Opera Australia Blog

Shadow interpreters get in on the action in the Oz Opera Victorian production
of The Barber of Seville. Photo: Albert Comper

Making opera accessible to deaf children was always going to be a challenge, but it’s one that Oz Opera has embraced with open arms.

Maxine Buxton has spent seven years working with Oz Opera interpreting shows for children. A few years ago, she came to the company with an intriguing idea: instead of standing side of stage, why couldn’t the interpreters be part of the action?

Shadow-interpreting was becoming popular overseas, but hadn’t really been tried in Australia. Buxton wanted to try this new model at Oz Opera, believing it would deliver a richer experience for deaf children.

“Ordinarily when a show is interpreted into Auslan, the interpreters stand on the side of stage and wear black clothing, and they’ll have little to no interaction with the cast,” she explains.

“Shadow-interpreting means the interpreters are on the stage, in a costume that is in keeping with the theme and colour of the show. The director blocks us onto the stage: we have movements and choreography, and it makes for a much more meaningful experience for a deaf audience.”

Maxine Buxton interprets as Stacey Alleaume
sings in the 2013 Victorian production
of The Barber of Seville. Photo: Albert Comper

It’s particularly important for young deaf children, who may not yet have learned to switch quickly from the interpreters to the side of stage to where the action happens, she says.

So for the past three years, Oz Opera shows have incorporated shadow-interpreters. The difference in audience engagement has been astonishing, Buxton says.

“In the past, a deaf child might ignore the interpreters and watch whoever on stage was doing something interesting – falling over for example,” she says. “We would rarely get a question after the show. Now, the kids rush straight up to us and ask us questions and talk about what they found funny or strange. They’re more engaged, they’re really following exactly what the action is and what is happening.”

It’s not simply a matter of putting fluent signers on stage with the singers, Maxine says. “We have to try and pitch our interpretation at a child’s level. When we’re translating, we have to think about how to make the Auslan accessible to kids who come from a signing household right through to those kids who may have only met one signing deaf person before. They have to be able to connect to it.”

Buxton and fellow interpreter Cara Due experience strong support from the cast and creatives involved with the Oz Opera shows. “The directors have listened to what we need and worked hard to incorporate it into shows. The cast have learned how to finger-spell their names. Where appropriate, we’ve added in signs for the cast in parts of the show. It’s as close to a fully integrated show as it could be.”

Buxton started signing out of personal interest – she was just fascinated by the language. She says an added benefit of the shadow-interpreting is putting Auslan front and centre in front of children who may never have seen it before.

“I never had access to signing when I was a kid, but I would have loved to see interpreters at work. It’s great for deaf kids, it’s great for their parents, teachers of the deaf and interpreters to watch and learn from it, but it’s also great for the general community.”

To learn more about Oz Opera, click here.

Jan Gundlach

By Jennifer Williams

After a gruelling day in the kitchen as an apprentice, Jan Gundlach’s masterchef would often drag his team to the opera, and follow up the experience with an elaborate (“and always very late”) dinner.

So while he was learning how to julienne vegetables and flambé dishes, Gundlach was also gaining a deep appreciation and understanding of the performing arts.

“What good fortune it was for me. Now culinary consultant to the Arts Centre, it has become the centre of my universe!”

While the Michelin-starred chef might ultimately prefer to listen to the “sizzle of a roast” than a full scale opera, he admits being quite partial to Verdi. “Verdi hits the right tone for me: think Nabucco, think Rigoletto. Imagine how controversial and revolutionary his compositions were. Music is like great food to me, it should be a bit controversial, exciting, thought provoking. Standard stuff – people can cook at home.”

A deep immersion in the arts world has given the chef a new understanding of his own motto: “art is essential to the enjoyment of food”.

Dining out at the opera is more than a pleasurable indulgence, Gundlach argues. “It is an expression of life. It’s nourishing, it adds to a more complete experience. To use opera’s own language, it adds to a Gesamtkunstwerk.”

Which brings him to Wagner. Gesamtkunstwerk is a German word for a complete work of art, and it is the artistic philosophy that Wagner aspired to in his creation of the Ringcycle.

As part of his role as culinary consultant for The Arts Centre, Gundlach is the man charged with designing dining packages to complement the Melbourne Ringexperience. It’s not just about fine dining – Gundlach has to make sure Ring patrons are well prepared to sit through operas up to six hours long.

“The ambition for all of the Ring cycle menus was to imagine what our discerning clientele expect and appreciate, and to showcase the finest ingredients Australia has to offer. Freshness and lightness of cuisine is imperative. With such a program, who wants to eat haxen (pig leg) with sauerkraut and huge dumplings?”

Today, food is a big part of arts culture, and Melbourne has become a city where fine food, wine, coffee and culture intersect. But it’s not a new phenomenon. Jan points out that the famous French steak dish Tournedos Rossini was created for the composer Rossini (the prolific opera composer once said: “I know of no more admirable occupation than eating”).

“I think of the Peach Melba, created for Nellie Melba by Auguste Escoffier, the chef of kings and king of chefs,” Gundlach says. “That’s not only mouth-watering, it reflects how food relates to the arts and the arts to food!”

For Gundlach, food is life, perhaps in the same way Rossini thought of it. “It is a great way to share, to spoil family and friends, a topic to satisfy soul and intellect!”

Not unlike the opera.

To learn more about Ring Dining packages, click here.

Gyton Grantley in South Pacific in
Brisbane last year. Photo by: Kurt Sneddon

There’s some distance between the gritty laneways of Melbourne and the sunny shores of the South Pacific, but Underbelly & House Husbands star Gyton Grantley made the leap with ease when he made his musical debut in South Pacific last year.

While treading the stage is a familiar feeling for the accomplished actor, this was his music theatre debut. “I’m not a singer,” he says. “And the only dance moves I pull are on the dance floor after midnight, so I was very nervous.”

But the “incredible world of musical theatre” welcomed him with open arms, Gyton says. “The people that came on this journey with me were such a warm and wonderful group of people. I felt very safe, and it just worked!” Reviews of the actor's performance were glowing.

Gyton had never seen South Pacific when he joined the cast in Brisbane last year, but he knew the music. “It’s one of those albums that played in every kid’s grandparent’s house as they grew up.”

He finds it hard to explain why the musical has proved so enduringly popular. “It’s just an old favourite. It’s incredible to watch it and see how much the world has changed in 60, 70 years.

“But it goes to show how well the musical was written that it’s still relevant today. There are great common themes: mateship and love and culture clashes and the question of war. Not to mention that universal human desire to sit on a tropical beach and do nothing,” Gyton laughs.

Musical theatre might not sound a logical career move for the Logie-award winning actor (although he is following in cast-mate’s Lisa McCune’s footsteps), “but I just love doing everything,” Gyton explains.

“What I love about being a performer is the opportunity to play different parts, explore different human stories and then tell them to audiences. Doing South Pacificintroduced me to another format, and another way of exploring that and I loved it!”

And while the singing and dancing certainly moved the actor out of his comfort zone, Gyton could approach the character of Luther Billis like any other. “With any character, you need to find the truth, you need to find their deepest darkest secrets, their driving forces.

“Billis is a conniving, wheeling, dealing go-getter that’s out there for himself. He’s not the happy-go-lucky musical theatre type.”

Director Bartlett Sher really encouraged the performers to find the humanity in the story, Gyton says. “It is a beautiful fun piece of entertainment, but what was so wonderful about Bartlett and what makes this production so special is that he has brought out the deeper issues and fleshed out the meatier parts of the story.”

Performing in a musical is very different from theatre or film, Gyton says. “There are lots of extra elements that are used to deliver the story. When you’ve got forty people in the cast supporting you on stage and an orchestra and a big stage crew, there’s a lot of energy behind that!”

The prospect of performing on the Sydney Opera House stage when South Pacific returns to Sydney this September is a “dream come true,” Gyton says. “It’s definitely a box most actors would like to tick, to perform at the most famous opera house in the world.”

To see Gyton Grantley in South Pacific, click here for tickets and more information.

Svetla Vassileva

Svetla Vassileva was just four years old when she declared to her parents that she wanted to be an opera singer. “I can’t explain why, but obviously the opera was already inside me,” she says.

“The love was born when I discovered all the facets of my soul written down in the music,” she adds. “It’s like the music can explain to me what I can’t see!!”

Vassileva is from Bulgaria, but her name is known all over the world: she has sung at Covent Garden, at La Scala, at the Opera national de Paris ... the list goes on.

When she debuts with Opera Australia in The Force of Destiny in June, it will be her first time in Australia and her first time on the Sydney Opera House stage. “I think it’s the most famous theatre in the world,” she says. “Who can’t be excited to perform there? Finally I will be able to form my own opinion: are they clouds, or sails?”

Vassileva is playing the role of Leonora in Verdi’s opera. Caught up in the relentless arms of fate, Leonora’s tale is a sad one. Will the audience connect with her character? “There are people who love to pity,” Vassileva says. “There are people who love to hate. In any case, you will love Leonora.”

The acclaimed soprano says she is blessed with a huge imagination, but that is not always fortunate when she is preparing a character. “Every written word for me is a frame of a movie I can see in my brain. This is my fortune and misfortune, because when I prepare a character, I find myself dreaming the dreams of another person.”

Vassileva says Verdi has composed a near-perfect opera in The Force of Destiny.“Even if you just listen to the music, like a symphony without words you will understand the story.”

The Force of Destiny is seldom performed, but Vassileva says the story can speak to a modern audience. “The story is eternal. It’s about love, death, religion – all of them are actual and real today, and will be in the future. But I have to say, the title is enough!”

Many of Vassileva’s friends have warned her she will fall in love with Australia: “Everyone that has been here tells me they want to live here. I try to reset all of that information in my brain, and try to be like a child. I’ll be surprised by this new world for me with its wonderful land, nice and friendly people and good lifestyle,” she says.

