A world premiere performance of a new Australian opera is an exhilarating experience. But the music in this reworking of the Peter Carey novel underwhelmed.
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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.
If The Return of Ulysses is not Monteverdi’s most inspired creation, it is close to it. And Pinchgut Opera's premiere may have been the first time this wonderful work was presented professionally in Australia.
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.
It is rare to have a new production of an Australian opera - a vivid new performance of The Children's Bach was refreshing to see.
The Australian premiere of La Passion de Simone uses multiple voices to tell a story about philosopher Simone Weil. But the work lacks the emotional drama of its subject's life.
Artaserse is an old Roman fable of treachery and the ethical power of clemency that becomes a psychological study of conflicting desires.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremburg) is a long, complex work. An ensemble performance by Opera Australia transports Wagner’s 16th-century guild of mastersingers to a modern-day men’s club.
Australian operas have been written about many pressing topics - from the Stolen Generations to the Lindy Chamberlain case - but few have been staged a second time. What is going wrong?
A new opera explores the story of five girls who believed that debris from the World Trade Centre was lodged in their throats after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Neil Armfield's production of the Brett Dean opera Hamlet is a confronting three hours in the theatre, but then so is Shakespeare's play. The second act is devastating in its emotional impact.
Expatriate Australian director Barrie Kosky and Shostakovich's modernist opera The Nose seem made for each other. It was sung in an expressive English translation - and the tap-dancing noses brought the house down.
The Monteverdi opera exploring passion in ancient Rome has been transposed to a contemporary gangster setting in a new Sydney production.
It is a strange reality but opera as an artform is always given special and arguably preferential treatment by governments and other influential forces in Western society. This happens, it seems, regardless…
With its themes of family dysfunction, love, death, madness and the supernatural, this Old Testament story is ready-made for opera.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Vocal Studies and Opera, University of Sydney
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Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne
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Cellist and musicologist, University of Sydney
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Honorary associate, Sydney College of Arts, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), University of Melbourne
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Head of Teaching and Learning, Australian Institute of Music
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Macquarie University Research Fellow, Macquarie University
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Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney
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Associate professor, University of Sydney
