delivered a poignant, raw, honest, tragically beautiful, emotional and heartbreaking sung rendition of "Will You Still Love Me When I’m No Longer Young And Beautiful" that spoke volumes about what it means to be queer and in love today.
The Color Purple (StageArt) at Chapel off Chapel: a stunning and passionate rendition of this Broadway icon-in-the-making, with a star turn by Thando Sikwila as Shug Avery. "It takes a grain of love to build a mighty tree – even the smallest voice can make a harmony."
Vanishing Act (Candace Miles and Rosie Clynes) at The Butterfly Club for Melbourne Fringe: a fabulous and unique cabaret journey through life with influences as diverse as Weimar, Grace Jones, Klaus Nomi, Kander and Ebb, and more, but syncretically combined to create a postmodern mishmash spectacle.
Lastly, powerful, eccentric, (rightfully) unashamed, (rightfully) unapologetic,authentic voices from women in cabaret comedy, two highlights of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: the irrepressible local legend Geraldine Quinn in a brilliant retrospective revue Could You Repeat That at Malthouse, and emerging feminist rabble rousers Pink Flappy Bits in their eponymous shows.
And more generally, anything involving the extraordinary talents and stories of people of colour, people experiencing disability, queer people, trans and gender diverse people, non-binary people and women.
mamaalto.com
SM: The Adulteress (Melbourne Fringe) was cool and delightfully camp, but my Mama highlight was last week at Finucane and Smith's Christmas Cocktail party. There were many magnificent performances that captivated the sold-out, overflowing room, but one left the room silent: Mama Alto. One captivating song and the room exploded with pure love.
Paul Selar
Opera Chaser
OC's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: In my three decades of opera-going that I'm now calling OperaChasing and the piles of opera programs I'm not sure what to do with, 2016 will remain special: 95 opera productions in 21 cities. The memories of many may wilt as they hopefully nourish the heart and soul but others presumably will have everlasting immediacy.
In Melbourne, I love seeing how the operatic pulse beats and I'm always wishing more people would taste what's on offer, from the smell-of-an-oily-rag budget productions to the polished bells and whistles of the hugely funded national opera company. One thing for certain is that the smell of an oily rag is often at least as overwhelmingly affecting and rewarding as any high-end work performed to the more toffee-nosed culture that sticks to opera's heals.
Melbourne staged no less than 24 opera productions in 2016. Adding Gertrude Opera's Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival, a little weekend outing for city dwellers to combine wine and opera, the number swells to 32. Ok, part of that diverse program included three "nano" operas around 15 minutes in length each, but how their succinct attack still penetrates. Apart from the bacchanalian-steered opening night dinner and gorgeously sung operatic arias, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti directed by Greg Eldridge and The Scottish Opera, a new gripping, shortened and stylised meshing of Verdi's Macbeth in an 80-minute work directed and designed by Luke Leonard still resonate.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the return of Opera Australia's Ring Cycle directed by Neil Armfield surprised me how much more arresting it was than its 2013 premiere (possibly due to that wilted memory). Elements of the everyday, mixed with the symbolic and surreal accompanying detailed characterisation and the year's most extraordinary singing and music-making, came together in a work of astounding beauty. Thank the gods it wasn't staged earlier in the year. I was so emotionally pummelled that immersing in anything outside The Ring seemed completely mundane.
Of the four, I had to see Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung again, and not just because of the allure of the double-dotted diacritics. Let's hope the cycle returns to Melbourne in 2019 so that it can be ticked off many more bucket lists.
But take note Opera Australia. More double-dotted Wagnerian repertoire got a magnificent outing by independently funded Melbourne Opera with Tannhäuser. This was a huge achievement that saw the company take a bold risk while making opera look right at home in the iconic Regent Theatre. Wagner's recurring theme of redemption resonated with glorious singing, expert orchestral support and director Suzanne Chaundy and her creative team's compelling staging portraying the contrast between one world of societal strictures and another of sexual pleasures. Perhaps Melbourne does have the initiative and resources to call itself a Wagnerian city after all. Is there any dream this city can't dream without making it a reality?
Victorian Opera's innovative arm muscled up once again under Artistic Director Richard Mills's tireless efforts in giving a fresh approach to the art. Directed by Emil Wolk, Laughter and Tears saw Mills's powerful reimagining of Leoncavallo's great tragic one-act opera, Pagliacci – the tears – came with a prologue made up of a pastiche of Baroque and Renaissance music imbued with comic abandon and contextual contrast – the laughter. Integrated circus arts handsomely illuminated the stage for one of the company's most compelling recent works that saw opera return to another splendid venue, the Palais Theatre. Certainly a work worthy of revival.
Finally, little Lyric Opera of Melbourne delivered an exquisite three-season adventure headed by the succulently staged, mojito-driven and rarely seen operatic version of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana by Aussie composer Malcolm Williamson. The musical richness of the score – brilliantly sung by many of Melbourne's young artists – the witty libretto and the directorial flesh Suzanne Chaundy gave to this festering black comedy (performed to an audience not much larger than 150), reflects the knack Artistic Director Pat Miller has in unearthing varied and exciting works.
Much further afield, controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito's dark, thought-provoking interpretation of Fromental Halévy's rarely seen 1835 La Juive (The Jewess) at the Bavarian State Opera stood out for its subtlety and strength. Musically and vocally outstanding, it remains for me the year's most powerfully relevant work highlighting the oneness and differences in humanity, the instilled fear of the other as a threat, and of intolerances we harbour but can't see. Much food for modern thought.
Finally, for those interested in the many great contributions made to the art of opera in 2016, I'm running a one-hour Twitter night for The 2nd Annual OperaChaser Awards and Commendations via @OperaChaser between Christmas and New Year. I've given only a little away so come join in and have a drink to find out more to celebrate our artists with me.
What OC is looking forward to in 2017: If you think opera isn't your thing, maybe 2017 might change that. Bizet's ever-popular Carmen comes to town in a new production from Opera Australia so that could do the trick but I saw it in Sydney earlier this year and it's Cuban-set concoction needed a deal of attention I hope it gets by May. Two works at the top of my list are Opera Australia's King Roger – a 1924 work by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski and a co-production with London's Royal Opera House – and Melbourne Opera's second outing at the Regent Theatre for hours and hours of more Wagner with Lohengrin.