The travel and discovery are perks of the job for a soprano in international demand, but Vassileva says it’s not a job for her – it’s a passion. “I travel everywhere in the world, I can learn the philosophies of different people. You can see, smell, fell and live like an Australian, Italian, American, Japanese, French...”

It is a true privilege, she says.

To see Svetla Vassileva in The Force of Destiny, click here for tickets and more information.

Opera is a spectacle for all the senses, but it takes an army of people to produce a single performance.

The Queen’s Birthday Honours list singled out a few respected Australian arts professionals for service to the arts and to opera in particular.

Opera Australia would like to offer congratulations to the following:

Distinguished soprano Merlyn Quaife received an honour for significant service to music. Ms Quaife has enjoyed a long career with highlights including the role of Betty in Opera Australia’s Bliss in 2010, regular performances with state opera companies and symphonies and star turns as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor and Chian Ch’ing in Nixon in China. Ms Quaife will sing the role of Orlinde in Opera Australia’s Melbourne Ring Cycle this year.

Renowned soprano Nance Grant MBE was honoured for significant service to the performing arts, particularly opera. After a successful career singing everything from Britten’s Lady Billows to Verdi’s Mistress Ford, Ms Grant retired vocally in the early 1990s. She was a principal soprano with Opera Australia for a decade from 1971, singing roles including The Countess in The Marriage of Figaroand Elizabeth in Tannhauser. She now gives her time to support emerging artists, speaking at workshops and giving master classes.

Movement coach and opera director Anna Sweeny was recognised for significant service to opera as a teacher of movement and stagecraft. Ms Sweeny specialises in teaching opera singers how to move to best protect and project their voices on stage. A mentor in Opera Australia’s Young Artist Program, Ms Sweeny has become something of a legend in her field.

Language coach Marie-Claire Szekely was honoured for service to the performing arts, particularly opera. The respected French-speaker is a gifted performer in her own right, and has coached singers in French for Opera Australia since the 1970s. Marie-Claire has been honoured around the world for her work coaching singers in French, and is oft seen at rehearsals, perched behind the conductor, sharpened pencil in hand.

ABC Classic FM have partnered with Opera Australia to broadcast live The Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013 across the nation in December.

After tickets to the landmark new production of Wagner’s epic sold out in just a day, Opera Australia sought a way to share the experience with other opera lovers across the country.

ABC Classic FM was keen to take up the challenge of broadcasting live more than 16 hours of opera across the space of a week.

“We were sure that the combination of Opera Australia’s first Ring cycle and Wagner’s 200^thyear was a ‘must have’ for our listeners,” said ABC Classic FM Manager, Richard Buckham. “[Our] production team and presenters are looking forward to the challenge and the thrill of broadcasting this huge musical work, which will also be an immensely significant cultural event.”

Opera Australia has cast some of the world’s most celebrated singers in the four operas: including Australia’s own Stuart Skelton, John Wegner, Deborah Humble, Mirian Gordon-Stewart and Daniel Sumegi.

Renowned international singers Terje Stensvold, Susan Bullock and Stefan Vinke are also drawcards in the work considered to be a significant challenge even for the most experienced singers.

Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini is thrilled the broadcast will enable more Australians to hear these great artists. “We are delighted that the ABC has joined with us to take the Melbourne Ring Cycle to a much wider audience than will fit in the theatre. Having the opportunity to take this beyond the theatre and into the living rooms of music lovers around the country ... enables us to continue widening audiences for Opera Australia.”

ABC Classic FM will broadcast the third and final cycle over four nights: Friday December 6 (Das Rheingold); Monday December 9 (Die Walküre), Wednesday December 11 (Siegfried) and Friday December 13 (Götterdämmerung).

Chorus Master Michael Black with the Opera Australia ChorusPhoto by: Ben Symons

Outgoing Chorus Master Michael Black has one piece of advice for the man that will step into his shoes: “Concentrate on the music. Don’t let all the peripheral things get in the way.”

That’s a harder command for Anthony Hunt than it appears: the role of the Chorus Master is a big one, and all the nitty-gritty of employing singers and maintaining a full-time Chorus takes up a fair amount of time between chorus rehearsals.

It’s a role Michael Black has performed with aplomb for 12 years. A dashing figure in a well-cut jacket and rehearsal blacks, it seems scurrilous to call him a veteran of the industry – he is still in his 40s. But veteran he is, having guided the Opera Australia Chorus through more than 100 operas and operettas in more than six languages, including three different types of English and three different incarnations of Latin.

He gets hold of the Chorus well before the director and the conductor get to town. Different operas require different periods of rehearsal: for Tosca, where the role of the Chorus is small and the music well-known, rehearsals started just a week before the rest of the cast arrived. The Force of Destiny is a different kettle of fish: rehearsals for Verdi’s masterpiece began months ago.

Michael looks after 40 full-time singers, along with a host of regular extras that get pulled in for big operas: Turandot requires 68, Lohengrinrequires 70. Every opera requires a different style from the Chorus, and it’s a big challenge, negotiating their ever changing role.

“The role of the Chorus has changed over the centuries. In some operas, they literally just comment on what is going on, like a Greek chorus. In other operas, they’re part of the action, they experience everything that happens on stage. They’re part of the fabric. Sometimes, they have a very small part in terms of time on the stage, but their role is integral.”

Chorus Master Michael Black
Photo by: Ben Symons

The job of the Chorus Master is to help them colour the music with meaning. “I have to make sure all of the words are in the right place, and it’s musically colourful and meaningful. It’s my job to make sure that the Chorus feel inspired to act through the music.”

For that reason, the big Chorus operas like Aida and Turandot are always a thrill to put on. But it’s when the group contributes to the emotion on stage that Michael feels proudest of his work. “It’s not the most impressive musically, but the Chorus did Neil Armfield’s production of Jenufa incredibly well. Their part isn’t large, but it was incredibly moving, night after night.”

Michael is off to take up the same role with the Chicago Lyric Opera in 2014. “I’d love to stay here for the next 20 years, I love Opera Australia. But I don’t think I’d be challenging myself if I did.”

The beloved chorus master has a few final notes to sing before he jets off to Chicago: preparing the small but haunting music of Tosca’s chorus, the hugely challenging music of Verdi’s The Force of Destinyand the uplifting music of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.

There will be mournful tunes coming from the wings as the Chorus farewell their long-time leader, but they'll be singing their best onstage: it's the best bon voyage gift they can offer.

Yonghoon Lee’s story is as unconventional as it is unlikely: a singer in his church choir, the Korean tenor sought out singing lessons just to sound better. “I never ever thought, ‘I'm going to be a professional opera singer’.”

The young tenor is now in demand all over the world to sing on the most prestigious stages. His schedule is booked through to 2018. He sings the role of Cavaradossi in Opera Australia’s brand new production of Tosca.

Tell me about your character, Cavaradossi.

Cavaradossi is a hero: very noble, gentle, an artist, a painter. In our production we are going back to 1943. In Italy, it’s a fairly dark period under Fascist rule. Cavaradossi is not exactly revolutionary, but he is on the side of the revolutionaries. He is never afraid to die. Only in the last moment before his execution, he thinks about his love for Tosca, and it is only that which makes him afraid to die. He’s a very strong person.

What do you connect with in his personality? What can you draw on to find your character?

I've never experienced that kind of dark period, but when I fall in love, when I love someone, it brings me a lot of energy and passion. So the thought that I may never see that person again ... that touches my heart. In Act 1, Cavaradossi and Tosca sing the love duet. The conversation is about love and jealousy and even though you learn that Tosca is a super jealous person, I still love her. The audience sees both her jealousy and her sweetness, and they can feel that I still love her.

What is it about Tosca that you think speaks to people?

Tosca has everything. This is not really a big opera, compared to Verdi’s Don Carlos, compared to Wagner, this is short. But it has everything: passion, love, jealousy, murder, execution and friendship. We can see in one opera every human thing that happens in our life. It’s understandable. And also ... Masterpiece! It’s a masterpiece! Beautiful music, beautiful arias, everything.

How do you go about preparing a role?

I try to find out as much as I can about the background and the history. I try to find any real testament from the period, especially if it’s a real story. I read about the composer and the story and the musical background as well. I study a lot about the text, delving into the words. I try to put my feelings into the music, so when I sing something it can be stronger, from my heart, not just because it is written in a particular way.

What brought you into the world of opera?

When I started to learn singing, people around me including my teacher said, “You must sing! You must be a singer!” I thought about it, and I thought ‘It’s a gift from above, I have to follow that’. After just five months I got a scholarship to Seoul National University, which is the best musical college in Korea. But after I graduated, I quit singing. It was too political. But I prayed, and heard God calling: “I created you as a singer.” So I felt very strongly: I must sing! That brought me to New York City where I went to Mannes College of Music and could start my career.

What do you love about opera?

They are real stories: it’s life! Everything that is in opera is not fake. It’s of a different generation, but in this day, also, we can feel everything they feel: love, passion, murder – everything. It is real. And the music, the beautiful music! That makes me fall in love!

I love Tosca, I love Carmen, all the Verdi operas: Il Trovatore, Un ballo in maschera. My dream role is Otello, I haven’t ever done this part but I will, I think the opera is incredible. One day!

This is your first time singing at the Sydney Opera House.

It’s my first time in Australia! It’s really lovely to make this debut, because you never know if it will be the last time you are somewhere. My schedule is booked until 2018, so it’s very exciting to be here to work with these wonderful people. Alexia Voulgaridou and I have sung together before, she was my Michaëla in Carmen, and we will sing together in Hamburg again in a new production of La battaglia di Leganano.

Do you have any advice for young opera singers?

