A festering drama alive with two powerful leads percolates in Opera Autralia's Werther in Sydney

There’s a festering tragedy you see coming and an unseen aftermath that looms palpably in Jules Massenet’s oft-performed 1892 French romantic ‘drame lyrique’ (lyric drama), Werther. In its 4-act episodic dramatisation that traverses the seasons, the prettier side of falling in love is as bare as the branches of winter’s trees.

Ensemble in Opera Australia's 2019 production of Werther

Loosely based on Goethe’s popular novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, a whirlwind of emotion grips the poet Werther when he escorts Charlotte, the daughter of the Bailiff, to a party. Charlotte swoons under his charms and momentarily forgets she is engaged to Albert, the good man she promised her deceased mother to marry. It doesn’t bode well and, though a degree of structural clumsiness pinches the plot, Massenet and his trio of librettists (Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann) deftly illuminate love’s circumstantial uniqueness and repercussions, how it can intoxicate with pleasure, cloud rationality, play with vulnerabilities and drive the agonised over the edge. 

In Opera Australia’s current season of Elijah Moshinsky’s long lasting 30 year old production, the drama percolates with superbly tempered emotional substance. It hasn’t come out of storage for 10 years. Michael Yeargan’s stylish set looks fresh - a stylish blend of classic and contemporary with classy costumes by Sabina Myers and evocative lighting by Robert Bryan - but it’s in its execution by the glowing talents of its artists that make it particularly special. 

Much relies on conductor Carlo Montanaro’s superlative attention in brewing Massenet’s musical soundscape of lush melodious textures and multi-faceted moods. The funereal tone of the first bars give way to sunny lyrical strings as Act 1’s summer scene opens at the Bailiff’s busy child-filled home. There and there on, the Opera Australia Orchestra supported the stage with refined and captivating musicianship, especially glowing and penetrating in Act 3’s orchestral intermezzo ("La nuit de Noël") as Charlotte, understanding that suicidal tragedy may follow, rushes off to Werther’s lonely abode.

Michael Fabiano as Werther and
Elena Maximova as Charlotte

It was in the grip of two unassailable leads, however, that the greatest impact was left. What I’ve seen of American tenor Michael Fabiano to date was eclipsed by a committed debut performance that fused character and voice in an exciting combination of genuine and compelling force. Fabiano brought kaleidoscopic colour and intensely wrought passion to Werther’s pitiful melancholic presence. Despite an early overheating of phrases, Werther’s wandering poetic introspection is captured with remarkably seductive tremolo in his Act 1 opening aria, “O Nature, pleine de grâce". In Act 2, Fabiano lifts the anguish of an inconsolable heart as Werther’s state of mind uncouples and he contemplates suicide with seesawing volcanic and delicate vocal power through “Lorsque l'enfant revient d'un voyage". Urgency and dementedness are thrillingly displayed in Act 3 when Werther returns, understanding he has Charlotte’s heart but not her life to which "Pourquoi me réveiller?" is wrought with intent and longing. Finally, as he writhes from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Act 4, the demise is achingly felt before the last floated notes close one part of the tragedy. 

Curiously, Charlotte and her family see something in this misery guts of a guy that the audience doesn’t - references are occasionally made indicating how his absence is missed. But, alongside Fabiano, Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova makes believable the circumstances in Charlotte’s own troubled affair, highlighting just how equally vulnerable both of them are. Maximova affectingly crosses crest after crest of broad emotional responses with her sumptuous-voiced, darkly drawn, religiously devout and duty-bound Charlotte. From earlier mannered dismissiveness, in Act 3’s Christmas Eve setting as she rereads Werther’s letters, the pain unfurls in swirling, magnificent voice in “Werther! Qui m'aurait dit ... Ces lettres!". When Werther unexpectedly shows up, the pair are inextricably locked in an unforgettable and deeply personalised scene that showcases opera’s indelible strength. And you can’t help but sympathise with her for being blamed by Werther’s repugnant declaration that she is the cause of his actions.

Luke Gabbedy as Albert and
Stacey Alleaume as Sophie

There’s much to admire in baritone Luke Gabbedy’s polished tone, robust and outwardly assured Albert, not so much in his character’s rather haughty insincerity. Gabbedy let’s you feel the threat Werther is for Albert, coming powerfully to the fore in one of Act 2’s vocal highlight as the two share a man-to-man exchange to which Albert gives condescending form. He’s much the same with Charlotte, now his wife for three months, adding much to her dilemma in feelings she is reluctant to express. 