Rarely do we see Czech composer Leoš Janácek’s powerful works so Victorian Opera's Cunning Little Vixen, his poignant reflection on the cycle of life, shouldn't be missed either. Make sure you add Tom Waits and William S Burroughs's allegory of addiction, The Black Rider, to the list as well. It's a co-production with Malthouse Theatre starring Paul Capsis with Meow Meow and Kanen Breen.
Lyric Opera of Melbourne will no doubt enchant with a contemporary work by female composer Rachel Portman, The Little Prince. Based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's delightful 1943 book, it premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2003 with Teddy Tabu Rhodes in the role of the Pilot.
Finally, on the international front, for something quirky amongst so much impressive work that'll be impossible to see, there's a new comic opera based on that botched restoration of a fresco of Jesus likened to a hedgehog. Written by two Americans, librettist Andrew Flack and composer Paul Fowler, Behold the Man will premiere in a fully staged production in the town of Borja where everyone's laughing at how a town's misfortune turned with just a few well-intended brushstrokes. That I'd love to see.
operachaser.blogspot.com.au
Paul Selar
Opera Chaser
 |
| Paul Selar selfie |
OC's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: In my three decades of opera-going that I'm now calling OperaChasing and the piles of opera programs I'm not sure what to do with, 2016 will remain special: 95 opera productions in 21 cities. The memories of many may wilt as they hopefully nourish the heart and soul but others presumably will have everlasting immediacy.
In Melbourne, I love seeing how the operatic pulse beats and I'm always wishing more people would taste what's on offer, from the smell-of-an-oily-rag budget productions to the polished bells and whistles of the hugely funded national opera company. One thing for certain is that the smell of an oily rag is often at least as overwhelmingly affecting and rewarding as any high-end work performed to the more toffee-nosed culture that sticks to opera's heals.
Melbourne staged no less than 24 opera productions in 2016. Adding Gertrude Opera's Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival, a little weekend outing for city dwellers to combine wine and opera, the number swells to 32. Ok, part of that diverse program included three "nano" operas around 15 minutes in length each, but how their succinct attack still penetrates. Apart from the bacchanalian-steered opening night dinner and gorgeously sung operatic arias, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti directed by Greg Eldridge and The Scottish Opera, a new gripping, shortened and stylised meshing of Verdi's Macbeth in an 80-minute work directed and designed by Luke Leonard still resonate.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the return of Opera Australia's Ring Cycle directed by Neil Armfield surprised me how much more arresting it was than its 2013 premiere (possibly due to that wilted memory). Elements of the everyday, mixed with the symbolic and surreal accompanying detailed characterisation and the year's most extraordinary singing and music-making, came together in a work of astounding beauty. Thank the gods it wasn't staged earlier in the year. I was so emotionally pummelled that immersing in anything outside The Ring seemed completely mundane.
Of the four, I had to see Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung again, and not just because of the allure of the double-dotted diacritics. Let's hope the cycle returns to Melbourne in 2019 so that it can be ticked off many more bucket lists.
But take note Opera Australia. More double-dotted Wagnerian repertoire got a magnificent outing by independently funded Melbourne Opera with Tannhäuser. This was a huge achievement that saw the company take a bold risk while making opera look right at home in the iconic Regent Theatre. Wagner's recurring theme of redemption resonated with glorious singing, expert orchestral support and director Suzanne Chaundy and her creative team's compelling staging portraying the contrast between one world of societal strictures and another of sexual pleasures. Perhaps Melbourne does have the initiative and resources to call itself a Wagnerian city after all. Is there any dream this city can't dream without making it a reality?
Victorian Opera's innovative arm muscled up once again under Artistic Director Richard Mills's tireless efforts in giving a fresh approach to the art. Directed by Emil Wolk, Laughter and Tears saw Mills's powerful reimagining of Leoncavallo's great tragic one-act opera, Pagliacci – the tears – came with a prologue made up of a pastiche of Baroque and Renaissance music imbued with comic abandon and contextual contrast – the laughter. Integrated circus arts handsomely illuminated the stage for one of the company's most compelling recent works that saw opera return to another splendid venue, the Palais Theatre. Certainly a work worthy of revival.
Finally, little Lyric Opera of Melbourne delivered an exquisite three-season adventure headed by the succulently staged, mojito-driven and rarely seen operatic version of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana by Aussie composer Malcolm Williamson. The musical richness of the score – brilliantly sung by many of Melbourne's young artists – the witty libretto and the directorial flesh Suzanne Chaundy gave to this festering black comedy (performed to an audience not much larger than 150), reflects the knack Artistic Director Pat Miller has in unearthing varied and exciting works.
Much further afield, controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito's dark, thought-provoking interpretation of Fromental Halévy's rarely seen 1835 La Juive (The Jewess) at the Bavarian State Opera stood out for its subtlety and strength. Musically and vocally outstanding, it remains for me the year's most powerfully relevant work highlighting the oneness and differences in humanity, the instilled fear of the other as a threat, and of intolerances we harbour but can't see. Much food for modern thought.
Finally, for those interested in the many great contributions made to the art of opera in 2016, I'm running a one-hour Twitter night for The 2nd Annual OperaChaser Awards and Commendations via @OperaChaser between Christmas and New Year. I've given only a little away so come join in and have a drink to find out more to celebrate our artists with me.
What OC is looking forward to in 2017: If you think opera isn't your thing, maybe 2017 might change that. Bizet's ever-popular Carmen comes to town in a new production from Opera Australia so that could do the trick but I saw it in Sydney earlier this year and it's Cuban-set concoction needed a deal of attention I hope it gets by May. Two works at the top of my list are Opera Australia's King Roger – a 1924 work by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski and a co-production with London's Royal Opera House – and Melbourne Opera's second outing at the Regent Theatre for hours and hours of more Wagner with Lohengrin.
Rarely do we see Czech composer Leoš Janácek’s powerful works so Victorian Opera's Cunning Little Vixen, his poignant reflection on the cycle of life, shouldn't be missed either. Make sure you add Tom Waits and William S Burroughs's allegory of addiction, The Black Rider, to the list as well. It's a co-production with Malthouse Theatre starring Paul Capsis with Meow Meow and Kanen Breen.
