Aida

(Opera Australia)

This version of Verdi's 'Aida' has received much publicity because Opera Australia has eschewed traditional sets and scenery and replaced them with huge digital panels.

So, does it work? The panels slide and twist and turn and display impressive images. They don't so much replace sets rather they emphasise the mood of the plot at each stage. All this movement is distracting at times even if the images are often stunning. The panels seemed to work best in the final Act when together with superb lighting they came closest to representing a traditional set. The triumphal march scene on the other hand was not a march and not especially triumphant either.

One negative of these panels is that the singers tended to a static performance as though staging a concert; not acting out a story. To my untrained ear the singing was of a high quality. I wish I could say the same for the choreography in the numerous dance sequences. They struck me as very peculiar and I had to suppress an urge to giggle on a number of occasions.

Choreography aside I enjoyed the spectacle.

✮✮✮

A night at the opera on the harbour

The stage ahead of the performance of La Boheme

Andrew kindly invited me to accompany him and his partner R to La Boheme; this year's Opera on Sydney Harbour. (It wasn't a Freebie; I paid my way.)

As with each of these Operas on the Harbour the emphasis is on spectacle rather than a traditional production of the works.

In this case the setting is updated to the 1960s culminating in 1968 following the Paris student riots. This re-setting worked reasonably well to my mind.

Apart from the primary aim to make a profit and I imagine that Opera Australia hopes these annual productions bring a new audience to Opera and apparently surveys indicate that the audiences by the harbour include significant numbers of first timers. I wonder whether they become repeat attendees and, more importantly, start to attend productions during the Opera season? In the Andrew's and R's case I believe they enjoyed the spectacle - albeit in some discomfort on the hard plastic seats - as one-off event but are not won over to becoming regular attendees.

The company taking its bows at the conclusion of La Boheme.

✮✮✮

Elektra

The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Centre, before curtain up

On our remaining night in New York we decided to see the Opera. Had we chosen earlier nights we could have seen Puccini's Madama Butterfly or La Boheme; two operas with which I am very familiar but on our last night the programmed performance by the Metropolitan Opera was Richard Strauss' Elektra; totally unfamiliar to me.

The music didn't appeal to me and visually the staging was not exciting but I could appreciate the quality of the singers and the orchestral performance. I'd rather have seen the Puccini but I do know now what it is like to attend the Metropolitan Opera.

Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House

The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca

The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca

I have written before about my special affinity for Puccini's opera 'Tosca'. It's particular blend of passion, romance and tragedy seems to strike a chord with gay men. The opera was a favourite of my late Father who used it - and amusingly some of my late Mother's lottery winnings - to expose me to opera for the first time at a tender pre-teenage year.

I have seen the opera live and on film numerous times but this is my first exposure to a cinema screened live stage production from The Metropolitan Opera (New York). As I would expect from that company the production is superb. I was quite emotional by the end.

The police chief Scarpia - much the worse off for his encounter with Tosca in the image above - was performed in this production by Georgian singer George Gagnidze. I didn't know the name previously but his performance was brilliant, matched pretty well by all the principals.

This is Opera

I'm really enjoying 'This is Opera' screening in Australia on the Foxtel Arts channel. The host, Ramon Gener, is a real live wire full of energy and enthusiasm who has the most interesting ways of demonstrating the points he wants to make about the operas he highlights. In the latest episode, for example, he used the introduction of overhead serving in tennis by 1920s champion Bill Tilden to illustrate the dramatic impact on opera of the introduction of bel canto singing.

It doesn't hurt the series that Gener is a bit of looker.

Gener switches, with apparent ease, between his native Spanish to interviewing in Italian, French, German and (I think) Portuguese. He hosts the program in a rapid fire English but I have to admit I watch the series with closed captions switched on primarily because his pronunciation of my language is at times curious.

None the less, I look forward to viewing the show each week.

A clockwork butterfly

Butterfly is married

Tonight, as regular as clockwork, a couple of minutes after 8pm I heard through my closed windows, the dull thud, thud, thud of fireworks going off. For the past three weeks, Tuesday to Sunday inclusive, those fireworks have sounded at virtually the same time. It is the moment that Butterfly marries her Pinkerton.

