As Australia’s most brilliant choreographer, we’ve always basked in the light Graeme Murphy casts, but this retrospective of some of his best works showcases beautifully the depth and range of his extraordinary talent.
Murphy – the Australian Ballet’s tribute to choreographer Graeme Murphy, surely their brightest star – kicks off with a scene in bed.
I knew this production was going to be different when things started happening in the overture.
Renowned conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy breaches the divide to the master in this concert version of the Tchaikovsky opera last enjoyed by Sydney audiences in the 1979 Australian Opera production.
Based on the success of this production, Sydney Symphony should try their hand at opera more frequently.
Two short operatic chamber works written more than two centuries apart with contrasting musical languages couldn’t better have been brought together in a new double bill. At Friday evening’s opening night, Melbourne-based IOpera’s inspired and unexpected marriage of English Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (c. 1683) and Silesian-born, 20th century Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis (1943) proved to be both a stimulating and entertaining experience.