Lyric Opera of Melbourne will no doubt enchant with a contemporary work by female composer Rachel Portman, The Little Prince. Based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's delightful 1943 book, it premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2003 with Teddy Tabu Rhodes in the role of the Pilot.
Finally, on the international front, for something quirky amongst so much impressive work that'll be impossible to see, there's a new comic opera based on that botched restoration of a fresco of Jesus likened to a hedgehog. Written by two Americans, librettist Andrew Flack and composer Paul Fowler, Behold the Man will premiere in a fully staged production in the town of Borja where everyone's laughing at how a town's misfortune turned with just a few well-intended brushstrokes. That I'd love to see.
operachaser.blogspot.com.au
SM: I didn't see as much opera as I wanted to this year, but Paul makes sure that I see some. His blog is great; no one else writes about just opera – let alone about opera all over the world. I learn so much about opera by reading his reviews and tweets.
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2012
21 April 2016
Review: Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Victoria Opera
19 April 201
Her Majesty's Theatre
to 21 April
victorianopera.com.au
With the astonishing soprano Jessica Pratt in the title role, Victoria Opera have re-imagined the 1986 Opera Australia production of Lucia di Lammermoor made for Dame Joan Sutherland.
Gaetano Donizetti's 1885 opera is set in Scotland in the 1700s. Lucia is in love with a handsome young dude (who wears black leather), but is forced to marry the guy she doesn't like (who wears powder blue satin with jewels and feathers) for the sake of her family. Misogyny, miscommunication, madness, blood, death, regret, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Australian Jessica Pratt is better known in Europe than her home country, and has performed the famous bel canto role 20 times around the world. She's exquisite. In a room where you can hear her every breath and inflection, she makes every emotion in the music feel alive and palpable.
I'd love to see more opera in Her Majesty's. In a space lets human voices sound like human voices, and conductor (and VO Artistic Director) Richard Mills creates a sound that must be what this opera would have sounded like 180 years ago. Every instrument and part – every part in the sextet at the end of Act 2 – can be heard for itself and its role in creating the whole. The chorus and orchestra are a wall of complex sound that support the principals. This is so different from spaces like the State Theatre that blur the complexity of live sound.
(Having said that, others told me that having a good seat helped.)
This is how opera should sound; it's magnificent. Nonetheless, by staging an old production, too much of this Lucia supports the cliches that opera is dated, irrelevant and dull.
Even with a new lighting, the design of pillars and stairs would have felt dated in the 1980s. The costumes in hues of brown, green and beige – even the tartan – make every person who wears them look frumpy, uncomfortable and stuck in a community production of Brigadoon.
The direction, while working with the music and finding the heart of the characters, doesn't look at the story though a 2016 lense. A mentally ill woman kills herself because her family don't consider her to be worthy of consideration because she's a woman. There are so many ways to make this story reflect now.
The music in this style of opera reflects genuine but highly exaggerated emotion. When performers try to match this extreme level, their performances can feel false and over done. The impression of love isn't the same as showing love. The opera performances that have moved me are when on-stage emotion is held close, leaving the music to control the emotion, almost like a soundtrack. The music shows what's going on in their heads and hearts, not what they are showing to the world.
None of which make Lucia di Lammermoor any less wonderful to listen to.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Victoria Opera
19 April 201
Her Majesty's Theatre
to 21 April
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| Jessica Pratt. Photo by Jeff Busby |
With the astonishing soprano Jessica Pratt in the title role, Victoria Opera have re-imagined the 1986 Opera Australia production of Lucia di Lammermoor made for Dame Joan Sutherland.
Gaetano Donizetti's 1885 opera is set in Scotland in the 1700s. Lucia is in love with a handsome young dude (who wears black leather), but is forced to marry the guy she doesn't like (who wears powder blue satin with jewels and feathers) for the sake of her family. Misogyny, miscommunication, madness, blood, death, regret, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Australian Jessica Pratt is better known in Europe than her home country, and has performed the famous bel canto role 20 times around the world. She's exquisite. In a room where you can hear her every breath and inflection, she makes every emotion in the music feel alive and palpable.
I'd love to see more opera in Her Majesty's. In a space lets human voices sound like human voices, and conductor (and VO Artistic Director) Richard Mills creates a sound that must be what this opera would have sounded like 180 years ago. Every instrument and part – every part in the sextet at the end of Act 2 – can be heard for itself and its role in creating the whole. The chorus and orchestra are a wall of complex sound that support the principals. This is so different from spaces like the State Theatre that blur the complexity of live sound.
(Having said that, others told me that having a good seat helped.)
This is how opera should sound; it's magnificent. Nonetheless, by staging an old production, too much of this Lucia supports the cliches that opera is dated, irrelevant and dull.
Even with a new lighting, the design of pillars and stairs would have felt dated in the 1980s. The costumes in hues of brown, green and beige – even the tartan – make every person who wears them look frumpy, uncomfortable and stuck in a community production of Brigadoon.
The direction, while working with the music and finding the heart of the characters, doesn't look at the story though a 2016 lense. A mentally ill woman kills herself because her family don't consider her to be worthy of consideration because she's a woman. There are so many ways to make this story reflect now.
The music in this style of opera reflects genuine but highly exaggerated emotion. When performers try to match this extreme level, their performances can feel false and over done. The impression of love isn't the same as showing love. The opera performances that have moved me are when on-stage emotion is held close, leaving the music to control the emotion, almost like a soundtrack. The music shows what's going on in their heads and hearts, not what they are showing to the world.
None of which make Lucia di Lammermoor any less wonderful to listen to.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
19 February 2016
Review: Voyage to the Moon
Voyage to the Moon
Victorian Opera, Musica Viva
16 February 2016
Melbourne Recital Centre
Melb to 19 February, but touring to Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Adelaide
victorianopera.com.au
Tuesday’s audience at Melbourne’s Recital Centre were noisy, but with mumblings of “wonderful” and interjections of “brava”, there’s nothing to complain about. They were cheering Voyage to the Moon, a Victorian Opera and Musica Viva collaboration.