Opera on the Harbour is being staged adjacent to the Botanic Gardens about four kilometres from my home, I guess, as the crow flies. Each of the three outdoor opera seasons has had fireworks as an added inducement. In the first year the fireworks concluded the performance of La Traviata. The second year the fireworks came early in the final act of Carmen. This year the fireworks come at the earliest time of the evening; that point in Act 1 of Madama Butterfly when Butterfly has married Lieutenant Pinkerton.

This year the season has been marred by rain. It rained the night I attended and it rained tonight and it has rained on many of the nights. I wondered whether the performance could continue the night I attended and marvelled that it did and I have marvelled on subsequent nights that the performance was going ahead in even heavier, steadier rain. The sound of the fireworks told me so. Regularly at a couple of minutes past 8pm.

Tomorrow night is the final scheduled night. More rain is forecast. I won't be home at 8pm to hear that thud, thud, thud as I have a play to attend. I may have heard my last Opera on the Harbour fireworks as the gossip is that the seasons will not continue. If so, I will miss those fireworks but the compensation is that there seem so many marketing and special occasion excuses for fireworks on other nights of the year.

Dressed to kill

The Opera on Sydney Harbour attracts a diverse audience in age and dress. There were a few dressed quite formally but the fashion of most in attendance last night would be described as smart casual or just plain casual. Once the rains came the ponchos appeared and the audience turned into a sea of plastic.

However the fashions were on display pre the opera whilst the sun was in the sky and the rains had not yet arrived. This gentleman was certainly not formal. Whether he was smart casual or plain casual is a matter of opinion. Or perhaps you think he was lairy?

Scarf, black shirt, yellow pants & sock less(?)

Madama Butterfly

This year's Opera on Sydney Harbour is Puccini's Madama Butterfly the story of the 15 years old Japanese girl taken as a bride by a visiting US naval officer who remains faithful to her foreign husband even as it becomes clear he has abandoned her once his visit has ended.

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour Madama Butterfly

In this interpretation, if I have understood it correctly, the events are updated to contemporary Japanese history with the first act occurring before the disastrous tsunami and the second/third acts taking place post the tsunami.

Pinkerton is a property developer rather than a naval officer and displaced persons inhabit his damaged and unfinished properties post the tsunami. The Bonze becomes a gangster godfather type figure. For the most part I found this interpretation very convincing.

A grassy hill is the stage for the first act with an outdoor wedding and reception. As it happened steady rain fell for the most of this act but the performers did not miss a beat.

The performance space 30 minutes before commencement of the opera

The rain tumbled during an extended interval...

... as stage hands converted the grassy hill into damaged/unfinished property development for Acts 2 and 3.

Alternates perform the key characters. I wish I knew which alternates were performing tonight as the Butterfly was quite brilliant and Pinkerton and Suzuki were very strong.

The amplified sound was perhaps a little loud, especially in Act 1, but otherwise this was as enjoyable and interesting a Madama Butterfly as I have seen.

★★★★

Carmen

Opera Australia

Georges Bizet's opera Carmen tells the tale of the Spanish soldier who turns his back on his career, family and girlfriend all for his doomed infatuation with a cigarette factory worker and part time smuggler, Carmencita.

In so many of the most popular operas including, Aida, La Traviata, La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot one or more characters die. In all of those I usually have a sense of sympathy or sadness for the death(s) especially when the opera has been well sung and acted by the performers.

I rarely, in fact I think never, have that sense of sympathy for the inevitable climactic death in Carmen. For close to three hours I will have sat through what I think is some of the most glorious music in opera but in those last ten minutes or so with Don Jose pleading his love Carmen I invariably have a sense of irritation. Just face facts Jose, I think to myself, and get on with the job. After all, Carmen is a self interested opportunistic seductress and Jose is a weak and unfaithful man. Why should I feel kindly to either?

Opera Australia's production has a nice appearance in terms of the set, the chorus and the major support singers but I felt a little let down by the three principal singers. Close my eyes and Bradley Daley makes for an accomplished Jose with a strongish voice but open my eyes and he is poor fit with Milijana Nikolic's Carmen. Ms Nikolic is an Amazon by comparison and sadly for Daley almost every other male on stage is taller, leaner and more dashing than he. Ms Nikolic possesses a deep voice that was not entirely to my taste in this role. Shane Lowrencev seemed in less than peak form this weekend as Escamillo. Arriving on stage by horse, I think the horse won.

