Opera Australia - Reviews
Sydney City, Australia

...while the Russian soprano Ekaterina Sadovnikova is a glorious Countess, plumbing the depths as her philandering husband chases every piece of skirt within reach.

The moments of gorgeous female singing, though, were not limited to Alleaume. Ekaterina Sadovnikova sang the Countess with remarkable clarity and assurance in line and phrasing. Her Countess had a patient poise – a wonderful contrast to Alleaume’s light-footed Susanna – creating a touching depiction of a dignified woman struggling under the weight of her husband’s infidelity.

I confess that I had misgivings about Opera Australia translating Die Zauberflöte into what appeared in the promotional material to be a performance fusing influences from Indiana Jones, Crocodile Dundee and Australia. I love the traditional costumes and sets and the fine meshing of the German libretto with Mozart's musical notions. And would a touring company have singers with the necessary technical expertise, assured comic timing and the stagecraft to do justice to the Opera – (or Singspiel as it was known in Mozart's time)?

This last – and quirkiest – of Mozart’s operas has always been the ideal vehicle for introducing opera to the young and the young at heart. This production – adapted, translated into English and directed by playwright Michael Gow – certainly makes the most of the comic aspects of librettist Schikaneder’s story and characters and the correspondingly magical fun that Mozart had with the music. And though the adaptation – and some of the local idioms in the translation – may not appeal to opera ‘purists’, Christopher Lawrence’s words in the program notes suggest that this is as it should be: “The Magic Flute’s great achievement is to have positioned itself as part of the vernacular furniture from day one”.

Shanul Sharma, performing the role of Gandhi, had a captivating element to his voice – a sense of romantic heroism that followed through to his performance, presenting a princely interpretation of the well-known historical figure

There was an ethereal quality about tenor Shanul Sharma’s interpretation of Gandhi, especially in his solo that brought the performance to a close; his voice gently shimmered like the dark, embroidered tunic he had changed into (having previously sported a creamy linen suit).

RAMEAU: ANACREAON & PIGMALION, Pinchgut Opera at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, 15-20 June 2017. Photography: above - l-r Lauren Zolezzi, Taryn Fiebig and Samuel Boden; below - Taryn Fiebig and Richard Anderson Pinchgut artistic director Erin Helyard can be relied upon to do something unusual or unexpected and he’s exceeded expectations with this triple bill. It introduces audiences for the first time to the live experience of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Anacréon followed by the intermezzo Erighetta e Don Chilone by Leonardo Vinci and, in the second half of the program, by Rameau’s Pigmalion. Dating from the mid-1700s, they clearly show us the difference between the French and Italian styles of the time, which caused much wrangling among contemporary audiences and now – you choose. For me Rameau is a sublime master of multiple soloists and harmonies. His music is elegant yet full of colour and emotion and as sung by Taryn Fiebig, Lauren Zolezzi, Richard Anderson and Allegra Giagu in Anacreon, then with Samuel Boden in Pigmalion, it made Vinci’s jolly romp-with fart joke worth its place as the flatulence in the musical sandwich. Director Crystal Manich, with set designer Alicia Clements and Melanie Liertz (costumes), ingeniously devised a way to link the three. The setting is an upscale art gallery where swanky benefactors’ events take place; think the Met Museum Gala transposed to crinolines rather than transparent boob tubes. The setting – tall and Enlightenment simple – suits the City Recital Hall and the predominant set and costume colours of icecream pastels is reflected in the blond wood interior: sumptuous and effective even as racks of costumes are wheeled on and off stage and the performers dress and re-dress for each piece. There is also some slyly symbolic work with giant picture frames that plays with “the look” and”the gaze” in a witty and post-modern (!) way. All this busyness successfully carries singers and audience through the more static elements of Anacréon in particular and also adds to the intimacy of opera that’s now virtually lost in the present day penchant for grandeur. The over-arching themes of life and art and imitations of both are deliciously played out, with the Orchestra of the Antipodes led by Erin Helyard out front and sounding both unified and energetic, and when joined by the chorus, often rapturously magnificent. Such a treat! The singers, of course, are among the best. Soprano Taryn Fiebig takes on three different roles with equal power and élan and is also one of the funnier actors in opera. Her final turn as the “statue” in Pigmalion is breathtaking as she finds a bell-like clarity and purity that lifts her performance into the ravishingly memorable. Memorable too as Cupid in both the Rameau pieces, London-based Australian soprano Lauren Zolezzi’s debut in Sydney makes one hope she’ll be back before too long. Like Fiebig, she isn’t afraid to act and as a former ballet dancer, she has the moves too and can do it all while singing with charm, agility and power: major talent on the rise and already recognised in the UK. As Anacreon (and Don Chilone) baritone Richard Anderson has the necessary dramatic and vocal presence both as a drunk and a high society patriarch – some might think it a natural combination – and he’s excellent in both roles. Samuel Boden is at the other end of the vocal scale, as Pigmalion, and his agile and intricate tenor is a judiciously placed and delightful instrument. In supporting roles, Allegra Giagu and Morgan Balfour not only held their own but also added to the vocal richness of the evening. Giagu has developed into a strong and confident performer whose Wife of Anacreon is poignant and beautifully sung, while Balfour makes every moment of his role as the Sweeper count. A terrific company, intelligently utilised. Pinchgut Opera is a vital and increasingly important part of Sydney’s fine music life as the company brings to audiences the kind of work, voices and new/old revelations many crave. Unless you read this before tonight (Tuesday, 20 June) you’ve missed this production. Fair warning: Pinchgut’s Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi opens on 30 November, directed by Mark Gaal.