With a new text by director Michael Gow that’s based on a sixteenth century poem, the score includes known and lesser-known Baroque composers including Telemann, Vivaldi, Gluck Orlandini, Handel and de Majo. Musical Director Phoebe Briggs worked with the late Alan Curtis (who died in 2015) and Calvin Bowman to make a score that celebrates Baroque while sounding like it was written for this work.
From the seven-piece chamber orchestra opening notes, it was like hearing something new and was as close to what it must have been like to be in a concert hall listening to a new Vivaldi.
With the magnificent acoustics of the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall making it easy to remember why the sound of unaltered human voices and acoustic instruments make our hearts beat in time, it was an absolute joy to hear Emma Matthews, Sally-Anne Russell and emerging artist Jeremy Kleeman in a venue that adores voices.
While more a performed concert, the design by Christina Smith (set and costume) and Matt Scott (lighting) consistently surprises with the likes of ornate late-Renaissance designs complementing a disco ball.
Tonight is the last chance to see this exquisite work in Melbourne, but it’s touring around Australia and is being recorded by ABC Classic FM.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Victorian Opera, Musica Viva
16 February 2016
Melbourne Recital Centre
Melb to 19 February, but touring to Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Adelaide
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| Voyage to the Moon. Sally-Anne Russell & Emma Matthews. Photo by Jeff Busby |
With a new text by director Michael Gow that’s based on a sixteenth century poem, the score includes known and lesser-known Baroque composers including Telemann, Vivaldi, Gluck Orlandini, Handel and de Majo. Musical Director Phoebe Briggs worked with the late Alan Curtis (who died in 2015) and Calvin Bowman to make a score that celebrates Baroque while sounding like it was written for this work.
From the seven-piece chamber orchestra opening notes, it was like hearing something new and was as close to what it must have been like to be in a concert hall listening to a new Vivaldi.
With the magnificent acoustics of the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall making it easy to remember why the sound of unaltered human voices and acoustic instruments make our hearts beat in time, it was an absolute joy to hear Emma Matthews, Sally-Anne Russell and emerging artist Jeremy Kleeman in a venue that adores voices.
While more a performed concert, the design by Christina Smith (set and costume) and Matt Scott (lighting) consistently surprises with the likes of ornate late-Renaissance designs complementing a disco ball.
Tonight is the last chance to see this exquisite work in Melbourne, but it’s touring around Australia and is being recorded by ABC Classic FM.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
20 February 2015
Review: The Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman
Victorian Opera
14 February 2015
Palais Theatre
to 19 February
victorianopera.com.au
Opera at the magnificent sea-side Palais Theatre with the audience wearing 3D glasses! Victorian Opera are sure giving us a new look at Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.
Close to his home in Norway, captain Daland (Warick Fyfe) takes shelter in a fjord where a huge and red ship pulls alongside. With the promise of riches, he doesn't notice its ghosty appearance and offers his daughter (Senta, Lori Phillips) to the Dutchman Captain (Oskar Hillebrandt, who has sung the role over 400 times in 45 productions around the world). This actually turns out better than expected because on shore Senta dreams of the legend of The Flying Dutchman ghost ship and its dreamy captain, but she already has a suitor, Eric (Bradley Daley).
Dutchman is one of Wagner's early works and is difficult to stage because the first act is set on a moving ship mid-ocean and the final act brings ghosts. The problems have been conquered with a team of animators and designers from 3D Image Design & Creation Deakin Motion. With three screens on the stage, we're brought onto and into the ships and it feels almost like being in a live computer game.
This is combined with a simple and somewhat traditional design of heavy wood (Matt Scott and Christina Smith) that makes it feel like we're at the Palais not long after it opened in 1927. The combination of the two styles works wonderfully to create a solid and unmovable world that's lost to a world of dreams. Unfortunately the costumes feel out of place. Unnecessarily attached to the late nineteenth century, the women look especially frumpy and not part of the stage world that feels so at home in the huge and crumbling Art Deco theatre.
Although the design is what's bringing attention to this show, there's no holding back from Victorian Opera in the creation of Wagner's opera.
The absolute highlight of the work is the Australian Youth Orchestra, who almost overfill the pit that's not much lower than the stage. Conductor Richard Mills leads them in creating a sound that fills the huge space. The sounds's not as rich as a professional orchestra who know Wagner inside out, but they bring a freshness to the music that's rarely heard. (I should also say that I was close enough to hear Mills singing along, so I don't know if the sound travelled to the back of the C Reserve balcony.)
On stage, Fyfe (who was a favourite in Wagner's Das Rheingold in 2013) continues to master Wagner as a singer and an actor, and Phillips holds onto Senta's indecision and dilemma until the last scene. Director Roger Hodgman lets the story come first on the stage by ensuring that the projections only take over when they need to and by letting everyone in the chorus be as important in the telling as those up front.
Wagner's music is demanding to listen to and his stories about how humans and the supernatural/divine interact are equally as demanding. This combination of traditional opera story-telling, young orchestra and whizz-band new technology grasps it all. This is the kind of production that makes old-school opera exciting and fresh.
There are only three performances and the only one left is this Thursday, 19 February.
This was on AussieTheatre.com
Victorian Opera
14 February 2015
Palais Theatre
to 19 February
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| Victorian Opera. The Flying Dutchman. Photo by Jeff Busby |
Opera at the magnificent sea-side Palais Theatre with the audience wearing 3D glasses! Victorian Opera are sure giving us a new look at Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.
Close to his home in Norway, captain Daland (Warick Fyfe) takes shelter in a fjord where a huge and red ship pulls alongside. With the promise of riches, he doesn't notice its ghosty appearance and offers his daughter (Senta, Lori Phillips) to the Dutchman Captain (Oskar Hillebrandt, who has sung the role over 400 times in 45 productions around the world). This actually turns out better than expected because on shore Senta dreams of the legend of The Flying Dutchman ghost ship and its dreamy captain, but she already has a suitor, Eric (Bradley Daley).
Dutchman is one of Wagner's early works and is difficult to stage because the first act is set on a moving ship mid-ocean and the final act brings ghosts. The problems have been conquered with a team of animators and designers from 3D Image Design & Creation Deakin Motion. With three screens on the stage, we're brought onto and into the ships and it feels almost like being in a live computer game.