As Charlotte’s cheerful younger sister Sophie, Stacey Alleaume uses her sweet and sparkling soprano to great effect while balancing jollity with compassion and youthfulness with maturity. Smaller vocal roles eventually fade by Act 3 but Richard Anderson’s content and fatherly Bailiff and Nicholas Jones’ and Andrew Moran’s jovial, down to earth Schmidt and Johann adequately colour the edges. Individuality in character and radiantly unison are Charlotte and Sophie’s younger privileged siblings.

Much is mined in the direction of the core leads but a distracting awkwardness exists in the coming and goings of unknown friends. Not so in Moshinsky’s update which, while not necessarily reflecting our more progressive attitudes today, gives credibility to individuals and circumstances that reside in our times. 


Werther 
Opera Australia 
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Until 11th March 2019


Production Photos: Prudence Upton

Victorian Opera's Parsifal illuminates the stage as a work that has further bejewelled the city’s embrace of Wagner

Published online at Herald Sun 22nd February, 2018. No print version

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/fines-performances-in-victorian-operas-parsifal/news-story/b7794de2f1637b474cf593e7ae4d5564


Melbourne had waited long for Parsifal, Wagner’s final work he described as "A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage". Victorian Opera’s season-opening production has further bejewelled the city’s embrace of Wagner. Now, in just six years, all 10 works of the Bayreuth canon have been staged in a phenomenal achievement with major contributions from Melbourne Opera and Opera Australia. 

Burkhard Fritz as Parsifal and Peter Rose as Gurnemanz

Artistic Director Richard Mills received a standing ovation. It was as much for the near 90-strong Australian Youth Orchestra who played expertly. Under Mills’ baton, Wagner’s spaciousness and contemplative signature on over 4 hours of music radiated and informed. 

Especially so did director Roger Hodgman’s non-specific modern period interpretation that brought clarity to every character and subtlety to its strong symbolic and religious overtones. 

The Medieval story concerns the wandering fool Parsifal, destined to become the saviour of the Grail Knights. Hodgman deftly turns the cogs of compassion and redemption driving it while accentuating good versus evil, where wealth is measured in spirituality. For it, Richard Roberts’ splendid fractured boxed set is spare and strikingly adapted.

After Act 1’s languid forest scene, a superb stage transformation leads into the full-thrust of ritualised drama in the Hall of the Grail. In flamboyant contrast, Act 2 shimmers in Klingsor's tempting domain – Derek Welton is as electrifying and kinetic as his wild costume. Tension erupts and harmony is restored in Act 3’s luminous ending. 

Derek Welton as Klingsor and Katarina Dalayman as Kundry

A string of fine performances, down to bit-roles too numerous, came from local and international leads. In the tile role, Burkhard Fritz’s muscled tenor became warmer and pliant as his journey developed from what was more slob than fool to commanding saviour. 

Katarina Dalayman drew a highly sympathetic Kundry - one seen as a pawn in opposing worlds - with a voice of distinctive stature and dramatic textures.

As Amfortas, James Roser was outstanding, working the text compellingly in his guilt, suffering and desperation for atonement. Veteran knight Gurnemanz’s assiduity and sincerity were smoothly combined by Peter Rose and Teddy Tahu Rhodes resonated hauntingly as Titurel. 

Kudos also to the large chorus of knights and lusty maidens. You’ll hopefully be required for more Wagner the city relishes.

Parsifal 
Victorian Opera
Palais Theatre
Until 24th February, 2019

4.5-stars

Production Photos: Jeff Busby

Melbourne Opera's The Flying Dutchman takes to the stage with exportable class: Herald Sun Review

Published in print in edited form in Melbourne's Herald Sun 5th February, 2019.


With wind in their sails and augmented resources, Melbourne Opera’s new production of The Flying Dutchman opened in majestic form on Sunday evening with exportable class. Following successes with Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde, the company has now turned to the earliest of Wagner’s 10 mature works that make up the Bayreuth canon. 

