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Articles on Opera

Displaying 21 - 40 of 106 articles

Opera singer Natalie Aroyan poses for a photograph ahead of the 2020 season launch of Opera Australia’s Attila in Sydney last year. Performances were cancelled due to COVID-19 in March this year. Bianca De Marchi/AAP

As COVID wreaks havoc in the performing arts, do we still need a national opera company?

Opera Australia has been hit hard by the pandemic’s economic impact. It’s time to rethink our approach to funding opera, with a focus on local companies.
The National Arts Centre in Ottawa displays the message “Everything will be okay” and a rainbow, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang)

Support for artists is key to returning to vibrant cultural life post-coronavirus

Policy makers and arts sectors together need to reimagine how we might organize contracts, leverage networks and change supports to create more long-term opportunities for arts workers in Canada.
Two female models face off in a production of The Magic Flute at Texas A&M University. Above, the Queen of the Night is up to no good, while the passive Pamina awaits her rescuer. Wikimedia

The tale of two queens: flipping the script on the ‘princess culture’ in opera

Princess movies and opera alike reveal the limited number of models available to women. “Le Dernier Sorcier”, composed by Pauline Viardot in 1869, shows that a much richer world is possible.
Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House. The opera focuses on the artist’s addictions and his relationship with his wife. Prudence Upton

Opera Australia’s Whiteley brings together 3 icons to tell the artist’s complicated story

A new opera focuses more on the personal life of artist Brett Whiteley than his artistic creations. As the opera reveals, a life like Whiteley’s does not offer a clear moral message.
Cio-Cio-San (centre) during a dress rehearsal of Opera Australia’s Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney in 2019. Works such as this are attracting criticism from some modern audiences. Stephen Saphore/AAP

Opera is stuck in a racist, sexist past, while many in the audience have moved on

Opera companies around the world are grappling with an ever-widening gap between a repertoire frozen in time and an increasingly critical audience.
Juan de Dios Mateos as Cavalier Belfiore and Ruth Iniesta as Corinna in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Il Viaggio a Reims at Arts Centre Melbourne. Jeff Busby

A night at the opera: art comes alive in a modern twist on Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims

Gioachino Rossini’s opera was originally meant as a satire of royalist France. A new production updates the work for a modern audience, setting the drama in a museum where the paintings come to life.
Performers in Speechless, a new opera by composer Cat Hope, co-commissioned by the Perth Festival and Tura New Music. The opera is a response to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2014 report into children in immigration detention. Toni Wilkinson

In a notoriously sexist art form, Australian women composers are making their voices heard

Despite the exclusion of their creative work from mainstream opera companies, Australian women composers are creating spaces for themselves, writing work that tackles urgent social issues.
South African soprano Pretty Yende (L) & Mexican tenor Javier Camarena during a rehearsal of ‘I puritani’ in Spain, 2018. EPA-EFE/Quique Garcia

How South Africans forged a path to making opera truly African

Realism and addressing pressing contemporary South African societal issues have been the focus of local opera since 1995.

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