This is combined with a simple and somewhat traditional design of heavy wood (Matt Scott and Christina Smith) that makes it feel like we're at the Palais not long after it opened in 1927. The combination of the two styles works wonderfully to create a solid and unmovable world that's lost to a world of dreams. Unfortunately the costumes feel out of place. Unnecessarily attached to the late nineteenth century, the women look especially frumpy and not part of the stage world that feels so at home in the huge and crumbling Art Deco theatre.
Although the design is what's bringing attention to this show, there's no holding back from Victorian Opera in the creation of Wagner's opera.
The absolute highlight of the work is the Australian Youth Orchestra, who almost overfill the pit that's not much lower than the stage. Conductor Richard Mills leads them in creating a sound that fills the huge space. The sounds's not as rich as a professional orchestra who know Wagner inside out, but they bring a freshness to the music that's rarely heard. (I should also say that I was close enough to hear Mills singing along, so I don't know if the sound travelled to the back of the C Reserve balcony.)
On stage, Fyfe (who was a favourite in Wagner's Das Rheingold in 2013) continues to master Wagner as a singer and an actor, and Phillips holds onto Senta's indecision and dilemma until the last scene. Director Roger Hodgman lets the story come first on the stage by ensuring that the projections only take over when they need to and by letting everyone in the chorus be as important in the telling as those up front.
Wagner's music is demanding to listen to and his stories about how humans and the supernatural/divine interact are equally as demanding. This combination of traditional opera story-telling, young orchestra and whizz-band new technology grasps it all. This is the kind of production that makes old-school opera exciting and fresh.
There are only three performances and the only one left is this Thursday, 19 February.
This was on AussieTheatre.com
01 October 2014
Review: The Riders
The Riders
Victorian Opera & Malthouse Theatre
23 September 2014
Merlyn Theatre, Coopers Malthouse
to 4 October
malthousetheatre.com.au
Victorian Opera and Malthouse Theatre have created a new mainstage Australian opera. How exciting! And it's an adaption of Tim Winton's The Riders, a dream-fit for opera. This is worth being excited about.
The Riders is a personal and affecting story with a scope that's beyond the reach of its characters. Aussie bloke-man Scully yearns for hot sandy beaches but searches his past in Europe for something more than what he wants. As the line between imagery and reality is blurred, it's never clear if it's all happening in Scully's head or if he's lost in the mythology of the horses and riders who follow him.
Scully is renovating a cottage in Ireland for his pregnant wife, Jennifer, and daughter, Billie, who went back to Freemantle to sell their house. When Billie arrives at the airport alone and traumatised into silence, Scully takes his child and searches for Jennifer in the places they recently stayed in Europe.
Alison Croggon (libretto) and Iain Grandage (music) haven't translated the book for the stage – which belongs in the pages it was written for – but have found a vision of the story that condenses Scully's arc, gives a voice and presence to the book-invisible Jennifer, and leaves only three minor characters for the chorus of three.
Croggon's libretto combines grabs of the poetic text and so-Winton symbolism of the book with a poetry of her own that muses on Winton's subtext and, by having Jennifer on stage and letting the audience know more than Scully, lets the drive of the work be Scully's anguish and his spiralling down rather than about the unanswered questions of Jennifer's disappearance.
Grandage's music lives in the emotions of the characters. From hints of liturgical music to bird songs, galloping riders and the ever-building storm, we can hear their hearts and are drawn into the psyches of people who make dissonant decisions on their quest for harmony. And Richard Mills (conductor) creates a sound balance between stage and pit that lets the singers shine and fills the space in ways that question why we don't see more opera in the Merlyn.
Marion Potts's direction focuses on Scully's immediate story. Working with Dale Ferguson's design of manly wooden saw horses that contrast with Jennifer's world of clean light and soulless airports, it allows for a powerful connection to Scully and Billie, but it also lets Scully's journey to hell feel safe and controlled and there isn't a palpable fear for the child he drags down with him.
In being so connected to Scully, it also seems to underplay its epic and the mythological elements. I could see The Riders in the libretto but despite the constant "horses", The Riders presence isn't clear on the stage. In a similar way, a sense of place is missing. For an Australian story that's set in Ireland, Greece and Paris, the sounds and heat of Fremantle are what make the northern hemisphere ruins and cathedrals so foreign to Scully.
Barry Ryan (Nixon in last year's wonderful Nixon in China) is Scully. He's not as young and scruffy as the Scully readers might expect, but any expectations disappear in moments as he shows the contradictions and torment of man who has to lose everything before he can begin to see a future. The broken-family trio is completed with Jessica Aszodi, Jennifer, and Isabela Calderon, Billie, who bring an honesty to their characters that creates a hope that everyone can be happy, even though we know that their time together has to end.
Jerzy Kozlowski, David Rogers-Smith and Dimity Shepherd are the remarkable chorus who let Grandage play with a trio of voices that demand to be listened to while they watch and comment and become the people Scully needs to find.
The Riders is an exciting and important new piece of Australian opera and theatre. It's grand and intimate and positions Australian opera as something that's uniquely ours without letting go of the traditions and cultures that have brought us to this point. I'd love to see it in a major festival and hope that it returns with new interpretations from opera companies in Australia and all over the world.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Victorian Opera & Malthouse Theatre
23 September 2014
Merlyn Theatre, Coopers Malthouse
to 4 October
malthousetheatre.com.au
 |
| Photo by Jeff Busby |
Victorian Opera and Malthouse Theatre have created a new mainstage Australian opera. How exciting! And it's an adaption of Tim Winton's The Riders, a dream-fit for opera. This is worth being excited about.
The Riders is a personal and affecting story with a scope that's beyond the reach of its characters. Aussie bloke-man Scully yearns for hot sandy beaches but searches his past in Europe for something more than what he wants. As the line between imagery and reality is blurred, it's never clear if it's all happening in Scully's head or if he's lost in the mythology of the horses and riders who follow him.
Scully is renovating a cottage in Ireland for his pregnant wife, Jennifer, and daughter, Billie, who went back to Freemantle to sell their house. When Billie arrives at the airport alone and traumatised into silence, Scully takes his child and searches for Jennifer in the places they recently stayed in Europe.