Erin Helyard, Artistic Director of Sydney's Pinchgut Opera Company, is one of the most dynamic thinkers in the world on the subject of Baroque and early Classical opera. The 15-year-old Company has now presented 18, often unknown, works from that era, challenging audiences with their delightful difference from the works being presented in the Sydney Opera House – much Mozart, Verdi and Puccini. So this dégustation – an appropriately French word applied by Helyard to this triple bill consisting of two actes-de-ballet by Rameau and a commedia dell'arte intermezzo by Leonardo Vinci, was probably as close as most of us are going to get to being in the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in the 1750s. Two problems, though. Whereas the outrageous combination of serious French works discussing topical issues and frothy Italians offering nothing but entertainment was a matter of such controversy in Paris that the Académie was filled night after night, we are just a little less engaged by an argument about the relative importance of love and wine, or a philosophical disquisition on consciousness as Pigamlion's statue comes to life. Secondly, the musical delights of Rameau's harmonies and Vinci's lyricism that pre-figures Mozart were all too often interrupted between the performers and our ears by an almost incomprehensibly busy staging. I can't imagine why American director Crystal Manich felt the need to impose an overarching narrative on the three distinct stories. Pigamlion's pretty familiar (especially when spelled with a Y, though Rameau resisted), even if the Enlightenment significance of the statue's first words, “What do I think? What must I believe?”, followed by her proclamation of a soul certainly distinguished this text from My Fair Lady. And who amongst us took on board that the eponymous Anacreon was actually a Greek BC poet famous for his graceful writings on love and wine who's lust for life lead to fear of aging? But as Rameau's librettist, Pierre-Joseph-Justin Bernard, brought all those subjects into play so lightly, did we need the crowding of a contemporary art gallery opening – showing, oddly, 19th-century art – a drunken collector and a team of constantly moving attendants? It made it so much harder to understand the sudden transformation of party-goers into Bacchic devotees, and for a plaited schoolgirl to become Cupid to bring the collector back to his senses from an over-indulgence in the wine. However, Lauren Zolezzi emerged as the star of the night in that role – popping up later (and older) to bring life to Pigmalion's statue. This UK-trained soprano also has a Fellowship in Movement Direction, which allowed her to make ballet with her arms without looking the slightest bit immoderate, even as her perky singing brought Richard Anderson's art collector back from his drunken dreams to his wife's arms. Counter-intuitively, they then all toasted this reunion. Anderson was then given an ex-wife to fall in love with in Erighetta e Don Chilone. In fact, Vinci offered the widow Erighetta a rich but hypochondriac (and flatulent) bachelor, already attracted to her, but reluctant to commit because of his “imminent demise”. Taryn Fiebig, in a commedia doctor's mask, soon prescribes marriage to a mature woman as Don Chilone's only possible cure. And within minutes, as herself, she's negotiated a contract promising free running of the house. All is well. Well, well-enough for Fiebig (who, coincidentally, played Eliza Doolittle for Opera Australia last year) to mutate into marble and fall resonantly in love (again) with her creator – the agile English haute-contre tenor, Samuel Boden. Not much haute in his music and not great power in the voice; but he may have been distracted by the fact that everyone around him suddenly deserted their contemporary dress for racks of 18th-century outfits in order to dance. We certainly were distracted. Meanwhile, the band played on. It was an impressive transition by the historically informed Orchestra of the Antipodes from last year's Haydn and Handel to French music that so closely allies its rhythms to its language. Their languid tones as Anacreon falls asleep were followed by a torrent of demisemiquavers in contrary motion as a storm awakes him. A luscious flute holds Lauren Zolezzi's lively gyrations in balance. And the mellifluous combination of bassoon and recorder in Pigamlion's swinging overture was probably as radical a piece of orchestration in 1748 as it was a delight on the ear today. Leading from the harpsichord, Erin Helyard made the point in interviews that 18th-century audiences had as short-term attention spans as today's – requiring dances, debate and (in the boxes) sex between short bursts of opera seria. But this would surely be preferable to offering confusions and distractions during the music.