I've enjoyed other productions of Carmen more than this one. Perhaps others in the audience felt differently from me as the concluding ovation seemed pretty enthusiastic.
★★★

La Boheme

Opera Australia must be very grateful to Giacomo Puccini. Three Puccini operas; La Boheme, Madama Butterfy and Tosca regularly appear in the season and are guaranteed to be box office successes whilst a fourth opera, Turandot, is performed less often but also draws the conservative and less adventurous opera lovers like myself who enjoy the old war horse productions but who run a mile from obscure baroque or medieval or the like offerings.

More recently companies have tinkered with these standard operas with varying success. An Opera Australia production of Tosca several years back, based on an interpretation from the north of England, completely changed its settings and time thus greatly polarising audiences. I was both perplexed by the interpretation and yet enjoyed the production mostly because of the outstanding performances of the principal singers.

Famously Baz Lurhmann updated La Boheme for Opera Australia from its traditional end of 19th century setting (it premiered on 1 February 1896) to the Paris of the 1950s employing young and cinematically attractive singers. This refreshed the work and was mostly successful, being not too deviant from the beloved classical interpretation unlike the aforementioned Tosca which offended too many traditional punters. Lurhmann, later went a step further staging La Boheme on Broadway as though it were a musical and he employed three rotating ensemble casts to manage the workload of an eight times per week performance schedule.

And so this year La Boheme is back on the schedule.

La Boheme, Opera Australia

It is not quite a traditional production. The setting has moved from late 19th century to, my guess is, the mid 1930s. Acts 1 and 4 look pretty traditional except that the costumes are clearly neither 19th century nor 1950s. Otherwise there is nothing to suggest that we are anywhere but in a garret somewhere in Paris. Not that I noticed, anyway. The giveaway break from the traditional is Act 2 and to a lesser extent Act 3. Act 2, the jolly Cafe Momus Act, appears very much to be set in Berlin in the 1930s. There is a sprinkling of Nazi officers in what is a lecherous cafe and even the Hitler Youth make an appearance in the Act's climactic moments. There are numerous images redolent of the Berlin cafes of the era. Now this setting makes for some arresting images - and works on that level - but otherwise it seems to have little connection with where the plot lies.

Act 3 is sparse and snowbound - so in that regard appears traditional - but there are still a couple of Nazi references; albeit rather low key.

This production has one interval between Acts 2 and 3. The changes between the other Acts were handled by way of a transition without interval but with quite different levels of success at last Saturday's matinee. The transition between Acts 1 and 2, with set adjustments and all, was done with a blackout and the curtain remained raised. It was effected smoothly and quickly. A successful transition. The transition between Acts 3 and 4 was another matter. This time the curtain was lowered, a brief blackout followed and then the lights raised but a long delay ensued whilst the audience listened firstly to the noise of the set changing and then became restless and talkative. An unsuccessful transition I believe. The mood established until then had been broken. Perhaps it could have been better to dim the lights but leave the curtain raised enabling the audience to view the scene change. This method is used occasionally in stage dramas and seems to work OK.

For mine the success of an opera performance lies in the orchestra and the singers. If I'm moved by their work then those other curiosities I mentioned are of less concern to me.

In this instance work of the six principal singers and of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra was wonderful.

I particularly single out Ji-Min Park whose Rodolfo was glorious and powerful of voice and also noteworthy were Natalie Aroyan (Mimi) and Giorgio Caoduro (Marcello); all three supported well by  Shane Lowrencev (Shaunard), Sharon Prero (Musetta) and Richard Anderson (Colline). The whole company, children and all, contributed to a memorable musical experience.

I've seen Mimi die plenty of times in Sydney and at Covent Garden as well as on film. Musically, this was as good and moving as any of them.
★★★★

Madama Butterfly

(Opera Australia)

Our original tickets for 'Madama Butterfly' clashed with our next scheduled play at Belvoir Street Theatre. The scheduled conclusion of the Opera and the scheduled commencement of the play are 25 minutes apart. Now there may be a person and a time of day where a dash from the Opera House to Belvoir Street could be completed in that time but I'm not that person and a Saturday afternoon is not that time.