It’s tough ... if you have a dream, your passion can drive it, I believe that. Don’t give up. When you are ready, go and audition. My teacher told me not to go for a Young Artist Program. He said, “Do you feel ready?” I said, “Yes, I’m ready!” He said, “Go for it!” So I did. People told me I was too young. “You cannot do this, you cannot sing these parts, in three years you will have lost your career.” But I’m still working! I haven’t changed anything. I always tell people I’m 40, 45, 42, or I can’t remember! It doesn’t matter – if it’s good, it’s good!

Tosca opens on July 6 and runs until August 31. For more information and tickets, click here.

Lyndon Terracini
Photo by Peter Derrett

Opera Australia's Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini wrote this piece for Fine Music Magazine describing the five different operas on offer this winter. He also introduces the fantastic Australian and international stars descending on The Opera Centre to provide Sydney audiences with incredible voices.

It’s hard to quantify what makes a truly wonderful opera: what brings audiences to their feet and turns the dalliance of a first-time viewer into a life-long love affair.

But you usually see it first on the faces of the cast, crowding the wings of the stage, craning for a glimpse of opera magic.

When a truly exceptional singer performs, and his comrades on stage are applauding, it creates this incredible atmosphere: everyone wanting to do the very best they can do. With the ensemble cheering for them, even the stars are inspired to push for their very best. When it comes off, it’s an incomparable experience. It’s why people go to the opera.

Opera is about voice, voice and more voice. It’s our job at Opera Australia to deliver exceptional voices to audiences, and make sure they’re in productions that have meaning, that connect with audiences, that have a narrative drive.

It’s why international stars are descending on The Opera Centre as I write, as preparations for the Sydney winter season reach fever pitch. It’s an exciting time. The larger-than-life voices of the 40-strong Chorus swell to fill cavernous rehearsal rooms. World famous maestros are strolling the corridors, while Australia’s best directors are workshopping the best of Australian and international singing talent.

Hammers are banging, machines are whirring, batons are tapping.

Elijah Moshinksy's lavish production of La Traviata is
part of the Sydney Winter season.
Photo: Branco Gaica

It’s the tremendous noise of hundreds of people working together to produce three new productions for the Winter season, as well as resurrecting two from the canon of Opera Australia’s favourites. It’s an ambitious task, but it’s also the natural work of Australia’s national opera company: providing the right setting for the right story for the right voice.

This season is a balance of light and dark, of new and old, of beloved and forgotten works. Most importantly, it’s a season that will speak to audiences.

A new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny promises to master a difficult work: it’s a wonderful, wonderful opera, but it’s not often performed. That’s no fault of the opera itself: just that the roles are incredibly difficult. It takes a certain calibre of artist to stage this work. In Verdi’s bicentennial year, it makes sense to resurrect Elijah Moshinksy’s production of La Traviata, loved by audiences for its splendour and tragic beauty. John Cox’s 1976 production of Albert Herring remains the definitive version of Britten’s witty opera about English country life. The playful Roger Hodgman production of Don Pasquale is a perfect foil for the drama and tragedy of a brand new production of Tosca.

Riccardo Massi in the chilling new production
of Verdi's The Force of Destiny Photo: Branco Gaica

We create new productions of established works when we feel we need to update the existing production – as audiences change, and the world in which they reside shifts, we aim to keep pace. The company hasn’t done The Force of Destinyin a very long time. Rising young Australian director Tama Matheson, together with renowned Australian designer Mark Thompson, have come up with a wonderful concept. It’s rich and vibrant, the set is terrific, and the power of the piece will sweep you up in it and into Verdi’s terrible world where fate holds all the cards. It’s an assault on the senses: powerful music, breathtaking sets and a gripping story.

The leading roles demand singers of exceptional talent - Riccardo Massi is one of the few people in the world who can sing Don Alvaro. Svetla Vassileva has the sort of compelling charisma that Leonora requires – she can communicate the subtleties and subtext of a phrase by the inflections she uses in her voice. At the same time she will illustrate it physically – she’s a genuine stage performer.

Rinat Shaham in The Force of Destiny
Photo: Branco Gaica

The fortune-teller Preziosilla drives the action of The Force of Destiny– the plot revolves around her. You need a great stage animal. Who better than Rinat Shaham, who dazzled audiences as Carmen in this year’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour?

You also need a conductor who really understands Verdi’s style - it has wonderful, wonderful music. Andrea Licata is a magnificent conductor, of this opera along with many, many others.

Rachelle Durkin stars
in Don Pasquale

I can’t remember a time when this company did Don Pasquale. It’sa genuinely funny opera that will provide a balance to what we will have had in The Force of Destiny, and what is coming in Tosca. It’s a wonderfully witty comic opera. This production by Roger Hodgman has all the freshness of the opera itself: it’s got a La Dolce Vita feel to it, with beautiful sets and lovely costumes.

You need a larger than life singer to perform the title role, and Conal Coad is one of the great Australian bass buffos. The opera plays Don Pasquale off against the self-assured Norina. You need a singer with a fabulous sense of humour, as well as being a great singer and wonderful actor. Who better than Rachelle Durkin, who showed everyone in Orpheusin the Underworld earlier this year how talented she really is?

Ji-Min Park was a wonderful Rodolfo in La boheme, and Ernesto is a perfect fit for him. Guillaume Tourniaire has impressed audiences enormously over the last couple of years that he has conducted for us. He has a lightness of touch that brings Donizetti’s Don Pasquale to life.

It was time at Opera Australia for a new production of Tosca. It’s one of the greatest operas ever written, in fact, one of the greatest pieces of music theatre ever written. This will be a beautiful production. The curtain opens onto a magnificent set – it will fill the entire stage of the Sydney Opera House with the interior of a cathedral: in the church where Puccini first intended Tosca to be performed.

Alexia Voulgaridou shines in John Bell's
new production of Puccini's Tosca Photo: Keith Saunders

I wanted Bell Shakespeare’s artistic director John Bell to direct it from the start. Bell is arguably the greatest actor Australia has ever produced, and he is also a wonderful director for actors. Tosca is a piece for three singing actors: the drama between Tosca, Cavaradossi and Scarpia. I felt it was important to have an actor’s director directing this production, so that the singers could really get under the skin of those characters. To bring off a piece like Tosca, you need to create the dramatic tension that Puccini’s music inspires.

Alexia Voulgaridou and Cheryl Barker are both true prima donnas, which are so important for the title role – after all, the character of Floria Tosca is a soprano in the opera herself.

Voulgaridou has that Latin way of playing – she’s got a great temperament. The two Cavaradossis are two sensational singers. Yonghoon Lee I first heard sing at The Met in New York, and he’s a tremendously impressive young singer. Fortunately we managed to engage him before everyone else heard him and wanted him. Something I try and do regularly. And Diego Torre is such a moving performer – he’s been singing for us for a number of years, and his voice just gets better and better.

Audiences are used to seeing John Wegner as Scarpia and John Bolton Wood as the Sacristan, but this is a very different production, a different interpretation with magnificent sets and costumes. Maestro Christian Badea knows this music better than anyone. He’s conducted over 160 performances of this opera alone at The Met – this is a piece he loves doing.

In Verdi’s bicentennial, we are resurrecting Moshinsky’s gorgeous production of La Traviata. It’s a particularly wonderful setting for Emma Matthews, who made a magnificent role debut as Violetta in Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour last year. The young and very talented Patrick Lange will conduct. There’s a lot of excitement about this production: hearing Matthews and Polish tenor Arnold Rutkowski and José Carbó sing these roles for the first time.

John Cox's seminal production of Albert Herring
will be revived this season.
Photo: David Parker

Last but not least is Britten’s witty Albert Herring, the opera in which I made my debut as a principal for the company, way back in 1976 when the Company performed for the queen. This is a really finely crafted production, with an outstanding cast led by the brilliant comic pairing of Jacqui Dark and Kanen Breen.

Lots of the singers that are debuting or returning for Opera Australia this winter aren’t household names. But they are some of the greatest singers in the world. Once audiences hear them sing, I think they will understand.

These new productions are vital additions to the repertoire of a serious opera company. We have fantastic singers coming from all over the world, first-rate conductors and directors, guest artists we’re bringing back to Australia, as well as some tremendous local singers.

There aren’t many people in the world that can sing this kind of repertoire really well. When you hear people that can, it’s a magnificent experience. It’s what the experience of opera should be about. We’re thrilled to have so many extraordinary artists working as artists, conductors and directors, designers and musicians.

It’s an exciting time to be creating opera in this country.

By Jennifer Williams

In the middle of a raging sea of activity stands John Bell: calm, still, focussed. Around him, mechanics rush around making notes and lists and testing door handles on set pieces. International singers are rehearsing notes, movements, pulling on rehearsal skirts and shoes. Language coaches are etching notes onto well-worn scores. Stage managers are madly scribbling lists.

The man in the signature black skivvy is oblivious to the chaos – standing facing the makeshift rehearsal room stage, he is visualising his Tosca.

You could almost imagine Bell was overwhelmed by the scale of the piece he has been asked to direct, unnerved by the experience of the maestro and singers he is working alongside.

But though he speaks softly, his words are commanding: correcting a hand movement here, suggesting a different entrance there. Bell’s mastery of stagecraft and storytelling comes through in every word.

There is nothing arrogant or demanding in his manner. Australia’s most prominent theatre director is coming to his first mainstage opera with utter humility, deferring to the experience and knowledge of the seasoned Tosca performers he is charged with directing.

“I don’t think directing is the right word in this context,” he says, in the clear, clipped tones of a lifelong Shakespeare actor. “I’m collaborating with them. I’m there to facilitate their performances. They know these roles very well, I don’t want to take them back to square one and say ‘Let’s start at the beginning’. All I can really do is provide circumstances for them to feel comfortable in, a set that works and accommodates what they want to do, staging with moves that make it comfortable and real to them: a staging that is effective as possible.”

