Opera Australia has announced its 2024 season, the first under new artistic director Jo Davies. Melbourne The Melbourne season opens with “BMW Opera for All,” a concert series in collaboration with Orchestra Victoria. Performance Dates: Feb. 3, 2024 Next up is “Tosca.” Edward Dick directs and Garry Walker conducts. Performance Dates: May 24 – 30, 2024 Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the {…}
A new survey out of Australia’s The Conversation has revealed that there is still gender inequality in the majority of opera companies in Australia. The survey looked at the production credits for staged operas presented by Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, the State Opera of South Australia, Victorian Opera, and West Australian Opera between 2005 and 2020. According to the survey, {…}
Photo credit: Keith Saunders Opera Australia more than made-up for a recent spate of revivals with the world premiere at Sydney Opera House on July 11th of Damiano Michieletto’s production of Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman,” a co-production with Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra National de Lyon, and Venice’s Teatro La Fenice. Michieletto’s arresting production of Rossini’s “Il viaggio a {…}
(Credit: ©Gemma Escribano) After having performed all over the world at the Teatro Regio di Parma, Donizetti Opera Festival, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro San Carlo, Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Teatro Regio di Torino, and Royal Opera Muscat, among many others, there can be no doubt that Marko Mimica is one of opera’s rising stars. And this month, the bass-baritone will {…}
(Photo credit: Jeff Busby) Elijah Moshinsky’s 1991 production of “Rigoletto” has been seen a number of times in Sydney since its first performance season, and so it would be unsurprising if the recent season at Sydney Opera House, which began on June 13, restaged by Shane Placentino, attracted the odd suggestion that it is time to retire this version. The {…}
Opera Australia announced its 2024 summer season which will feature five Sydney Opera House premieres. Guest Creative Director Lindy Hume curated the season. The program highlights the scope of Australian talent both “on and off the stage,” as well as international guest artists and opera in contemporary storytelling. Hume’s program includes several milestone partnerships for Opera Australia including Victorian Opera, {…}
Opera Australia is currently presenting “Madama Butterfly” on the Sydney Harbour with Karah Son. The Korean soprano is one of today’s most sought-after Cio-Cio Sans which OperaWire has called a “tour-de-force whose journey we raptly followed.” She has performed the title role in Tampere, Leipzig, Warsaw, Berlin (Deutsche Oper), Goteborg, and Turin and is set to perform it in San {…}
Conductor and pianist Robert Andrew Greene passed away on March 12, 2023, due to cancer. Born in Sydney, Australia, Greene studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and graduated in 1974. He conducted “Elixir of Love” for Canberra Opera Society in 1982, and Duhamel’s “The Labours of Hercules” for Adelaide’s Come Out Festival in 1983. In 1985, he made his {…}
(Photo credit: Prudence Upton) The stories on which Puccini based his much-loved opera “La Bohème” (Henri Murger’s “Tales from Bohemian Life”) were set in Paris in the 1830s. Puccini and his librettists distilled from Murger’s diverse and diffuse vignettes of life amid the crowded echelons of poorer Parisian society a throughline of love and dying among four young struggling artist-friends {…}
(Photo credit: Keith Saunders) The designation of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s 1787 opera “Don Giovanni” is “dramma giocosa” – that is, playful or jocular drama. However, Don Giovanni (aka the legendary Don Juan) roamed Europe seducing women (2,065 of them by calculation of the servant Leporello in Mozart’s version of the tale), and the 19th century’s Romantics saw {…}
(Credit: Diana Guledani) 2022 was a year of difficulty for Andrei Kymach. His family were in Ukraine when Russia invaded, beginning a war which has now lasted for over nine months. The baritone immediately spoke out against the war and has continued to use his voice to bring attention to it. In many ways, he has become an operatic hero {…}