It was the Opera that got rescheduled. Arriving at the Opera Theatre last Thursday evening and squeezing past a dozen or so seated patrons I was impressed to find the reassigned seat was perfect; dead centre of the row and with good, close sight lines. My self congratulation on having been upgraded so grandly was rudely disturbed minutes later when a very formally dressed couple - it transpires the reassigned performance was Opening Night with Governor Bashir and her retinue in official attendance - appeared at my side informing me I was occupying their seat. (I hasten to add, this was not the Governor's seats.)

A quick check of my ticket and I sheepishly made my way back past the same patrons to the correct seat. At least I had been in the correct row but my entry had been thoughtless. Distracted for unremembered reasons I had just headed for the seat with same number as the entry door number for my row. I don't know why, it was just one of those things.

Sitting amongst scattered Black Tie gents wearing jeans and white trainers I must have looked for all the world like a fish out of water; or more ominously a potential terrorist. Merciful relief followed shortly with the dimming of the lights and the Opera was underway.

Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly is one Opera's best loved works. The American naval Lieutenant Pinkerton takes the fifteen years old Cio Cio San (Butterfly) as his token bride for the duration of his ship's visit to Nagasaki. Just a little bit of local colour and fun for Pinkerton but for Butterfly it is love so serious and unwavering that she would adopt her groom's religion in place of her traditional beliefs.

Once Pinkerton's visit is over and despite evidence to the contrary, Butterfly is convinced that he will, one day, return to her and to their marriage.

This production benefits from having Hiromi Omura perform as Butterfly and not just because she is Japanese. Omura gave a powerful and dramatic performance which was rapturously received on the night. She was excellent. Despite my familiarity with the plot which could have had me viewing events passively I teared up at the Opera's dramatic conclusion. That was entirely the effect of Omura's performance, I believe.

James Egglestone was attractively caddish as Pinkerton and Dominica Matthews stood out as Butterfly's servant Suzuki.

Madama Butterfly can be a bit of an old war house. I have seen the same staging of it several times over a long period and I was a little worried beforehand that I would be bored to see it yet one more time but I really enjoyed this performance.

 ★★★★

There's Aida and there's Aida

A few weeks back I wrote about attending Opera Australia's Aida. Only a week later the SBS network, coincidentally or malevolently, screened a performance of Aida from La Scala in Milan. The performance dated from around 2008 and was in the presence of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I watched that screening out of interest as a comparison with the performance I had attended in Sydney. I only intended to watch for a short time not expecting that I could stomach a full repeat so soon but ended up watching it in full.

The comparisons with OA's production were not flattering to us. La Scala clearly has the advantage over Sydney's Opera House in terms of stage space. Its epic production was both crowded and spacious at the same time whereas the Sydney staging was simply crowded with limited free movement possible.

It must be wonderful for the artists to have so much space to work with at La Scala yet at the same time it must give them headaches designing a staging that isn't lost in all that spaciousness.

The La Scala set was stunning. It was massive but it was so, so stylish. Ours looked like Ziegfeld Follies tizziness by comparison.

This afternoon I am attending OA's staging of South Pacific. I suspect that La Scala has never staged a Broadway musical and may never feel the need to do so.

Aida

(Australian Opera)

Giuseppe Verdi's 'Aida'. Amneris, Pharoah's daughter, is in love with Radames, an Egyptian army captain, himself secretly in love with Amneris' handmaiden, Aida, an Ethiopian slave. This menage a trois is unlikely to end well especially as Egypt and Ethiopia are about to go to war with each other. For that matter, Italian Grand Opera rarely ends well for its main characters.

In a sense this production didn't begin well for me. The Director is Graeme Murphy and his interpretation had my imagination running at a tangent from the start. At the opening five Egyptian Gods - human bodies with bird-like heads - glide across the stage on a moving pathway. Their posture and hand movements no doubt are intended to echo ancient hieroglyphics but my first thought was of signalling traffic police. Radames enters the stage guided by the 'traffic police' and is greeted by a huge slightly curved sword descending from on high and hovering just out of his reach. The gentle yet firm upward curve of the sword made me think immediately of a giant erect penis. Don't worry, its me not you.