Alison Croggon (libretto) and Iain Grandage (music) haven't translated the book for the stage – which belongs in the pages it was written for – but have found a vision of the story that condenses Scully's arc, gives a voice and presence to the book-invisible Jennifer, and leaves only three minor characters for the chorus of three.
Croggon's libretto combines grabs of the poetic text and so-Winton symbolism of the book with a poetry of her own that muses on Winton's subtext and, by having Jennifer on stage and letting the audience know more than Scully, lets the drive of the work be Scully's anguish and his spiralling down rather than about the unanswered questions of Jennifer's disappearance.
Grandage's music lives in the emotions of the characters. From hints of liturgical music to bird songs, galloping riders and the ever-building storm, we can hear their hearts and are drawn into the psyches of people who make dissonant decisions on their quest for harmony. And Richard Mills (conductor) creates a sound balance between stage and pit that lets the singers shine and fills the space in ways that question why we don't see more opera in the Merlyn.
Marion Potts's direction focuses on Scully's immediate story. Working with Dale Ferguson's design of manly wooden saw horses that contrast with Jennifer's world of clean light and soulless airports, it allows for a powerful connection to Scully and Billie, but it also lets Scully's journey to hell feel safe and controlled and there isn't a palpable fear for the child he drags down with him.
In being so connected to Scully, it also seems to underplay its epic and the mythological elements. I could see The Riders in the libretto but despite the constant "horses", The Riders presence isn't clear on the stage. In a similar way, a sense of place is missing. For an Australian story that's set in Ireland, Greece and Paris, the sounds and heat of Fremantle are what make the northern hemisphere ruins and cathedrals so foreign to Scully.
Barry Ryan (Nixon in last year's wonderful Nixon in China) is Scully. He's not as young and scruffy as the Scully readers might expect, but any expectations disappear in moments as he shows the contradictions and torment of man who has to lose everything before he can begin to see a future. The broken-family trio is completed with Jessica Aszodi, Jennifer, and Isabela Calderon, Billie, who bring an honesty to their characters that creates a hope that everyone can be happy, even though we know that their time together has to end.
Jerzy Kozlowski, David Rogers-Smith and Dimity Shepherd are the remarkable chorus who let Grandage play with a trio of voices that demand to be listened to while they watch and comment and become the people Scully needs to find.
The Riders is an exciting and important new piece of Australian opera and theatre. It's grand and intimate and positions Australian opera as something that's uniquely ours without letting go of the traditions and cultures that have brought us to this point. I'd love to see it in a major festival and hope that it returns with new interpretations from opera companies in Australia and all over the world.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
26 July 2014
Review: Into the Woods
Into the Woods
Victorian Opera
19 July 2014
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 26 July
victorianopera.com.au
After the success of their Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created Into the Woods (1986), which beat Phantom of the Opera at the Tonys and firmly sits on the top of many favourite-musical lists. Following the success of their 2013 production of Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera have followed with an Into the Woods that's as close to sold out as it can be and even closer to perfection.
With a boldness, a sense of cheekiness and an understated sophistication, Vic Opera tell the tale with Australian twists and a loving understanding of the power of once-upon-a-time story telling. If you have a ticket, don't let it out of your sight because the show's simply unforgettable and reminds us that music theatre should never be a fading and dull copy of another production.
Lapine's book (he also directed the Broadway version) takes characters and well-known stories from the Brothers Grimm's collection of European fairy tales (mid-1800s) and sends them into the woods to find themselves together as part of a bigger story. Act one brings everyone through trials to their happy-ever-after; Act two asks what happens next and is as dark, confronting and blood-filled as traditional fairy tales really are.
Part of the inspiration for Woods was the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by academic and therapist Bruno Bettleheim. Since his death (1990), Bettleheim has been criticised academically and personally, but his book continues to influence and inspire countless writers. Internationally successful Australian children's/young adult writer John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began series) is among those who recommend it. It's partly a Freudian psychoanalytic analysis of Fairy Tales (mostly the Grimm's collection) and the rest is a discussion about the psychological impact of fairy tales on children – or the importance of telling and re-telling stories. At the most simple level, we tell stories to understand the world.
But there's nothing simple about Into the Woods. From its surface of fairy tales and gorgeous syncopated rhymes (that Sondheim and his lyrics!), layers are torn away and complexities revealed until grown ups find themselves crying because they see it as a story about themselves. We re-tell stories to understand the world and our place in it.
And the music's by Sondheim, so it shares the every emotion without a word being spoken.
While one of the genius notes of Into the Woods is the complexity of its re-telling of known tales, much of the magnificence of Victorian Opera's production is how director Stuart Maunder lets the story be told without over complication or sentimentality, while supporting the comedy and freeing it from the so-well-known Broadway production that so many of us have seen because it was filmed for TV.
Adam Gardnir's design of bare trees creates an ever-changing wood that's comforting and familiar and terrifying and bone-like (with perhaps a nod to Freud), and the woods are given depth, darkness and magic flashes by Philip Lethlean's lighting. Which are all an ideal world for Harriet Oxley's costumes that take the shape of pantomime-fairy-tale costumes, but are filled with bold colour and geometric shapes that help tell a story that's for now and forever.
Conductor Benjamin Northey and sound designer Jim Atkins create a recordable pit–stage balance that uses the amplification to emphasise the unique sound of each singer, and helps to enforce the idea that stories are best told by human voices.
Vocally and emotionally the cast nail it. While Christina O'Neil (Baker's wife), Rowan Witt (Jack), Queenie van de Zandt (Witch), Josie Lane (Red Riding Hood) and Lucy Maunder (Cinderella) lead the way, everyone brings a real bit of themselves to their roles and every character has their moment of pure enchantment.
The only disappointment about Into the Woods is that it has so few shows and the tickets left can be counted on one hand (hint: try for singles). With producers letting sub-standard shows run for months in big theatres, surely there are ways to bring this production to a bigger audience. #IWish.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
Victorian Opera
19 July 2014
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 26 July
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| Photo by Jeff Busby |
After the success of their Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created Into the Woods (1986), which beat Phantom of the Opera at the Tonys and firmly sits on the top of many favourite-musical lists. Following the success of their 2013 production of Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera have followed with an Into the Woods that's as close to sold out as it can be and even closer to perfection.