Steven Gallop as Daland with Melbourne Opera Chorus

In it, the risks, adventures and livelihood derived from the sea are intensely painted across a music drama based on a legendary ghost ship. If sighted, it is a portent of doom. But Wagner utilised the myth to explore love and redemption, themes that recur throughout much of his work. 

Wagnerian specialist Anthony Negus presided in the pit, conducting the mercurial and multi-coloured three-act score into one seamless nautical beauty - just how Wagner had intended.

Fully fledged in Wagner’s work, Suzanne Chaundy’s impressively variegated direction gives clarity and sensitivity in a staging realised with striking stylised economy and folkloric feel. Chaundy deftly balances the sexes in a setting where men sail off to work and women are left behind. 

You’d have to possess some degree of desperation and craftiness as the roaming ghostly Dutchman and it’s written all over Englishman Darren Jeffery’s performance with thunderous heft in voice and stature. Steven Gallop’s burnished bass comes with complimentary authoritative strength as the greedy-eyed Daland, captain of his own ship. 

Lee Abrahmsen as Senta and Darren Jeffery as The Dutchman

His loving daughter Senta knows the commodity she is but acts on her own terms. Drawn in to see the myth through Senta’s emotions, the complex textures, determination, grace and thrilling voice to which soprano Lee Abrahmsen give her are terrific. 

Erik, believing he has Senta in reach of marriage gets luxury casting with passionate tenor Rosario La Spina. Roxane Hislop and Michael Lapina stud the list superbly as Mary and Daland's steersman.

A shipload of muscular-voiced roughened sailors and a brilliantly choreographed Spinning Chorus of delicately lace-voiced women complete the coastal setting. And when the sailors return home in Act 3’s cacophonous celebration and subsequent cloud of gloom, the impression you get is that no stage is unconquerable for Melbourne Opera. Deserved rewards from the government’s chest, however, would assist.


The Flying Dutchman 
Melbourne Opera
Regent Theatre 
Until 7th February, 2018

4.5 stars

Production Photos: Robin Halls

2b theatre's Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is an irresistible burst of entertainment and poignancy: Herald Sun Review

Published in print in Melbourne's Herald Sun 31st January, 2019.


You’ll be laughing through tears, riveted by the journey and brought to question what you would do if a stranger came knocking on your door late at night in Canadian-born 2b theatre’s Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story. 

A show so easily transportable, it’s unpacked from a shipping container with human contents searching for a new life, looking for connection and building anew. Told through songs and short scenes, it’s an irresistible burst of entertainment and poignancy. 

From playwright Hannah Moscovitch, it traces the story of her great grandparents Chaim and Chaya, Romanian Jewish immigrants driven out of Europe by poverty and massacres in 1908.

Ben Caplan as The Wanderer 

Co-creator and musician Ben Caplan emerges as The Wanderer, an eccentric rabbi-cum-ringmaster of sorts and a consummate showman with a tremendously versatile voice. In a piquant mix of cabaret mode and neo-klezmer song, bushy-bearded Caplan shifts emotional energy effortlessly from the bleak and sentimental to the comic and bawdy. Caplan narrates, cajoles and flits about in anarchic abandon, picking up guitar and banjo for added musical spice. 

But the heart of the story resides in the container full of Old World artefacts where four musicians in simple attire make music together. From either side, two of them step into the low-lit space to channel Chaim and Chaya’s affecting story from their arrival in Halifax.

Dani Oore on clarinet is infectious as the gentle-souled and persevering Chaim, a man left bereft by the loss of his entire family. On violin as the dry and aloof young widow Chaya, who lost her first newly born during her flight to safety, Mary Fay Coady amuses to no end with brilliantly inflected, uncontrived comebacks. 

Watching their dynamics as the unlikely marriage unfolds, through to the awkwardness in their sexual intimacy and eventual birth of their first son and beyond, the window to their life is extraordinarily framed. It’s a story of truth, one of dedication and of remarkable survival. But broader, it’s a powerful statement on inclusiveness to which Moscovitch gives a loving patina and Caplan witty exuberance. 


Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story
2b theatre company
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne 
Until 2nd February, 2019

Production Photos: Fadi Acra

A welcome new Wozzeck for Opera Australia opens in a showering extravaganza in Sydney

A new Opera Australia production of Austrian composer Alban Berg’s harrowing psychological opera, Wozzeck, opened on Friday night at the Sydney Opera House. It’s a feast of extraordinary artistic stimulation of the highest level in a new, grandly signed William Kentridge production and a 90-minute showering extravaganza driven by an intensely passionate cast. 