Every time that damn erect object returned I had the same thought. Later the penis...I mean, sword...hovers near the pyramid as though waiting to be fellated. Then in the triumphal march scene Radames eventually appears with his erect penis...er, sword...in hand.

Enough of my demented thoughts, though, as this is a fine presentation of the opera. Radames is sung by Rosario La Spina and his Aida by Latonia Moore. I don't have Marcellous' knowledge of musicianship or voice but in my opinion La Spina and Moore perform admirably. They are well matched with their strong classically Italian sounding voices. They are also a match physically which is a bit of a pity because to maintain the illusion of romantic lovers they are best viewed through closed eyes. The sound, though, is superb. Amneris is sung by Milijana Nikolic whose deeper (mezzo soprano?) voice is less appealing to me but that is just a personal preference.

Murphy's production edges near 1940s MGM musical overkill at times but also has its moments of restraint perhaps best exemplified in the opening scene of Act 3 which is mostly low key and beautiful, that is, once the topless female dancer swimming in the front-of-stage pool has departed the scene.

I have penalised the production one star for the traffic police and giant penis.

☆☆☆☆

Chandelier and fireworks

An outdoor season of the opera La Traviata is currently underway in Sydney. A stage has been constructed on Sydney Harbour itself with the audience seated on the foreshore at Mrs Macquarie's Chair. A massive chandelier (9 metres x 9 metres) studded with more than 10,000 Swarovski crystals hangs over the stage.

All this is being staged a couple of kilometres from where I live as the crow flies. Every evening at 7.45pm a short but brilliant fireworks display lights up the view from my home (and sends a few sonic booms my way too). This display I believe marks the commencement of the performance. Then at around 10.20pm there is a second, smaller display which I guess marks the conclusion of the performance.

This photograph downloaded from the net is of the chandelier being put into place before the season commenced.

The Marriage of Figaro

Opera Australia

I have to make an admission. I had never heard Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro' in full nor had I ever seen a production of it prior to this week. I had some vague notions as to it's plot and knew that I was familiar with, maybe I should say had heard, several of it's most popular arias.

The opportunity to finally see/hear the work arose through my subscription to the Belvoir Theatre's 2012 drama season when they offered discount seats under some arrangement with Opera Australia. I already have a subscription to Opera Australia's 2012 season but mine does not include Mozart's opera and given that this offer was for A reserve seating at half the price of what I had paid for my subscription it seemed too good to pass up. I'm glad I went.

In case you have even less knowledge than I of the Opera, the essential story is that Figaro and Susanna (pictured above), both in the service of Count Almaviva, intend to marry but impediments include that the Count wants to have his way with Susanna; another character, Marcellina, wants to have her way with Figaro; the Countess wants her husband back and several others have romantic intentions of their own. As one expects in comedies all ends happily ever after but only following a series of misunderstandings, complications and in this case some gender bending callisthenics.

This production updates the action to modern times which didn't worry me given that I was so unfamiliar with it all anyway. Mozart takes his time relating the story. I gather there are cuts in this production but it still took three and a half hours to unfold. Clearly Mozart didn't have to worry that his audience would be racing home to view that night's episode of 'Neighbours' on television.

I don't have the musical knowledge to offer an informed critique but for those who prefer that level of assessment Marcellous fits the bill here.

The audience last night lapped it up giving the cast and orchestra a rousing ovation. I thought that Joshua Bloom (Figaro) and Taryn Fiebig (Susanna) were terrific in their roles. The set design was interesting with each scene change signalled by the set sliding across the stage from right to left. Although slightly creaky in its movement, the scene changes were a minor fascination all of their own as the set never backtracked the entire evening.

There is a strange (to me) trend in Opera nowadays to have singers drop down at some point to sing their lungs out whilst prone on stage. At different times, five (I think it was) of the singers last night sang in this position. It must be very difficult for them.