With a boldness, a sense of cheekiness and an understated sophistication, Vic Opera tell the tale with Australian twists and a loving understanding of the power of once-upon-a-time story telling. If you have a ticket, don't let it out of your sight because the show's simply unforgettable and reminds us that music theatre should never be a fading and dull copy of another production.
Lapine's book (he also directed the Broadway version) takes characters and well-known stories from the Brothers Grimm's collection of European fairy tales (mid-1800s) and sends them into the woods to find themselves together as part of a bigger story. Act one brings everyone through trials to their happy-ever-after; Act two asks what happens next and is as dark, confronting and blood-filled as traditional fairy tales really are.
Part of the inspiration for Woods was the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by academic and therapist Bruno Bettleheim. Since his death (1990), Bettleheim has been criticised academically and personally, but his book continues to influence and inspire countless writers. Internationally successful Australian children's/young adult writer John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began series) is among those who recommend it. It's partly a Freudian psychoanalytic analysis of Fairy Tales (mostly the Grimm's collection) and the rest is a discussion about the psychological impact of fairy tales on children – or the importance of telling and re-telling stories. At the most simple level, we tell stories to understand the world.
But there's nothing simple about Into the Woods. From its surface of fairy tales and gorgeous syncopated rhymes (that Sondheim and his lyrics!), layers are torn away and complexities revealed until grown ups find themselves crying because they see it as a story about themselves. We re-tell stories to understand the world and our place in it.
And the music's by Sondheim, so it shares the every emotion without a word being spoken.
 |
| Photo by Jeff Busby |
While one of the genius notes of Into the Woods is the complexity of its re-telling of known tales, much of the magnificence of Victorian Opera's production is how director Stuart Maunder lets the story be told without over complication or sentimentality, while supporting the comedy and freeing it from the so-well-known Broadway production that so many of us have seen because it was filmed for TV.
Adam Gardnir's design of bare trees creates an ever-changing wood that's comforting and familiar and terrifying and bone-like (with perhaps a nod to Freud), and the woods are given depth, darkness and magic flashes by Philip Lethlean's lighting. Which are all an ideal world for Harriet Oxley's costumes that take the shape of pantomime-fairy-tale costumes, but are filled with bold colour and geometric shapes that help tell a story that's for now and forever.
Conductor Benjamin Northey and sound designer Jim Atkins create a recordable pit–stage balance that uses the amplification to emphasise the unique sound of each singer, and helps to enforce the idea that stories are best told by human voices.
Vocally and emotionally the cast nail it. While Christina O'Neil (Baker's wife), Rowan Witt (Jack), Queenie van de Zandt (Witch), Josie Lane (Red Riding Hood) and Lucy Maunder (Cinderella) lead the way, everyone brings a real bit of themselves to their roles and every character has their moment of pure enchantment.
The only disappointment about Into the Woods is that it has so few shows and the tickets left can be counted on one hand (hint: try for singles). With producers letting sub-standard shows run for months in big theatres, surely there are ways to bring this production to a bigger audience. #IWish.
This was on AussieTheatre.com.
01 June 2014
Review: La traviata
La traviata
Victorian Opera in association with Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini
17 May 2014
Her Majesty's Theatre
to 29 May
victorianopera.com.au
Victorian Opera's much-anticipated La traviata is presented in association with Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini (the Pergolesi Spontini Foundataion) who run an opera house in Jesi, Italy, that was built in the late 1700s. You can imagine how much the original 1992 production oozed with connection to place and time and culture, but I'm not sure why Victorian Opera transported it to Australia.
La traviata is the opera non-opera fans know. It's the story of courtesan Violetta who gives up the life of sexy whoring and lavish parties for lover Alfredo and a quiet life the country. Alfie's dad isn't impressed, especially as his daughter is trying to be respectable and having a brother associated an un-unmarried prossie is a problem. But Violetta is all heart and gives up her love and has plot-convenienet consumption.
With the original director, Henning Brockhaus, and the famous – extraordinarily beautiful angled mirror with painted floor clothes – design by the late Czech designer Josef Svoboda, it's the Italian production with an Australian cast.
And the cast are stunning.
Australian Soprano Jessica Pratt is best known in Europe and her Australian debut as Violetta is astonishing. This is singing that stops you dead and dares you not to listen. With clarity like an untouched mountain spring, she finds the emotion in the music and lets it float into our hearts.
Italian tenor Alessandro Scotto di Luzio captures the appeal of Alfredo and he and Pratt sound like they were meant to sing together. But they rely on the music to show their love and haven't been directed to show their unstoppable passion, leaving them looking awkward rather then lovers who are prepared to give up everything to be together.
Much better in this respect is Jose Carbo as Alfredo's father, who show the unbearable loss in Act III.
And Kirilie Blythman, as servant Annina, and Dimity Shepherd, as courtesan Flora, bring more than wonderful voices to the stage.
The sound of this opera is what makes it so worth seeing. Richard Mills's conducting and musical direction brings out the best in all the voices and the chorus, and he ensures that the full orchestra supports and never overwhelms the singers. It's a production you want a recording of.
What's disappointing is that this production never feels or looks like it was made for this cast. There are unflattering costumes made to fit rather than designed for the performers, and ridiculous false beards; the chorus sound magnificent but look uncomfortable and seem unsure of their role on the stage, as do the dancers who swirl around them with little connection to the story; and even when the design reveals visual treats like its stunning lawn of flowers, the connection between design and production gets lost.
As a whole, I saw nothing in this Traviata that I haven't seen before and wonder what we'd have got if an Australian director had been given the freedom to create a production hat resonates in the here and now.
But go to hear Jessica Pratt.
This was in AussieTheatre.com.
Victorian Opera in association with Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini
17 May 2014
Her Majesty's Theatre
to 29 May
victorianopera.com.au
 |
| Photo by Jeff Busby |
La traviata is the opera non-opera fans know. It's the story of courtesan Violetta who gives up the life of sexy whoring and lavish parties for lover Alfredo and a quiet life the country. Alfie's dad isn't impressed, especially as his daughter is trying to be respectable and having a brother associated an un-unmarried prossie is a problem. But Violetta is all heart and gives up her love and has plot-convenienet consumption.