John Longmuir as The Captain, Michael Honeyman as Wozzeck
 and Richard Anderson as The Doctor

Composed between 1914 and 1922 within which Europe was in the throes of being ravaged by World War I, Wozzeck was the opera Berg had to write. It was his first, premiering in 1925, and reflects his own affecting experience of war. It’s based, nonetheless, on the unfinished 27-episode play Woyzeck of 1837 by German playwright Georg Büchner. Themes of militarism, bastardisation and sadistic power play are the ingredients with which Berg forged 15 compact scenes that are divided equally across 3 continuous acts. 

A poor soldier of low rank who has witnessed the horrors on the field, Wozzeck is mocked by his superiors, cheated on by his lover (mother of his bastard child) and reduced to a redundant casualty of circumstance. As a mental breakdown unfurls, your heart goes out to him but sympathy is subsequently drained when, in a preconceived act of revenge, he murders his lover, Marie. In a broader view, in tandem with the devastation of war comes the breakdown of morals.

But how do you like your Wozzeck served? The last production mounted by Opera Australia premiered in 1999 when the imaginative mind of director Barrie Kosky created a spare, intensely expressionistic and intimately focused interpretation that elevated the psychological aspect. Kentridge’s lens is wider, his version less personalised, creating a contextualisation of Wozzeck’s crisis with a collage-like bombardment of film and projected images both photographic and sketched. The stage is made up of an intricate jumble of seemingly piled up bric-a-brac around impressions of a blown out home nestled upon it. And not a foot goes wrong when precariously steep duckboard walkways are traversed. 

Lorina Gore as Marie and Michael Honeyman as Wozzeck 

The creative team - designer Sabine Theunissen, costumes Greta Goiris, lighting Urs Schönebaum and projections Catherine Meyburgh - have collaborated to produce a highly fluid and technically accomplished art installation of sorts. Each scene is segued superbly. Decapitated heads, animated mechanical figures, unidentifiable faces in gas masks, a passing zeppelin and an enormous silhouetted crowd are some of the devices used to feel what Wozzeck sees within an array of spaces that balloon and contract and light up in explosive flashes. 

It’s a busy visual fare that might help to assuage a more melody-loving ear. But conductor Andrea Molino matches Kentridge’s gestures head on with Berg’s angular, atonal musical landscape as he sculpts an ever-present tension over the rises, falls and tumbles in the score. Between such strong, weighty components of visuals and music, the demands on the singers is enormous. It struck me whether singing in English rather than German was considered - surtitles would be one less area of the stage to look at, giving greater connection to the cast.

The first scene opens with gusto. Catching the eye and slicing the air in remarkable outbursts of superciliousness as the Captain, tenor John Longmuir took the role by the horns, gave it an electrifying shake and showcased the formidable vocal dexterity he possesses. 

John Daszak as The Drum-Major and Lorina Gore as Marie

After pairing in Opera Australia’s 2018 Green Room Award-winning production of King Roger - a similarly psychologically focused drama from composer Karol Szymanowski - baritone Michael Honeyman and soprano Lorina Gore brought conviction as Wozzeck and Marie. Stooped under a cloud of humiliation, Honeyman built his performance impeccably as the voice increasingly burned with half-declaimed text that was delivered in deeply furrowed lines. Gore effortlessly sailed to glassy penetrating highs as a pitiable, battling Marie. 

John Daszak, who performed in the production's premiere at the Salzburg Festival last year, spread his manhood wide as the pompous Drum Major with his full and roaring tenor. Oily bass Richard Anderson’s freaky Doctor, fine-grained tenor Virgilio Marino’s genial Andres and Dominica Matthews’ rough and ready Margret all made a good impression. And though his appearance is brief as the Madman, it was wonderful to see young tenor Shanul Sharma fit in among esteemed company. 

In the end, you could say Wozzeck gets his just desserts. Punished not by man, Wozzeck drowns in the nearby lake. Left behind is a parent-less child, a little puppet in a grotesque face-mask, his peers unfeeling and distant. Berg and Kentridge leave you with the sense that things are not going to easily change. 