Nevertheless, the seasoned director has a bold ambition: to restore the truth in the drama of Tosca, to recapture the original shock audiences felt as they watched Puccini’s masterpiece unfold, he says.

“This is a true story: it has happened many, many times over throughout history, it happened during the world wars, it’s happening now, somewhere in the world,” Bell explains. “A tyrannical regime, resistance fighters hunted down, women forced to give sexual favours in order to protect a loved one – these things are still happening, and always have been, during war.”

Thus Bell has relocated Puccini’s Tosca to Rome in 1943: a Fascist Italy under German rule. The great city is wartorn, starving: “a city down on its knees."

It’s not an attempt to place his own stamp on a timeless story, he says, rather a move to challenge the audience to see the story in a different light. “I'm not an auteur type of director, I don’t try to reshape it in my own image. I see my job as an interpreter rather than a creator: I want to try to serve the opera and composer as well as I can.

“I'm saying this is not what you thought it was. This is something else.

“World War II is within the memory of many of our audience: they either lived through it or their families did, they've seen the documentary footage, the movies, the books. It’s familiar territory. I want the experience of our own lifetimes to bring the story into focus.”

His hope is that the production will strike a chord with a modern audience. “They’ll say yes, I believe this story, I know these things happen, I believe these characters.”

Artistic director Lyndon Terracini always wanted John Bell to direct this production of Tosca. A household name, Bell is an actor with no equal when it comes to the portrayal of Shakespeare’s heroes and villains. His credentials in the theatre world are strong, but he is not often seen in the halls of the Opera Centre. His opera credits are limited to an Oz Opera touring production of Madama Butterfly.

Why then would Terracini entrust him with one of the world’s most beloved operas? “I felt it was important to have an actor’s director working on this production. John Bell is arguably one of the greatest actors that Australia has ever produced.” Terracini explains. “I wanted the singers to really get under the skin of those characters and create the dramatic tension as well as the musical tension you need to bring off a piece like Tosca.”

In the rehearsal room, Bell is rehearsing Act II, as Tosca stabs Scarpia. They try the move over, and over again. John Wegner lies on his back on a table as Alexia Voulgaridou drives the knife into his chest. Bell wants more. “Yes, yes,” says Alexia Voulgaridou, imitating the move Bell has demonstrated. “This is the kiss of Tosca!”

For the director himself, taking on one of the world’s most beloved operas is an exciting challenge. “It’s a change of pace, a change of style, I love the scale of it,” he says. “You don’t often get a chance to work with 80 actors on a stage – we've got 80 singers in this cast at last count. And it’s always great to work on some piece that you love and respond to, it’s great to work on a classic play, it’s also great to encounter a composer, whether its Mozart or Wagner or Puccini, and just rub shoulders with him for a year, study it, learn it, get inside the work. That’s what I think the most rewarding thing about being involved in theatre is: the privilege of working alongside a genius.”

There is more and more crossover between the worlds of opera and theatre, Bell says. “All over the world more theatre directors are coming in to direct operas, and theatre itself is becoming more operatic, less naturalistic. There are revivals of Shakespeare and other classics that tend towards opera rather than ‘kitchen sink realism’, the lines are blurring.”

Puccini’s music can be relied on to stir hearts. Spend five minutes in the rehearsal room of this year’s Tosca and it’s clear that Bell’s production will also captivate minds.

Tosca opens on July 6^th. For further details, click here.

Trombonist Gregory van der Struik tutors Ballarat
High School Students via video-conference

There’s a delay of about three seconds before the Ballarat High School students start smiling and laughing, in response to a rather enthusiastic greeting from members of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra (AOBO).

It’s a lapse they’ll get used to, as more than 40 students embark on a one-of-a-kind learning adventure with volunteers from one of Australia’s premier orchestras. The students are communicating with the AOBO via video-conference.

AOBO Clarinetist Richard Rourke
tutors some saxophone students.

Video-conferencing technology is familiar in boardrooms all over the world, but it is a newer addition to the classroom. Opera Australia and the AOBO are using it to connect students with professional musicians – a partnership that gives students a taste of a professional orchestra.

First off the mark is the Ballarat High School stage band, who are already a talented group. As they blast trombones and tickle guitars to the popular strains of Christine Aguilera’s Carwash, it’s hard to imagine the teenage musicians will be equally at home with the conventions of opera.

But that’s partly what they’ve come to learn. OA instrumentalists are tutoring small sections of the Ballarat High band using the technology before the band travel to Sydney to get a glimpse of life inside Australia’s national opera company.

Opera Australia principal Jacqui Dark has taken a more conventional approach to tutoring as part of the program: stepping back into the high school class rooms where she once juggled Pythagoras’ theorem with difficult arpeggios.

The former Ballarat High student challenged some teenage singers with the famous Brindisidrinking song from La Traviata.“It was a bit of a tough ask, as not only was it in a classical style which they'd never tackled before, it was also in another language,” Jacqui said. “We ended up singing on la la la so that we could concentrate on singing technique rather than language. The kids did a brilliant job with a very difficult piece of music and came so far in such a short time!”

Jacqui Dark puts some Ballarat High School singers
through their paces at a vocal workshop

The popular mezzo-soprano was anxious not to push the singers too hard: “You actually don't want to start full-on singing lessons too early, as it can be too harsh for a developing voice. Sure, learn breathing and some basic technique, but never push a young voice or be too serious too early. Just sing around the place for enjoyment and have fun!”

The students were far from intimidated in Jacqui’s presence, and asked really interesting questions. “I find that people are often surprised to find that we’re just normal, down-to-earth folk and not at all snobby or diva-like (Well, most of us!)," she said. "I suspect that when they made me sing, it might have been a bit of a surprise to their ears, as I’m a tad loud in a small, enclosed room!”

Used to singing musical theatre or pop songs, the students were initially apprehensive about singing in a classical style. “But by the end they were just having a ball and singing it without inhibition," Jacqui said. "I love that classical music was totally demystified and not a scary, elite, refined art form to be feared or avoided, but rather a pretty cool and fun new genre to tackle! I think they felt a huge sense of achievement at having conquered what initially seemed a pretty daunting vocal task.”

It’s vital to engage young people with classical music, Jacqui said. “The earlier you're introduced to this type of music, the more you learn to love it and the less it seems some distant, elite art form. My little boy Xander is only 13 months old but is riveted whenever classical music comes on, even in ads. He sat glued to the TV watching Peter Grimes - I could hardly believe it!"

Classical music doesn't have to be inaccessible, and treating it as "elite" is something we learn, Jacqui said. "Kids actually love it and we need to give them more credit and not put classical music in the "too hard" basket. Just stick it on the CD player now and then and watch their reaction! Having said that, Xander also loves The Wiggles.”

The Oz Opera Schools Company is taking Opera outside the classroom this school holidays.

Don't miss Oz Opera Victorian Schools Company performing The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville

Friday 5 July
11am; Drum Theatre, Dandenong
Click HERE for tickets and more information

Monday 8 July
11am: The Melbourne Recital Centre - Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Click HERE for tickets and more information

The Magic Flute

In NSW, the Oz Opera NSW Schools Company are performing in a Sydney Theatre for the first time, with a special production of The Magic Flute

Wednesday, July 10
11am & 2pm The Concourse, Chatswood

Click HERE for tickets and more information

Pietari Inkinen

Opera Australia has announced Pietari Inkinen will replace Richard Mills as conductor of The Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013. Inkinen will join Opera Australia for the first orchestral rehearsals as the second phase of Ring rehearsals kick off in September.

In a lineup of the world’s conducting greats, Inkinen would stand out instantly: the maestro is just 33 years old, without a grey hair. So who is this wunderkind?

At age 15, Pietari Inkinen picked up his baton and stood in front of a professional orchestra for the first time. Balancing his extraordinary talent as a violinist and passion for conducting was never going to be an easy ask, but he has achieved what many conductors can’t: maintaining a career as a performing and recording violinist alongside a busy schedule conducting some of the world’s best orchestras.

Two decades after he first raised a baton, Inkinen is in demand across the globe: the Finnish conductor spends up to 300 nights a year in a hotel room. Famed for his work on Sibelius, Inkinen has harboured a deep passion for Wagner for many years. He realised this at the helm of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra last year, conducting a concert performance of Die Walküre to superlative reviews and a “standing ovation of an intensity unprecedented” in one reviewer’s experience.

His deft hand with the orchestra led to his appointment as conductor of a daring production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo at the start of the year.

For Inkinen, it was the realisation of a lifelong ambition to conduct a full production of Wagner’s epic, and one he executed with a mastery that belies his age. German Newspaper Die Welt praised Inkinen for “unfolding a luscious Wagnerian sound” from the Orchestra del Teatro Massimo. “His interpretation and leadership allow the music to bloom and glow.”

The Financial Timespraised his ability to support the singers, while Italian reviewer Sara Patera pointed out the “confident and convincing direction” of Inkinen, “who did justice to the complex timbres and dynamic nuances of the difficult score”.

With the Teatro Massimo entering administration and suspending its season of the Ring, Inkinen became an obvious choice to take the podium for Opera Australia’s Ring cycle. Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini said “There was an avalanche of interest from conductors around the world, but we couldn’t have found a better person for this”.

“He has all the qualities you need to conduct this work masterfully,” Terracini said. “The orchestra drives the Ring cycle. You only need to look at the list of orchestras Inkinen has worked with and the repertoire he conducts to see that he is immensely talented.”

As experienced in the Pacific as he is in Europe, Inkinen has strong connections in this part of the world. He was appointed Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at just 27 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra a year later. His C.V. reads like that of a much older maestro: conducting orchestras of such renown as the Dresden Staatskapelle, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the La Scala Philharmonic, to highlight just a few.