With the original director, Henning Brockhaus, and the famous – extraordinarily beautiful angled mirror with painted floor clothes – design by the late Czech designer Josef Svoboda, it's the Italian production with an Australian cast.
And the cast are stunning.
Australian Soprano Jessica Pratt is best known in Europe and her Australian debut as Violetta is astonishing. This is singing that stops you dead and dares you not to listen. With clarity like an untouched mountain spring, she finds the emotion in the music and lets it float into our hearts.
Italian tenor Alessandro Scotto di Luzio captures the appeal of Alfredo and he and Pratt sound like they were meant to sing together. But they rely on the music to show their love and haven't been directed to show their unstoppable passion, leaving them looking awkward rather then lovers who are prepared to give up everything to be together.
Much better in this respect is Jose Carbo as Alfredo's father, who show the unbearable loss in Act III.
And Kirilie Blythman, as servant Annina, and Dimity Shepherd, as courtesan Flora, bring more than wonderful voices to the stage.
The sound of this opera is what makes it so worth seeing. Richard Mills's conducting and musical direction brings out the best in all the voices and the chorus, and he ensures that the full orchestra supports and never overwhelms the singers. It's a production you want a recording of.
What's disappointing is that this production never feels or looks like it was made for this cast. There are unflattering costumes made to fit rather than designed for the performers, and ridiculous false beards; the chorus sound magnificent but look uncomfortable and seem unsure of their role on the stage, as do the dancers who swirl around them with little connection to the story; and even when the design reveals visual treats like its stunning lawn of flowers, the connection between design and production gets lost.
As a whole, I saw nothing in this Traviata that I haven't seen before and wonder what we'd have got if an Australian director had been given the freedom to create a production hat resonates in the here and now.
But go to hear Jessica Pratt.
This was in AussieTheatre.com.
23 December 2013
What I loved 2013: the Best of Melbourne Theatre
I was determined to see more than 100 shows this year and on my rough count I made it to 187. (If I count Life and Times as three shows, I get to 190; and if I count all the short plays, I can bluff a 250+!)
Over December, we've heard what 51 people from Melbourne's theatre community loved in 2013, but here are my What I Loved awards.
There's still nothing shiny to take away.
As always, my criteria is simply what I loved the most; what shows and artists I remembered beyond the final applause.
Some were easy picks, while others were impossible to choose between and there are shows that I can't believe didn't make my own list!
Outstanding Artists 2013
WRITING
Patricia Cornelius for Savages, fortyfivedownstairs
Special mentions
May Jasper for Not a very good story, La Mama
Patricia Cornelius for Savages, fortyfivedownstairs
 |
| Patricia Cornelius |
May Jasper for Not a very good story, La Mama
Lally Katz for Stories I want to tell you in person, Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir
Sarah Hamilton and Justine Campbell for They saw a thylacine, Melbourne Fringe
DESIGN
 |
| Sunday in the Park with George |
Anna Cordingley for Sunday in the Park with George, Victoria Opera
and
Kate Davis for Story of O, The Rabble at NEON
and
Kate Davis for Story of O, The Rabble at NEON
Special mention
Eugyeene Teh, design; Russell Goldsmith, sound; Rob Sowinski, lighting for Palace of the End, Theatre Works
LIGHTING
PERFORMANCE
 |
| The Sovereign Wife |
Hannah Norris for Palace of the End, Theatre Works
and
Mary Helen Sassman for Story of O, The Rabble at NEON
and
Ash Flanders for The Sovereign Wife, Sisters Grimm at NEON
and
The cast of Death in the Family, Ward Theatre Company
Special mentions
(or who to watch out for, because wow!)
Peter Paltos
Emily Milledge
Emily Tomlins
Genevieve Giuffre
DIRECTION
 |
| Palace of the End |
Leticia Caceres for Constellations, MTC (and a special mention for The Tall Man, La Mama)
and
Emma Valente for Story of O, The Rabble at NEON
Special mentions
Daniel Clarke for Palace of the End, Theatre Works
Daniel Lammin for Columbine, MUST
Stephen Nicolazzo for Psycho Beach Party
EVERYTHING THEY DO ROCKS
 |
| Summertime in the Garden of Eden |
Marg Horwell for her astonishing design for Constellations, MTC; By their own hands, The Hayloft Project at NEON; Savages, fortyfivedownstairs; and Summertime in the garden of Eden, Sisters Grimm and Theatre Works.
Marg consistently bring a visual narrative that's far beyond what the writers could ever have imagined, but makes the world look like it could never have been anything else.
 |
| Story of O |
and
The Rabble for Story of O at NEON, and Room of Regret, Theatre Works at Melbourne Festival.
I've run out of words to describe this company. I love them to pieces. All I know is that there's nothing on a Rabble stage that feels out of place. For a company with such a complex improvisational development process, they let process be process and only bring what's absolutely necessary to the stage.
Outstanding Productions 2012
CABARET
 |
| Between the Cracks |
Stranger, Geraldine Quinn at Melbourne Fringe.
COMMERCIAL SHOW
Constellations, MTC
and
War Horse, National Theatre of Great Britain and Global Creatures in association with Arts Centre Melbourne
Constellations, MTC
and
War Horse, National Theatre of Great Britain and Global Creatures in association with Arts Centre Melbourne
MUSICAL
Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera
and
 |
| Flowerchildren: The Mamas and Papas Story |
Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera
and
Wolf Creek, the Musical, at Melbourne Fringe
COMEDY
 |
| Happiness is a bedside table |
Happiness is a bedside table, Hannah Gadsby at Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Special mentions
 |
| Slutmonster and friends |
Slutmonster and Friends at Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Famoucity!, Lessons with Luis at at Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Famoucity!, Lessons with Luis at at Melbourne International Comedy Festival
And the Melbourne Ring Cycle was very cool, even the not-for-review dress rehearsals.
BEST OF THE BEST
 |
| The Rape of Lucrece |
The Rape of Lucrece, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arts Projects Australia
Einstein on the Beach, Arts Centre Melbourne, Pomegranate Arts
Story of O, The Rabble at NEON
The Sovereign Wife, Sisters Grimm at NEON
Kids Killing Kids, MKA and Q Theatre Company at Melbourne Fringe
MY FAVOURITE SHOW OF 2013
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