(Credit: Leila Alexander) Soprano Madison Nonoa has been named the 2025 recipient of the Dame Heather Begg Memorial Award. The New Zealand-born singer of Samoan, Niuean, and Pākehā heritage will receive AUD $25,000 to support her artistic and professional development at a key stage in her career. “It’s an incredible gift at a very important time,” said Nonoa, a former {…}
(Photo: © Monika Rittershaus) “Don Giovanni” is an opera of seductions and escapes, moral wreckage and divine retribution, a shimmering mosaic of comedy, tragedy, farce, and existential dread. Yet “the mother of all operas” is also a uniquely treacherous work—at once alluring and intractable, irresistibly open yet elusive. Music’s sublimity rarely fails to connect with audiences, even in a less-than-stellar {…}
The new Robert Icke staging of “Don Giovanni” might upset more than a few spirits. The scenic proposal is certainly disruptive, and its insistence on intervening digitally in the opera’s soundscape is the most acute symptom of “directivitis” (the terrible disease that has afflicted opera directors for the last seven decades). However, I really had a great time watching “Don {…}
(Credits: © McQueen / Deutsche Oper am Rhein official website / © Jean-Baptiste Millot / Jiyang Chen) Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, France has announced its 2021-22 season. Here is the full slate. Operas Hans Abrahamsen’s “The Snow Queen” will spotlight Lauren Snouffer, Rachael Wilson, Helena Rasker, David Leigh, Michael Smallwood, Owen Willetts, Floriane Derthe, and Moritz Kallenberg. Robert {…}
The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra is set to a series of concerts of Baroque music featuring three soloists under the age of 30: two violinists and a soprano. The concerts will showcase rising stars 11-year-old violinist Christian Li, violinist Annie Gard, and soprano Madison Nonoa performing a program of instrumental and vocal music by Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi alongside the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in Sydney and Melbourne. {…}