“He is firstly an outstanding musician,” Terracini said. “He is an impressive conductor with terrific stick technique, and he really demonstrates an innate understanding of and affinity with Wagner’s music. His passion for the piece is palpable.”

With his unlined face and Nordic appearance, Inkinen cuts a fine figure in tails and a bowtie. Aware of his relative youth compared with the instrumentalists under his command, the maestro has always had to let his talent speak for itself. And it has, loudly: talk to any singer or instrumentalist that has performed under his baton, and you begin to get an idea of his talent.

Ultimately, his youth has nothing to do with it, Terracini said. “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough. It’s exciting to have a young conductor of immense talent working with Neil Armfield on this life-changing project.” The artistic director had already approached Inkinen when he began to receive emails from singers praising the conductor’s immense talents.

Among the big names who have sung under his baton are the acclaimed New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill and Australian helden baritone John Wegner.

Last year, Inkinen brought New Zealand a concert performance of one of Wagner’s Ringoperas, and critics were dumbfounded. “Superlatives are inadequate to do the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Die Walküre justice ... Pietari Inkinen sustained a sumptuous, perfectly paced orchestra flow, springing into passionate bloom for the young lovers, ushering in the Valkyries with whiplash thrills,” wrote William Dart in the New Zealand Herald.

Lyndon Terracini is confident he will bring the very best out of the stellar international cast gathered in Melbourne to perform in Opera Australia’s first Ring cycle.

“As Peter Craven wrote in his wonderful article on the Ring in The Australian, finding the perfect conductor for The Ring is an eternal quest. But we think we’ve got pretty close to that,” he said.

Pietari Inkinen joins Opera Australia in September.

The Opera Australia Chorus light the stunning pillar candles made by Queen B in the first Act of Tosca.

A GUEST POST BY CATE BURTON - Queen Bee of the Queen B Hive

When a bee flew into the studio, the
Queen B team wasted no time fetching
the camera to capture the
"Bee's seal of approval"

We like to think that there’s not much about beeswax candle-making that we don’t know about at Queen B. With over a decade of experience, and having approached beeswax candle-making from a scientific perspective (rather than as a craft), there’s a lot that we know. We have a comprehensive understanding of beeswax (and that beeswax from different honey flows burns differently). We have filmed, photographed and analysed the over 500 different pure cotton wicks we have available. We’ve even documented the different results we get depending on the temperature of the day we’re pouring! But even then, the candles for Tosca were a challenge.

First, a little history…

Beeswax candle-making has been around in one form or another for centuries, traced as far back as the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD). From Roman times until the 18^thcentury candles were made from either beeswax (for royalty) or tallow/animal fat (for everyone else). In the mid 18^thCentury, the whaling industry started to provide ‘spermaceti’ (a semi liquid fat from the head cavity) which became the primary wax for candles until the early 19^th Century when stearin (another pure fat) was discovered. But it was the discovery of petroleum in Burma in the mid 1850’s that transformed candle-making. Today, it is estimated that over 90% of candles are made from paraffin, a by-product of petroleum refining.

Blocks of beeswax, pre candle-making

Throughout that time, however, beeswax candles have remained the candle of choice for royalty and for churches, many monasteries keeping their own bees and making their own candles to use and sell. Whilst we hold no monastic tendencies at Queen B, our desire has always been to make candles that are non-toxic to burn a fit for royalty, but affordable to the masses. Being passionate about Australian manufacturing, we hand-make every candle on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

And now for the challenge!

Who would have thought that hand-pouring a 50cm candle that we already do a 35cm version of would involve rearranging our entire building! Hand making beeswax candles if you’re a perfectionist is not for the faint hearted.

For the Tosca order we sourced over 300kg’s of beeswax from an ironbark honey flow in Southern NSW, built special jigs to handle the height and weight of these candles and moved everything in our building to create a new production space (to ensure the pouring wasn’t open to the elements and the candles cooled evenly).

Yet still we had problems.

Using heat lamps to keep the beeswax warm.

The trick, as it turns out, was to use of heat lamps and drumming! Making the Tosca pillar candles was a little like tending a baby… ensuring they were warm (not easy in an unheaded 250 square metre building) and singing them a lullaby… or in our case, drumming a lullaby.

There is something quite extraordinary about nature and just how right she gets things. For example, a female worker bee makes around 1/8^th of a pinkie nail of beeswax in her lifetime. If you clean that wax properly, and wick test thoroughly to find the ‘perfect’ wick, the result is sublime. Each candle with a large flame (due to the high melting point of the wax), surrounded by a golden halo (unique to pure beeswax candles) and incredible, long burn times.

Each Tosca pillar burns for over 100 hours and contains the life’s work of around 10,000 female worker bees (and several grey hairs on the heads of the Queen B team)! Perhaps best of all, being beeswax they are non-toxic to burn which ensures that the opera singers (and audience) can enjoy the candle-light without the fumes.

Candlemaker Tilly at work in
the Queen B studio

Whilst we’ve worked with many global luxury brands (including Dom Perignon, Cartier, Dior, Riedel, Penfolds and Bollinger) as a business passionate about the arts, and about Australian made, it was a special privilege to work with Opera Australia. Each Tosca pillar candle was individually hand-poured at Queen B’s hive on Sydney’s northern beaches using 100% pure Australian beeswax and a pure cotton wick.

The thing we love the most is being part of the team working behind the scenes to make an Opera Australia production memorable.

It wasn’t until we got started that we realised the sheer number of people involved – from the carpenters, to the metal workers, the costume makers, the fibre glass workers, the painters, the decorators… and yes, the beeswax candle makers! Every craft an essential part of putting on an unforgettable performance. Every skill employed right here, in Australia.

In this day and age of budget cutting and cheap imports, it is incredibly gratifying that this still exists.

You can read about my first night at the opera by clicking here!

Jonathan Abernethy is part of the Moffatt Oxenbould Young Artist Program. He is currently on tour with Oz Opera, taking Don Giovanni around Australia.

A sneaky Instagram shot taken by fellow
castmate Katherine Wiles whilst in rehearsal!

The Tour started rehearsing at the Opera Centre in Melbourne as a team of two casts. There is a group from last year's tour and a new group joining for this year (I'm one of the newbies). The newbies have the challenge of picking up the entire opera and blocking in just two weeks before the full runs of the show begin in the third week.

We have a fantastic director (Michael Gow), who has been incredible at giving both casts the tools to make their own creative choices, as well as giving a helping hand to keep the overall vision he has of the show.

Comparatively this show requires much more input and effort from everyone involved than a mainstage production, there are fewer people both onstage, in the orchestra, and behind the scenes.

The cast is a split system where one cast will perform the main roles while the other cast makes up the
chorus and fills any ‘extras’ acting requirements. On the following night, we switch roles! If anyone is sick the lead from the alternate cast is then called up to cover, this means we are able to get plenty of rest from the role and the travel between destinations – without it we couldn't last the distance.

Pictured here in character with
castmate Celeste Lazarenko

This travelling production of Don Giovanni is sung in English. Every singer I've talked to doesn't like singing in English… it can be a double-edged sword, on the one hand there are certain moments through a phrase where an English word is difficult to produce (a vowel or a consonant in the wrong spot), whereas in the original language it’s a clear passage with no obstacles.

The flip side is that it can be a great way for English-speaking singers to learn a role prior to doing it in the original language, as it helps really come to grips with the text and the key moments in the Opera from a character's perspective.

Finally as we are performing to a predominately English-speaking audience in rural Australia, so performing in English as compared to in Italian with subtitles is a much more easy going and enjoyable experience. Opening night at the Karralyka Theatre in Ringwood was testament to that, judging by the overwhelming applause we received!

Next stop was Port Pirie, opening night for the new cast. A few of us had our Oz Opera debuts there!

I am looking forward to exploring greater Australia on this tour - and I couldn't think of a better way to do it, than singing my way around the country!

Lisa McCune as Nellie Forbush
Picture: Kurt Sneddon

There’s something about a success. Something you can feel when you know you’re onto a good thing. Something in the air of the rehearsal studio, on the faces of the cast, in the smiles of the crew, says Lisa McCune. “It’s the crackle of a good show.”

She’s talking about the musical juggernaut of South Pacific, which the Logie-award winning performer starred in through Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne last year. The Rodgers & Hammerstein hit returns for a repeat season in Sydney in September and then a whirlwind tour of Adelaide and Perth.

The role is now familiar territory for the tiny blonde performer, who “washed that man right out of her hair” night after night during 2012. But it doesn’t get old, she says. “The crackle remains.”

That same feeling of wonder can be terrifying for someone joining the cast: a feeling Gyton Grantley and Christine Anu know well. The star pair joined the cast for the Brisbane season last year, and were thrown in at the deep end for a whirlwind rehearsal period.

Anu recalls crying in her dressing room on her first day from sheer nerves. “It was insane. Lisa popped by to say hello and I thought ... Shit! That was Lisa McCune! She saw me cry!”

But it was straight down to business when they got out under lights on stage. “It was [director] Bart Sher standing there and saying, “Hi Christine. I want you to do it like this.”

Gyton Grantley as Luther Billis
Picture: Kurt Sneddon

All of the cast rave about working with Sher, whose directing accolades include four Tony nominations (and one win for his seminal production of South Pacific).

“You’d find yourself performing to the wings because Bart was standing there,” McCune said.

Gyton Grantley is positively excited about the director’s return. “He’s just got that crazy New York energy. Razor-sharp. Super smart. It’s an honour and a privilege to work with him.”

The characters each performer plays in South Pacific are worlds away from their own lives, but that can be immensely freeing as a performer.