Wozzeck
Opera Australia 
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House 
Until 15th February, 2019



Production Photos: Keith Saunders

Music, dance and design fuse in surrealistic strength for the U.S premiere of The Black Cat at Long Beach Opera

In American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 dark tale, The Black Cat, the insidious and debilitating affects of alcoholism are seen through the horrors of violence and murder. Zooming in on domestic homicide, guilt becomes its by-product and, harbouring the secret of the act, its pain - more than enough ingredients for chilling operatic fodder. Potently, with the shocking statistics that continue to be ascribed to the crime, the work resonates hugely in our not so rosy domestic world where love is automatically presumed to be safe.

Keith Ian Polakoff, Jean-Guillaume Weis and Sylvia Camarda 

Poe’s short story has seen various adaptations but its operatic form arrived with a 2012 world premiere that combined English songwriter David Sylvian's songs and arias from J.S. Bach's cantatas in a collaboration with Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra and conductor Martin Haselböck at Théâtre National du Luxembourg in Belgium.

It took California’s intrepid Long Beach Opera to give The Black Cat its U.S. premiere, opening on 19th January and utilising director Frank Hoffmann’s original production with Virgil Widrich’s design concept. Realised in a palpably collaborative fashion, the experience stealthily unfolds in a surrealistic, trance-like state. Two dancers, an actor and a tenor entwined their talents marvellously to mine its pathos, revulsion and edgy, meditative gloomy beauty. 

It was intended to be performed by all of the original performers with English tenor Nicholas Mulroy as both singer and actor in the role of the nameless man who finds himself on death row after being convicted of his wife’s murder. But Mulroy’s inability to enter the U.S. due to the government’s current administrative shutdown threw a spanner in the works. With just 5 days notice to prepare, American tenor Aaron Sheehan stepped in, sang alongside the small chamber orchestra of 7 musicians and did a sterling job in giving toasty-warm voice, purposefully driven text and agile technique as assistant director Jacques Schiltz acted the part with complete understanding.

Jean-Guillaume Weis and Aaron Sheehan

Dancers Sylvia Camarda and Jean-Guillaume Weis provided compelling focus to flashbacks of the condemned man’s circumstances as his reason is poisoned and delirium takes effect. From a quaint but ominous commedia dell’arte-like sketch as the wife prepares a romantic dinner for her husband, the scene quickly deteriorates into an alcoholic’s blurred imaginations. Weis’ drunken movements were brilliantly executed, as were Camarda’s lithe and generously expressed performance. Suspicion, anger and blame are invited in with the presence and actions of the owner’s pet black cat Pluto. At times, both man and woman appear to morph as cat which adds to the psychedelic sense that Sylvian’s smokey music evokes.

It’s almost crazy, but unsettling and jolting, how the mix of J.S. Bach’s live music and Sylvian's recorded songs are spliced, delineated and layered, then worm their way into a unimaginable whole in a story both utterly mad and tragically plausible. Though alternating from one to the other, the purity of classical and modern genres is occasionally eschewed, resulting in a soundscape that unites them as well as emphasise extremes. Similarly, storytelling via Bach’s translated German arias and Sylvian’s songs is obliquely suggestive, but gestured powerfully through dance. 

Jean-Guillaume Weis and Sylvia Camarda

Virgil Widrich’s stage design evokes a vividly coloured surrealistic cinematic aesthetic. The effect created feels as superbly visionary as Salvador Dali and Bunuel’s 1929 silent short film, Un Chien Andalou, in which the violent disputes between a man and a woman are likewise witnessed. Even the musicians become part of the work as they enter the stage to take their places, dressed in coats and hats in a Magritte-like parade and return to the stage towards the end as detectives when the man is being interviewed. 

Three-metre high digital screens - three of them - form the backdrop on which Widrich’s visuals and projections indicate settings that move from prison cell to house, garden and back. Sin in God's presence and time for repentance seem omnipresent with the use of a crucifix and a pendulum wall clock. The tick-tock of the clock floats on the music as the pendulum swings, as does the sound of water droplets that conjure the damp harshness of the cell. Every effort to fuse music, design and dance appears to have been made that contributed hugely to the show’s seductive success. 