Damiano Michieletto’s Olivier Award-winning productions of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci were premiered in 2015 and then put on again in 2017 but not since. Here they were splendidly revived by former Jette Parker Young Artist Noa Naamat and continue to justify that Olivier! The nineteenth century was ending, and audiences turned from Wagner’s gods and heroes to embrace post-Verdian verismo with its stories that reflected real-life happenings. The birth of this movement came with the premiere of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana in Rome on 17 May 1890. It was soon twinned with Leoncavallo’s 1892 Pagliacci and together they caused verismo to sweep Europe influencing many diverse art forms. New York’s Metropolitan Opera first paired the works in 1893 and they were first seen together at Covent Garden the following year except the order we are used to today was reversed. The Cav & Pag double-header soon proved as popular as the regularly performed Puccini operas or genuine Verdi masterpieces in the affections of opera lovers, though recently they have fallen somewhat out of favour. Before Michieletto’s staging of Cav & Pag they had not been performed together by the Royal Opera for more than 25 years. From around that time I have some exhilarating memories of Plácido Domingo (Turiddu/Canio), Giuseppe Giacomini (Turiddu), Jon Vickers (Canio), Pauline Tinsley and Josephine Barstow (as Santuzza) and Piero Cappuccilli (Alfio/Tonio); several sadly no longer with us. Perhaps a reassessment of the operas is overdue and what Michieletto does with them can only help.

La commedia è finita (almost). Former Prime Minister Theresa May was in the house for its Cav & Pag double bill, an evening of bitter feuds, betrayal and murder. Michael Gove reportedly left before curtain-up. It’s been a fraught few weeks in Floral Street. There have been more cast reshuffles in this Royal Opera revival than Boris Johnson’s cabinet of late: Anita Rachvelishvili out, Ermonela Jaho out, Jonas Kaufmann missing the first two performances and deciding not to sing Canio when he does get on stage. At one point, Kaufmann’s replacement in Pagliacci bowed out of the first two nights as well. It was the Alagnas who rode heroically to the rescue. Aleksandra Kurzak took on the roles of Santuzza and Nedda (thereby requiring an acting double because Damiano Michieletto has each character silently appear in the intermezzo of the other’s opera) and Roberto Alagna sang Canio. And as Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana, we had SeokJong Baek who had already come off the subs’ bench, to excellent effect, in the recent Samson et Dalila.

Kate Amos was frank and subtly defiant as daughter Arkie, unprotected from her father’s excesses, singing with fine edge and unexpected strength.

Their daughter, Arkie, was played by two different singers:….while Kate Amos demonstrated a highly flexible soprano as the older Arkie.

“Rame Lahaj (...) radiates unbridled passion across the water.”

“As Alfredo Germont the Kosovar tenor Rame Lahaj perfectly conveyed the naiveté of a very young man who would fall heedlessly in love with a society woman, oblivious of the extent to which she lives off the generosity and sexual needs of wealthy benefactors. His duet with Alleaume towards the end of the opera, when they are trying to delude themselves into re-imagining a happy future in Paris (“Parigi, o cara“), was striking in the contrast of vocal color between them: Alleaume clearly conveyed the ravages of a mortal disease as Lahaj bloomed in oblivious full health.”

“In his Australian debut, Rame Lahaj cut a dashing figure as Alfredo Germont. Not only is his voice strong enough to carry far into the back of the auditorium, it is also smooth and flexible enough to deliver the nuances of his wildly fluctuating moods. Reaching his high notes with ease and holding firmly on to them, he deftly handled a variety of inflections and finely honed phrasing. Expressive without being melodramatic, neither did he overplay his hand.”

“Hailing from Kosovo, Lahaj is the most exciting Alfredo seen locally since Gianluca Terranova in the inaugural Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. A terrific actor, Lahaj charts the full emotional journey of Alfredo, from ardent admirer to impassioned lover, through to his brutish anger and subsequent shame and sorrow. Despite his striking looks, Lahaj clearly conveys Alfredo’s shy awkwardness at first meeting Violetta. His countenance changes as a dark storm cloud overtakes Alfredo’s logic, which then melts away with as deep regret takes over […] Possessing a rich, luxurious voice, Lahaj moves easily from middle to upper register with equal strength. If there are fleeting moments when his pitching is not quite accurate, it may well have be due to opening night nerves, which will soon dissipate as the season progresses. Combined with his charismatic presence, and his clear enjoyment of being on stage, the tone and lustre of Lahaj’s voice portent a very exciting future […] The perfect choice for newcomers, long-term operagoers will also enjoy and appreciate this season of La Traviata for the thrilling debuts of Gore and Lahaj.”