Anu is hardly recognisable under the long wig and blackened teeth. “I just look like this ugly troll. To be unrecognisable on stage ... to not look like me, means I can transform, in a true sense. The wig even makes me walk differently,” the celebrated Australian singer says.

Grantley agrees. “Having a character is so freeing, I love being able to throw myself into someone so different from myself. While Luther Billis isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, this time I wasn’t a drug dealing murderer (Underbelly), and it’s very different from being a gay house husband (House Husbands)!”

Christine Anu as Bloody Mary
Picture: Kurt Sneddon

In his years of working in opera and musicals, Opera Australia’s artistic director Lyndon Terracini has seen a lot of ensemble casts. “But this is one of the happiest casts I’ve ever seen!”

Why return for a second season? It all goes back to McCune’s feeling of the “crackle of a good show”. For Terracini, that crackle is excitement.

“Every night, South Pacific was just as exciting as the night before. And it doesn’t get much better than that.”

South Pacific returns to the Sydney Opera House from Sunday 8th September to Saturday 2nd November.

The smash-hit musical will also travel to Perth, playing from Sunday 10th November to Friday 6th December.

A limited season will play in Adelaide from Sunday 29th December to Sunday 12th January.

For more information and to book tickets, click here.

This is a guest post written by Sumita Menon, who interned at Oz Opera this Autumn.

There’s nothing quite like a cast of professional opera singers and a small chamber orchestra performing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a member of the touring company. All outstanding musicians but even more spectacular when they are all improvising in their own key. A truly memorable moment and one of many during my time as an intern at Oz Opera.

In January this year I was fortunate enough to participate in the Arts Administration Program with the Australian Youth Orchestra (AYO). Through this, I was given the opportunity to apply for a number of fellowships that AYO offers giving participants of the program a chance to gain work experience in another Arts Organisation. This is an invaluable opportunity and I was lucky enough to be the recipient of the 2013 Oz Opera fellowship.

Children watch the Schools Company
production of The Barber of Seville

Oz Opera have four main staff members, all of who work incredibly hard to put on an annual tour of a fully-staged opera production and two Schools Company’s Tours in both New South Wales and Victoria.

As an intern during one of Oz Opera’s busiest times of the year, I was given a wide variety of tasks to do, the majority of which were specifically for the preparation and launch of the 2013 Regional Tour of Don Giovanni. One of the first tasks I was given however was a research project looking into the evolving formula of opera.

A very broad topic yet right up my alley having recently completed my Bachelor of Music degree majoring in classical voice. Opera is an interest of mine and I enjoyed reading over the history of opera and putting together some of my thoughts about the accessibility of opera versus musical theatre and how opera has changed and developed over the centuries.

Other tasks I completed included: sending out 50,000 flyers to the 22 venues around Australia that the tour much more.

The Oz Opera touring production of Don Giovanni

will visit, creating tour maps for the tour diary, briefing notes for the launch of the tour, attending various meetings, proofing and writing marketing copy, sending out invitations to performance at various places on the tour, creating the tour survey, sitting in on rehearsals and much

My time at Oz Opera can truly be described as jam packed and I feel as though the last 5 weeks has just flown by. It is always challenging entering into any new work place, getting to know the members of staff, completing various tasks as well as learning how the company runs but the Oz Opera staff were warm and extremely welcoming. It has been a wonderful experience and I feel as though I got a good taste of what it is like working for the biggest opera company in Australia. Highlights include watching the extremely talented cast, crew, orchestra and creative team work in their element, seeing the launch of the School’s Company production of The Barber of Seville and I cannot forget to mention the amazing baking talents of some of the lovely people in the office, very delicious!

One of the many things I will take away from this experience will be an even greater appreciation for passionate people working in the arts and the amazing work they do to put on such amazing productions. To Sandra, Kate, Penny and Tamsin thank you for your guidance and kind words. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you all and I hope the regional tour is an enormous success. Thank you also to the Australian Youth Orchestra for providing me with this opportunity!

Conal Coad's Don Pasquale fails to impress Rachelle Durkin's feisty Norina

Conal Coad and Rachelle Durkin are wearing matching jumpers on the day we meet in the Sydney Opera House Green Room, but they assure me it’s accidental.

The unlikely pair are reuniting their comic talents to perform in Donizetti’s Don Pasqualefor Opera Australia this season.

It’s their second time treading the boards together, with the young New York-based soprano providing a ravishing Tatiana to Coad’s famous Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream a few years ago. (Both singers were also in Don Giovanni, however their roles were less intertwined.)

“It just seems to work,” said the distinguished bass. “Rachelle does something and sort of urges me into taking it a step further ...”

Rachelle interrupts, “And then Conal says, let’s do it like this ...”

“And then I fall into a trap and do so,” Conal says, “And I swing around and she’s on another level yet again...”

“Until the director goes, ‘no, no, that’s enough!’” Rachelle finishes with a laugh. “It definitely works.”

Both performers love doing comedy. “And I’d say we have a natural affinity towards it,” Conal says. “It’s one of those things, it either fits in and suits your personality, or it doesn’t. And you can see that on stage.”

Rachelle attributes her comic talent to an awkward adolescence. “I grew up with such long limbs, I spent my whole childhood trying to hide it. I hid myself by creating comedy and making people laugh!”

Conal has enjoyed a long career in Australia and abroad playing chiefly comic roles, but the experience has taught him that comedy is no laughing matter. “You have to do all of your fool work with great truth,” the New Zealand-born bass says. “You must never believe that you are playing the fool. If you don’t think about what you’re doing as funny (even if it is innately funny, like a fall), if you get the right timing, then you get the right laugh.”

Rachelle Durkin & Conal Coad in
A Midsummer Night's Dream

It’s about respecting the audience, Rachelle agrees. “They’re not stupid. Even when you are doing something funny, like when I’m pretending to be Sophronia from the convent, I still have to believe that I’m trying to be her. You can’t go ‘nudge nudge, wink wink,’ to the audience, I don’t like that.”

The audience don’t either, Conal says. “Even if they laugh, it doesn’t really work. They laugh because they know they’re expected to, but that’s not the laughter of true humour. You have to take comedy very seriously.”

It’s Rachelle’s second turn at playing the feisty Norina, after she stepped in at the last minute to cover an ill soprano at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. “I had to jump on the Met stage in front of 4,500 people, there you go, thank you very much! For a radio broadcast, as well!”

It’s a fun role, Rachelle says. “We don’t know what happened to Norina’s first husband, but it’s clear a lot of people would be talking about her when she walks down the street. She’s a tough nut, she’s got a thick skin, but what’s really charming is that she really does love Ernesto. She’s quick-witted, wise beyond her years, she’s feisty and bitchy in that Italian way.”

In other words, the perfect foil for Conal Coad’s character: a self-important elderly bachelor who decides to diddle his nephew out of his inheritance by finding himself a wife.

“Here is this old codger who is pretty happy with his life of stamp-collecting and servants,” Conal explains. “He gets irritated that his nephew won’t settle down with the woman he has picked out for him, and so he gets sold on the idea that he could do it himself. Without realising the true and horrible implications of a 70-yr-old settling down with someone who is less than half his age!”

As the plot unfolds, the true horror is revealed: Norina runs riot and much hilarity ensues.

“It’s a very funny piece,” Conal says. “Donizetti’s music just sparkles – it’s like a stream, bouncing and sparkling along. The comedy is unforced.”

Director Roger Hodgman has created a production to match, Rachelle says. “It’s eye candy, a very bright production, beautiful costumes...”

“...Filled with beautiful people,” Conal quips.

“The Chorus is phenomenal,” Rachelle counters,

“And it’s got everything!” Conal interrupts.

“You’ve got Mafioso, a priest, bicycles,” Rachelle continues, “and bring the kids because there’s a vespa! The show just zips along at a lovely pace. There are no moments where you’re going, ‘Oh, when will this be over?’ Well, except for when the tenor sings...” she laughs.

(She’s joking. While the rest of the cast spend a lot of time spitting our rapid-fire recitative, the tenor gets the beautiful tunes.)

Even non-opera fans will love the music, Rachelle says. “You’ll be tapping your feet all the way out of the Opera House!”

Photo by Andrew Keshan

Deborah Humble is becoming quite famous for a role that is just four and a half minutes long. “Erda in Das Rheingold comes out of the ground, she sings, and she disappears back where she came from. How on earth can you make a reputation on four and a half minutes?”

But that’s just what the talented mezzo-soprano has been doing, making a name for herself as a “Wagneress” around the world. This November, Humble will sing two roles in Opera Australia’s first production of the Ring Cycle: Erda the earth goddess and Waltraute.

She’s grown very fond of the earth goddess that began her Wagner career. “I have sung that aria so many hundreds of times that I feel we might even be the same person. She pays my rent, so I guess that’s a close connection!”

Each time she sings the role, it’s new, Humble says. “You have to make it fresh each time, and hold a little something back for when she reappears in Siegfried.”

Humble is gaining a reputation for her dramatic mezzo tones, and has played five different roles in Ring cycles around the world to date. She is also rehearsing Fricka for a yet-to-be-confirmed gig somewhere outside Australia.

“By then I will have sung every mezzo role in the Ring. During rehearsals, I have to keep remembering not to sing other people’s parts!”

As a freelance artist with more than a decade of experience working across Europe, Humble is perfectly placed for the raft of Wagner opportunities available in the year of the great composer’s birth. “These kinds of roles come with age, and vocal development,” Humble explains. “It took my move to Germany in 2005 and the interest of [Hamburg State Opera Chief Executive] Simone Young to give me my first chance at that kind of repertoire. And then it all took off!”

The move to Germany was a catalyst for change, and Humble believes she sings Wagner so much better now she understands the nuances of the language. “I’ve spent many years studying the language and trying to understand the music. I don’t think I’ll ever understand all of it ... that would take a lifetime. And what an interesting journey! I sing Erda very differently in 2013 than I did in 2008.”

