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3Visually, not only is the set exceptional, it is also used fantastically well, with immense depth and clever use of shadow-play. But perhaps the star of the show is the lighting. In such a dark, menacing piece, the right lighting is essential, and here designer Matthew Marshall comes up trumps. Whether it’s the fine lines along the skew-whiff frames, the eerie lights on the dolls’ house, the effects that make characters look like they’re underwater, or the final, unrelenting focus on the Governess’s face, the lighting is (pardon the pun) spot on, and a vital part of a production whose restless energy and macabre tension make it a genuine tour de force.
One of the strongest aspects of this production is the set design by Tracey Grant Lord and lighting design by Matthew Marshall. We enter the dark Victorian house interior, black walls chalk-scribbled with children’s messages. A series of askew archways lead into the black heart of the house. The orchestra of thirteen players is set off to the side, as if in an antechamber. Sooty dust sheets cover the furniture as if hiding dirty secrets. Although relentlessly dark, it contributed hugely to the shadowy nature of this piece. This is not a brightly lit production but always Marshall’s lighting finds the characters’ faces. It feels like candlelight and a story that never does see the light of day, mired in ambiguity as novelist and composer intended. In a brilliant touch of light engineering in Act Two, the two children process into church lit by shafts of light as if from the side windows of the church.
Reseñas de producciones pasadas
9...and Hubert Francis sang Loge with impish impertinence and light, crisp tone.
Particularly outstanding was Hubert Francis as a wily, conniving Loge, his flexible tenor and lithe physical demeanour conveying much of the character’s combination of ambivalence and opportunism.
À l'Opéra de Leipzig ce 23 mars, décors, lumières, costumes et orchestre prodigieux du Gewandhaus ont constitué un superbe écrin enveloppant solistes et chœurs d'une Carmen très applaudie. Dès la somptueuse ouverture durant laquelle chanteurs et choristes s'assemblent face au public, on pressent une production qui s'annonce originale et impressionnante. Deux hauts murs blanchis forment depuis le fond de scène un angle ouvert vers la salle. De frêles escaliers jalonnés de petites plateformes serviront aux acteurs de tribunes jusqu'en haut, là où s'ouvre l'entrée de la manufacture de tabac. Ces structures assez élémentaires sont peuplées de personnages aux costumes multicolores et soignés. Par-delà une certaine couleur locale, la mise en scène de Lindy Hume montre une intention symbolique, suppléée par un jeu fascinant de couleurs et de lumières. Ocre écrasé par la chaleur à l'acte I, espace maculé de taches et de coulées rouge-sang lors du dernier acte. Entretemps, on passe de l'atmosphère trouble et confinée de l'auberge à une nuit constellée d'une myriade de lucioles ; c'est la troupe des contrebandiers qui évolue dans une montagne grisâtre, inhospitalière. La conception d'ensemble comme le soin du détail saisissent immédiatement la signification de chaque acte.
"Carmen" is still one of the most performed operas. In addition to the many catchy tunes and the folkloric flair, this is certainly also due to the fascinating title heroine. No matter which facet of her personality is the focus of attention - there is always an uninterpretable residue, an unfathomable secret. The Australian director Lindy Hume places Carmen's unconditional desire for freedom at the center of her production and, instead of showing an amoral seductress, shows an uncompromisingly independent woman who even accepts her own death for her convictions. This point of view is understandable and credible, especially since Carmen sings about the great importance of freedom for her life more than once.
From the opening notes of the overture the stage became a series of portals: with more doors and windows than an Advent calendar in all colours of the rainbow, in and out of which cast and chorus ran enough plotlines for a whole series of Looney Tunes, rather than the one episode starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd that riffs off Rossini’s score. Slapstick was never far away, keeping pathos at bay; though Heuser and Johns each had a moment before the chaotic comedy returned. Burhan Guner, conducting from the pit for the first time, kept the measure with an A-team of WA Symphony Orchestra musicians, occasionally tested by the sheer vibrant energy.