Turandot

(Opera Australia)

Puccini's final opera about the Peking Princess who tests her suitors with three riddles and if they fail, as all have, has them beheaded. Charming.

I think this is essentially the same production I saw first about fifteen years ago at the Opera House. Then it seemed as lavish to me as a 1940s MGM musical but now it seems...well...exotic. The small Opera Theatre stage is packed solid in the opening act much like the scene in the Japanese wave video which by coincidence Andrew posted the day before my attendance.

It's a pity Puccini didn't live to complete this work. He might have seen the hit that the final act opening aria Nessun Dorma was to become and so might have provided a musical break to allow for audience reaction. On Saturday, as I have observed previously, the aria was over and Ping, Pang and Pong were already twirling around the stage attempting to discover Calaf's name, before segments of the audience realising the big moment had passed delivered a burst of applause over what was effectively the next scene.

I know that the opera was completed from notes that Puccini had outlined but I wonder too if he might have done something about the ending. I always feel having spent the best part of three hours resisting every suitor vehemently, including Calaf, that Turandot's abrupt conversion to love at virtually the last minute doesn't ring true. Then again most operas to my limited knowledge fail to ring true in some way.

Just lie back and enjoy the music and the singing, which I did on Saturday. As the ambitious Calaf, Rosario La Spina sounded fine to my layman's ear though unfortunately to my eyes his body type is not modern day leading man material. The audience, presumably numbering plenty with superior knowledge about the craft than I have, reacted strongly in their applause to Daria Masiero (Liu), Andrew Moran (Ping), Graeme Macfarlane (Pang) and David Corcoran (Pong). Overall the audience  reacted warmly to the whole performance.

Interval at the Opera

The upstairs bar at the Opera Theatre during the first interval for 'Turandot'

Kulcha kostz

For the first time in about twenty years I have purchased a subscription package for the 2012 Opera Australia season. My tickets arrived yesterday. Boy are those tickets expensive. Eagle eyed readers will see the price on the ticket. That's not the price for the package. That is the price for each opera. And the seats are not even in the most expensive section of the theatre.

Black Swan

I enjoy classical music and have frequently attended the opera and concerts. I can sit through an opera and enjoy the stirring music and thrilling singing and not be deterred in the slightest by the most improbable of story lines. But I have never had the same interest for ballet. I can appreciate the obvious; that high class ballet involves exceptional skill, courage and dedication but I would have little aptitude for recognising good ballet dancing from that which is merely competent and I am hopeless at deciphering a ballet story line simply from the choreography. However I do enjoy the famous music moments; in particular the passionate music of Tchaikovsky.

In all my years I have only attended the ballet on three occasions. The first was a mixed performance of classical and modern excerpts at Covent Garden, London which included an appearance by Rudolph Nureyev back in 1975 which I thought would be a good first, and perhaps only, exposure to the art form. The other two occasions, by coincidence, were both to performances of 'Swan Lake'. The first was in Guangzhou, China in 1981 when I attended as virtually an obligation to my hosts so as not to cause offence. Even to my untrained eye the dancing, by a local company, seemed at best struggling. The second occasion was several years back when Matthew Bourne brought his all-male, or rather mostly male, version to Australia. I found this production very entertaining and whilst still not really appreciating the plot, the stunning climax where the swan (black or white, I don't recall) is brutally attacked moved me literally to tears.

And so to 'Black Swan'. Natalie Portman is the uptight and obsessed ballerina desperate to be cast as the Swan Queen. Mila Kunis is the carefree and seemingly effortlessly talented new arrival to the ballet company who both fascinates and terrifies Portman from the outset.

I knew that I would gain enjoyment from the film if only for the music and it's there by the decibel load. Although the film provides two brief and almost identical explanations of the Swan Lake plot it was little more than my already cursory understanding and I found myself wishing I knew much more about the work. It is pretty obvious that the film provides a parallel contemporary narrative. I'm sure I missed much of the nuances and ballet references in the film's plot through my lack of knowledge and as a consequence the second half was a somewhat baffling thriller/horror experience for me.

'Black Swan' must have one skinniest casts lists ever. I have never seen so much skin and bone held together by ballet tape in my life. Sadly I think my own body mass index exceeds that of the entire cast combined.