Immersing herself in German culture also offered a new perspective on Wagner’s music, Humble explains. “These stories are part of German culture. Children grow up with the Ring of the Nibelung as a fairytale, the way we grow up with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It’s a very big learning curve for an Australian.”

Nearly a decade of singing in Germany has taught the Adelaide girl there is no middle ground when it comes to Wagner. “I had no idea when I started on this path that there were people that were so passionate about the music. It’s one thing to sing it and try to understand the story, and another to learn of the history, the politics, all the things about this music that make people so for or against Wagner. People either love it or they hate it. I just sing it.”

If you can leave the history and politics aside, the music will win you over, Humble says. Despite having sung her way through so many Ring cycles, Humble admits “The Ride of the Valkyries” can still give her goosebumps. “There are other truly wonderful moments, often ones that my character isn’t involved in. The big immolation scene in Götterdammerung is so beautiful. I often just sit on the side of the stage and listen.”

When she’s not being captivated by the music, Humble sits backstage and knits between her scenes. “All my friends with children start receiving booties and baby clothes.”

The glamourous mezzo can’t quite believe that she’s now at an age where younger singers come to her for advice, saying it doesn’t feel like all that long ago that she was in their shoes. But she is quick to tell them two things: firstly, that you don’t have to always sing fortissimo (very very loud) to master Wagner. “Yes, there is big orchestration and big moments, but there are also very tender musical moments. It’s not about having a huge voice.”

Secondly, that if you want to have a career overseas, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices. “People come to me and say, ‘I’m moving overseas for 3 months, do you think it’s going to happen?’”

From the outside, it does look like a charmed life: Humble spent seven years living in Paris, seven years in Munich, and next year is moving to the food capital of Italy, Bologna to master Italian. But you have to be prepared to become just a singer with a suitcase, Humble says.

“I was a high school teacher and at 24 I just packed up and left. I’ve been gone ever since. It affects your friendships, your family life ... I don’t have any children. If you want a nice house in the suburbs and a regular income and a car and all the things normal people have, it’s not a very good choice.”

But if you can imagine opera singing as more than a job, there is no end to its rewards, she adds. “It’s a passion, and I’ve always wanted to do it. As long as I keep getting nervous about performances, as long as it keeps making my heart beat, and as long as I keep wanting to find out more, then it’s still worth doing.”

When the Melbourne Ring Cycle’s last curtain falls, Humble will make the big move to Bologna, to study under some great Verdi specialists. She can see herself fitting into the ancient university town. “I like cooking, I like food ... but I’ll begin to look like a traditional Wagner singer if I stay in Bologna for too long!”

Next year, as Wagner fever recedes with the composer’s 200^thanniversary behind her, Humble is looking forward to tackling some different roles, with a focus on Verdi and some Wagner roles she is yet to conquer.

But what about Erda?

“Erda is the sort of role that will be with you for life,” Humble says.

Emma Matthews stars as Violetta in La traviata. Photo by Branco Gaica

If there’s one thing you can guarantee when you put on a production of La traviata, it’s that someone in the audience will want to sing along. Up in the “gods” of the Joan Sutherland Theatre circle on opening night, fans leaned forward on their seats when Alfredo began the famous "Brindisi", nudging their seatmates “Ooh, I like this one!”

In a tiny coaching room at The Opera Centre just a few minutes before a rehearsal, I’ve cornered the three women in the Principal cast of La traviata. Leading lady Emma Matthews sits with her “opera sister” mezzo-soprano Dominica Matthews, who is no relation, and young soprano Natalie Aroyan.

Dominica Matthews as Flora
Photo by Branco Gaica

Emma is taking her second turn as the doomed Violetta, following a hugely successful performance of the “fallen woman” on Sydney Harbour last year. She’s looking forward to tackling the role in a more intimate setting. It’s Dominica’s fourth time playing the fabulously flirty role of Flora, in Elijah Moshinsky’s much loved and often performed production.

Verdi’s La traviatais known for its beautiful music and take-home tunes, and it is well known even outside of opera circles. That is a blessing and a curse for the performers on stage, Emma says. “There are so many people that know it, and they generally want to sing along. You’ve got to be better than all of the recordings. And there’s a lot of pressure to sound a certain way.”

While there can be pressure to impress, playing to a crowd in the know does have its advantages, Dominica says. “It is really good when you first start and you hear the crowd go ‘ooh’,” she laughs.

It’s Natalie’s first turn as a Principal in Verdi’s classic, playing Violetta’s loyal maid, Annina. She gets lots of nice recitative moments, and also a chance to watch an idol in action: Emma is one of Australia’s best known sopranos, and in this opera, she tackles an aria that daunts even the most experienced of singers.

When I ask Emma about “that e-flat”, she laughs. “The aria is my favourite part! When I first learned I was doing this role, [Artistic Director] Lyndon Terracini told me to sing "Sempre Libera" again and again and again, so that when I got to it, all I could think of was, ‘Yay, it’s here!’ Because it’s such a bloody hard piece to sing, sopranos get to it and are terrified.”

It was good advice, Emma says. “I love singing that aria now, I really enjoy it. I’m so glad there’s an interval afterwards, because I almost fall over when I’m done, but I do love it. It’s a glorious piece to sing.”

Conductor Patrick Lange has pushed the singers to play with their dynamic range, something Emma is enjoying immensely. As a lighter-voiced soprano, she says her forte (loud) singing can be softer than other singers. “But he’s getting me to find the softest, softest singing that I can do, so my forte sounds louder by comparison.”

Natalie Aroyan plays Violetta's maid, Annina
Photo by Branco Gaica

Natalie has been busy taking notes - singing alongside a soprano she has watched from the cheap seats is a

dream come true. “And kind of like having the best seat in the house!” Natalie jokes.

“You learn from everything they do, how they sing, even watching Emma in rehearsals is a learning experience. How do you handle yourself? How do you handle the difficult parts? How do you deal with five people telling you something different at the same time?”

In rehearsals, there are so many people in the room. “Everyone has an opinion about how something should be sung,” Natalie explains, “and when you have five people telling you about the language, the intention, the music, the movement, it’s hard to take it all in. For a singer to be able to stand there among that and deliver an amazing piece of music is an accomplishment in itself.”

“But in the end, it’s you standing up there,” Dominica says.

I’m interviewing the trio on the day of the Sitzprobe, and each singer has their own reasons for loving this rehearsal.

For Emma, it’s a chance to focus on the music, without any of the distractions of the movement and costumes. Natalie loves listening to the orchestra, in such close proximity. “It really makes me think I have the best job in the world. This is what I get to do,” she says. Even though she has performed it so many times, Dominica still likes to see it all come together. “The music is so beautiful, it’s heartbreaking at times.”

That said, each of the singers says it is easier to feel the part and sing the music once in costume.

Rehearsing in casual clothes is very different to wearing the lavish, corseted, and long-trained dresses of this period production.

“From the instant you step into the makeup room and they start putting on that wig or placing the first pin curl, every step is becoming that person,” Emma explains.

“Putting her on,” Dominica adds. “You walk differently.”

“You literally walk in her shoes,” Natalie finishes.

The sumptuously detailed production is now playing at the Sydney Opera House.

For more information and tickets, click here.

Cheryl Barker
Photo by Keith Saunders

Cheryl Barker has an addiction. It’s a fairly benign one, as addictions go, and suitably diva-ish for a woman who spends most of her time singing powerful top notes on the world’s most famous stages.

For each new role she plays, the celebrated soprano chooses a perfume that she believes reflects the character.

When Cheryl takes the stage in John Bell’s new production of Tosca on Sunday, she will be revisiting a well-loved role, and a well-known scent.

“I wear Chanel No.19 body lotion and perfume,” Cheryl says. “I see Floria Tosca as sensual, volatile and naive. I feel the perfume has all of these qualities to it.”

While each production of even the most frequently performed operas is different, the scent can help remind the singer of the feeling of being that woman. “I have always used this perfume, since I first sang the role several years ago. It helps to bring back memories of not only the different productions I have sung, but the feelings I have about her character,” Cheryl explains.

Bell’s new production is an exciting take on the timeless story of Tosca, but Cheryl says ultimately, the characterisation of Puccini’s brave heroine doesn’t change too much from performance to performance. “It’s all there in the music and the text.”

“The story of Tosca is completely believable and I think that is why the audiences love that opera so much.”

See Cheryl Barker reprise her role as Tosca on the Sydney Opera House stage from Sunday August 4^th to August 31^st.

By Jennifer Williams

Dusk is falling over Alice Springs, and under the rosy glow of the fading light, the Araluen Arts Centre seems deserted. Behind the doors, however, is a travelling company of singers, musicians, costumiers and mechanics.

The scene is nothing glamourous. In shorts and thongs (jandals, for the Kiwi members of the company), musicians are sitting around on bare concrete, eating microwaved soup from supermarket containers.

Some people are taking advantage of relatively good phone reception to call home, the technicians and stage hands are playing Frisbee.

The tour manager is ticking 1,000 things off an ever-growing list, and the travelling wigs and wardrobe supervisor is steaming the last of the costumes she has spent the day laundering.

In the dressing rooms, tenors and baritones are sitting around shirtless, as boys are wont to do when the temperature cracks 30. They’re warming up, checking notes and trading jokes, and occasionally stopping to apply eyeliner.

The bathrooms are reverberating with top notes and low notes as singers warm up against the unbeatable acoustics. Behind the lighting rigs, a violinist is bowing away, practising a particularly fiddly phrase.