With bright ideas, solid voices and drama sewn with pathos that doesn’t let a bag of spectacular effects overwhelm it, the outdoor experience of Opera Australia’s La bohème makes for a memorable and enchanting night out on Sydney Harbour. Generously backed by Dr Haruhisa Handa and his International Foundation for Arts and Culture - with the NSW government well onboard an annual event that has lured more than 300,000 attendees over its now seventh season - the stakes are high to deliver a thrilling night that ticks umpteen boxes for a broad cross-sectional audience. It would seem that the magic formula has well and truly proven itself. It’s an immense and superbly-organised affair that shares the art form with a mix of passion and unapologetic splendour and one that warmly connects first-timers and returnees alike. And if money’s to be made, we’ll see it trickle with the spirit of generosity through all levels of the art form. Correct? At the core of La bohème is passionate new love, hope against the odds and the unquestioning generosity of heart amongst friends. In Andy Morton’s first time in the director’s chair - after assisting on five previous harbour spectaculars - the work gleams with overall integrity, fortunately capturing the intimacy and strain between the leading lovers when and where it demands. In this case, it’s the 1960s. Morton updates Puccini’s four-tableaux acts set in Paris’ 1830s Latin Quarter to more than a century later in the same district during the turbulence of the student riots, specifically, 1968.
New Zealand Opera has unequivocally outdone themselves this season, chasing away the cold, damp tendrils of winter with their vivaciously kaleidoscopic production of Gioachino Rossinis’ comic opera The Barber of Seville. Co-produced with both Opera Queensland and Seattle Opera, and with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra once again under the charismatic conductorship of Wyn Davies, The Barber of Seville is a sumptuous feast, colourful morsels to tempt the senses awaiting around each and every corner of one of the most elaborate and sagacious sets that has ever been constructed in recent years. Designed by the rather talented Tracey Grant Lord – whose personality and style are also splashed across the costumes that dance across the stage – the set is a series of intricate doors, crawl spaces and windows through which the cast ebb and flow like fluid, allowing the story to progress swiftly. Small touches such as ornate wallpaper, mini lampshades and a somewhat magical main entrance through which all manner of surprises come and go, feed into this captivating tale of our Barber come match-maker Figaro. And what a Figaro Australian Morgan Pearse is! Dressed in a purple two piece that would have made even the iconic Prince envious, Pearse was both audacious and fleet of foot as he made his way to the stage in a completely unpredictable but hilarious way. Last year he played Belcore in Donizettis’ The Elixir of Love, this year, baritone Morgan Pearse is hands down an operatic rock star, his animated performance claiming both eye and ear.
Bizet’s Carmen is an opera about what it means to love someone. The eponymous gypsy, a 19th-century French stereotype of an exotic, liberated woman from Andalusia, emerges shortly into the first act and sings her famous Habanera: “Love is a rebellious bird”; “Love is a Gypsy child, it doesn’t follow the law”. Along with her female co-workers from the tobacco factory, Carmen is taking a break to smoke and flirt with the soldiers, among them the reluctant Don José. José is soon to become torn between his fascination with the dangerous, seductive Carmen, and his fondness for Micaëla, a pious young woman whom his mother wants him to marry. Although Carmen requites José’s burgeoning desire when the toreador Escamillo comes on the scene, the young man falls prey to his own overbearing sexual jealousy and his paranoid fear of Carmen’s independence, leading to the numbing brutality of the opera’s final minute
New Zealand Opera’s production of Mozart and Da Ponte’s ebullient and enduring Marriage of Figaro opened in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in the Aotea Centre, Auckland on Tuesday night. This masterpiece of perfect music describing imperfect humanity (as aptly described by director Lindy Hume), has as much to say now as it did when it was penned over 200 years ago. Mozart’s world was radically shaking off the ancien régime on the brink of the French Revolution, just as our world is changing before our eyes in the wake of the Pandemic. But it was the passionate storms of human temperament that occupied the Aotea Centre stage last night. The enduring themes of the disenfranchisement of love within marriage, the struggle with the domineering boss and, still so hotly relevant, the shady abuse of women at the hands of their ‘master’/‘husband’. Some of the manhandling of females on stage was truly shocking and this is the power of theatre to raise questions - at which point is it no longer a lighthearted flirtation, when is the abuse of privilege ever acceptable? How appropriate that this mainly female-led production explored these serious notes. Ravishingly full of fun, the production was thoroughly engaging in every sense. Not only excellent casting, but also the design, the dramatic shaping, not to mention the enlivened orchestral sounds from Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra led with lightness by conductor Zoe Zeniodi. Lindy Hume director and Zeniodi created clear co-ordination between pit and stage. And with the extraordinary sets and costumes of Tracey Lord Grant and the lighting vision of Matthew Marshall, it was striking teamwork.