It’s 60 minutes until showtime, and before long, the audience will begin milling in the foyers. It’s always a motley crowd, in these small towns. A couple walk past, dressed to the nines in taffeta and bow ties. Tourists have picked out their very best shorts and least-dusty sandals.

Excitable children press against their parents and shyly approach the program table.

“Does anybody die?” a girl asks the baritone selling programs. “Oh, just one or two,” says the singer gently. “But they don’t really. Just the characters.”

“People die?” her older brother chimes in. “Cool!”

The show itself goes well, despite a pre-show spider bite and a splitting headache for one of the singers. People chuckle at Leperello’s sulky comic antics, coo over the pretty 1950s dresses of Donna Elvira and Zerlina, and gasp at Don Giovanni’s shocking end.

With the last of the applause still ringing, performers are stripping off corsets and high-waisted pants, unpinning wigs and kicking off shoes. It’s a race to beat the record: getting back to the bus.

The mechs and techs have a longer night ahead: bumping out with the local crew.

But the best bit is still to come. Sitting in town having breakfast the next day, or 40km away seeing the sights, people sidle up to the singers. “Were you in the opera last night?” an older woman asks. “It was wonderful!”

She’s a grey nomad, travelling with her husband and another couple across the outback. From a small town in rural Queensland, she’s seen the odd opera screening at the cinema. But this was her first live show. “You can’t beat the feeling of live performance,” she says, her travelling companions shyly looking on.

We get a tweet from an audience member. “Leperello adds Alice Springs to Don Giovanni’s list.”

Perhaps another lady for Don Giovanni’s burgeoning book of conquests?

Not this time. The singers are all tucked up in bed, preparing for an eight-hour bus trip in the morning. Next stop: Tennant Creek!

Oz Opera is the touring arm of Opera Australia. They are currently taking Don Giovanni around the country, on a 10 week tour stopping in 21 towns! Follow OperaAustralia on instagram to see more pictures from the road!

Kanen Breen

Kanen Breen has already won a Helpmann award for his gift with comedy. This winter, he is taking his talents to the title role in Albert Herring: singing the role of a discontented grocer boy who would rather not be in the spotlight.

The tenor took a few minutes out from a by all accounts hilarious rehearsal period to introduce you to his character and Britten's take on life in a small country town.

Britten's operas often take one individual and pit them against the rest of society, as in Peter Grimes. How does this play out in Albert Herring?

Although it doesn't play out as explicitly as it does in Peter Grimes, Albert Herring is nonetheless at odds with his community. Really, he's a nonentity, regarded as simple and a little laughable. Add an overprotective mother into the mix, and you've got a very discontented boy, who feels trapped by a life of hard work in the family grocers.

He's keenly aware that life has a great deal more to offer but is completely clueless about how to involve himself in it. His selection as May King is further evidence that the town regards him as a virtuous simpleton who can be exploited towards their own ends - at no point does anyone acknowledge how utterly humiliating such an appointment must be for a young man, already deeply self-conscious and desperately unsure of himself.

What are your favourite moments in the opera?

My favourite scene to watch is the opening of the show, as we are introduced to the various town figures who concoct this hideous plan to elect a May "King" (usually a May Queen) in order to teach the town's young female population a lesson. It's a great combination of characters, capped by the arrival of Lady Billows (Jacqui Dark), who steam rolls into the scene and takes charge in her best blustering fashion.

My favourite scene to perform is Albert's return to the shop at night, after the festivities, drunk and ready to explode his life in a different direction.

Britten isn't known for his simple melodies or orchestration. How do you make something difficult look easy on stage?

Though far from the hardest score I've worked on, Albert Herring does have its challenges, mostly related to counting! The pitches are reasonably straightforward, it's the gaps between vocal entries that are a bit random. Thank God for Anthony Legge, our terrific conductor - he is excellent at cueing the cast, and equally proficient at steering us out of the ditch and back onto the road if we get a bit wayward. Trusting your conductor on a piece like this makes all the difference. If we're making it look easy, you can rest assured there is a great conductor in the pit!

For somebody not familiar with Britten's work, what is Albert Herring similar to?

Albert Herring really has its own flavour, but I guess there are elements of the characters and their interactions that one could compare to a couple of British sitcoms. The obvious is The Vicar of Dibley, in that you've got some strongly archetypal country figures from different castes, and the resulting frictions from all of these people living in the same town. Lady Billows reminds me of Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping up Appearances: controlling, head-strong, and always on the lookout for an opportunity to toss her status about. There's an element of Upstairs, Downstairs also, as the worlds of Mrs Herring's grocer shop and Lady Billows' posse collide.

On a personal note, how do you go about preparing for a role like Albert Herring?

I always start with the score first, and once I have a reasonable working knowledge of the notes and a sense of the character's journey from the first to the last page, I might listen to a couple of recordings. The trouble with many recordings is that they can contain inaccuracies, so you need to be able to stick to your own musical guns when listening to someone else's mistakes, and not be influenced by them. I'm always reluctant to watch video recordings of shows that I'm doing, because I'm a bit of a bowerbird and end up stealing stuff without even meaning to, rather than inventing my own physicality.

Have you ever seen a production of Albert Herring?

The only production I've seen was about 15 years ago in Melbourne. It was staged at the Prahran markets and was a really great piece of entertainment. My mate Jon Bode was a brilliant Albert, Jacqui Dark played his Mum and the late John Dingle conducted. I recall hearing that it was so cold in the marketplace that during one of the shows, the double bass cracked! Sid made his entrance on a forklift and the kids were dressed as giant cupcakes, it was really sweet.

Albert Herring is on at the Sydney Opera House from Friday, August 16. For more information and tickets, click here.

“Steak!” comes the cry from the back of the bus, as we pull into Alice Springs. “Who’s up for a steak?”

It’s a treat for a bus full of singers, musicians and mechs, who have been on the road for six weeks.

Most days, the fare is less substantial.

But six weeks on the road, moving from motel room to motel room, certainly inspires some creativity when it comes to filling that touring belly.

Here are some of the most creative meals discovered by the Oz Opera touring company.

Warning: you may never use a motel iron to steam a shirt, ever again.

Anzac biscuits: mixed by hand, wrapped in foil and cooked on the iron.
Poached chicken: chicken fillet wrapped in an oven bag and boiled in the motel room kettle.
Pikelets: make batter as usual, drop onto a foil covered iron.
Toasted sandwiches: fresh bread, cheese and ham pressed together with (you guessed it), the motel iron
Microwave lemon meringue pie (via packet mix, and nicer than you think!)
Anything with tuna (tuna rolls, tuna and rice, tuna on crackers, tuna, tuna, tuna)
Supermarket in town? That’s barbecue chicken and salad, night after night, with a travelling jar of Nando’s Hot Sauce
Boiled eggs, placed carefully in the motel room kettle and retrieved with a coffee spoon

Perhaps they were inspired by YouTube star Natalie Tran, and her infamous hotel room cooking skills?

Jessica Dean (Zerlina), Christopher Hillier (Don Giovanni) and Janet Todd (Donna Elvira)
in Oz Opera's production of Don Giovanni. Photo by: Albert Comper

A guest post by Penelope Bergen

Where else in the world can you sit in Row 5 of a concert venue and see some of the best performers in one of the best operas ever written for the same price as that Chinese takeaway I had for dinner a few nights earlier (not to mention drink a glass of red while you’re watching it)?

I've been living in Alice Springs for over six years and I've seen three operas, two ballets, two Moscow Circus visits, an Archibald-winning art exhibition, not to mention all the local exhibits, performances and art films that pass through this remote desert town: Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of Alice.

But nothing stands out more in a dusty desert town than the art of opera with its drama, singing, acting, costumes, music – who could ask for more in one art form?

Among the characters you most want to meet (though maybe not on your own in a dark alley) is Don Giovanni, so as soon as I heard Oz Opera was heading to town I bought a ticket.

If you know nothing about opera, it might be tempting to think that opera stars are all old, fat Italian men and women who've been eating too much lasagne for too long so when one of Mozart’s most enduring and beloved of operas about a scoundrel womaniser and his sidekick Leperello began in Alice Springs it was clear the vibrant, young Alice was going to be added to Don Giovanni’s list of conquests.

And far from being old, fat Italian blokes, we were treated to the gorgeousness of Christopher Hillier and Tom Hamilton in the two main roles, with the incredible soprano voice of Celeste Lazarenko to add some gravitas to the jokers (if only they knew what was coming their way).

The choruses were magnificent, the sets and 1950s costumes stylish and beautiful, all the soloists were fantastic and the orchestra and director worked hard to wrap an entire orchestral piece into one chamber music performance - far too many notes for so few musicians, but by golly, they were good. The art of a good accompaniment is to play so well you’re not noticed and this they did, ironically, with great panache.

As a professional classical violinist it’s always been hard for me to be an audience member and not a performer, picking to pieces the bits that weren't quite the way they were supposed to be – but Oz Opera’s Don Giovanniprovided a fantastic night out; a relief from the stresses of daily life; some great performances, great art and of course the incomparable music of WA Mozart in which you’d have to be soulless not to lose yourself.

We all laughed at Leperello's jokes and his talent for physical comedy, rolled our eyes and groaned together at the naivety of Zerlina and gasped at The Don’s shocking end.

The strength of Christopher Hillier's performance was played out when he got booed by the audience at the curtain call for being such a cad: Christopher, we meant it in the nicest possible way, you understand.

Thank you so much for adding Alice to your list and please, please, please come again.

Penelope Bergen is a violinist and writer. She has played in the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the State Opera and Ballet Orchestra of Victoria and several orchestras and chamber music groups in the Netherlands including the Fiorelli Trio and the Helios Ensemble. She continues to play chamber music in her chosen hometown of Alice Springs where she has been the deputy and acting editor of the local newspaper, a correspondent for Radio Netherlands World Service and a media and communications advisor.

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