Indications are that the work will maintain the separate casting of actor and singer. I’d prefer not. To hear Bach’s arias sung with depth of emotion from the actor himself who plays the condemned man as he blends with the danced flashbacks would integrate the piece even further.


The Black Cat
Long Beach Opera
The Beverly O’Neill Theatre
Until 20th January, 2019


Production Photos: Keith Ian Polakoff

Decades on, Graeme Murphy's Turandot for Opera Australia continues to live with persuasive dynamism

Hoping to solve three riddles that would give them the right to marry a notoriously ice-hearted but beautiful princess, umpteen princes have failed and lost their heads even before the curtain goes up on Puccini’s final opera, Turandot. It would seem that Opera Australia’s near 30 year-old production from director and choreographer Graeme Murphy has gone through as many revivals. I thought I’d had enough of it but it’s still living on healthily with a wealth of attributes to treat thousands of newcomers who’ll walk away with the memory of its smartly conceived, vividly exotic and sometimes playful spectacle. 

Graeme Macfarlane as the Emperor
and Amber Wagner as Turandot 

Glowingly obvious is the deep respect revival director Kim Walker shows for Murphy’s original and masterful touch. What better way to iron out the story’s peculiarities and far-fetched nature than to bind it with an enigmatic and stylistic interpretation that eschews realism. Every scene bristles with persuasive dynamism in which nothing is left to chance. John Drummond Montgomery’s lighting adds ongoing intrigue to Kristian Fredrikson's sets that rely heavily on decorative motifs and an array of billowing robes as part of an inventive take on ancient Chinese class-divided costumes. Fantasy is elevated to such gorgeously crafted and oblique picture-book detail that trying to find faults hinting on cultural misappropriation is unproductive. 

Long before the titular character sings a note, a strong, magnetic chorus essentially carries the drama forward and the huge contingent of mandarins, dignitaries and commoners of the Opera Australia Chorus ticked every box of excellence from the start. Moving en masse in waves and surges around ribbons of blood, waving banners, threatening swords and towering figures of rule, the singing was richly textured, strong and lucent, both on and off stage. A snaking chorus of children, likewise, delighted the eyes and ears. 

Imperial ministers Ping, Pang and Pong (Christopher Hillier, Virgilio Marino and John Longmuir) melded quirky moves in large scrolls with earnest warnings to the latest besotted suitor, Calàf, and musings on nothing more than a life in nature far-removed from Beijing’s quandary and its sacred books. Fortunately, they’re an entertaining trio who bounced their gravelly vocals off each other and joined splendidly in rhythmic unison. 

Christopher Hillier, Virgilio Marino and John Longmuir
as Ping, Pang and Pong

Spanish tenor Andeka Gorrotxategi strikes the gong to signify his determination to solve the riddles as a suitably valiant Calàf . Gorrotxategi exhibited burning passion with charismatic tone on opening night but I got the feeling there was more in the tank to give. With no time to waste in Act 3’s popular but brief header, “Nessun dorma!”, Gorrotxategi’s rendition was cleanly and forwardly sung, though seemingly without taking absolute ownership of time and place. 

Soprano Mariana Hong’s expressive vocal weight and sympathetically drawn character gave pitiful truthfulness to the slave girl Liù all the way through to the gripping tragic ending that befalls her. As her blind master and Calàf ’s father Timur, Richard Anderson convincingly carried the burden of old age and fading hope with a bass of grainy, sinuous appeal. Giving authoritative voice to a small role, Andrew Moran glided about in his element as a roll-about Mandarin but Graeme Macfarlane lacked projection from his lofty position at the rear of the stage as the Emperor Altoum.

When Princess Turandot finally shows up to sing midway through Act 2, American soprano Amber Wagner powered the title role on opening night with all manner of sensational vocal beauty. Like a spurned sorceress, Wagner unleashed the pent up resentment Turandot has for any man who tries to win her affection. Top to bottom, Wagner preyed on the music, singing out with ferocious might, penetrating daggers and condescending tone. “No man will ever own me”, Wagner meaningfully proclaims and, though the sentiment is short-lived, with those intensely emoted notes she gave fleeting hope to all women. 

Amber Wagner as Turandot and Andeka Gorrotxategi as Calàf 

When Wagner sings, you take notice, just as you would’ve in Opera Australia’s Ring Cycle of 2016 when she appeared as Sieglinde. That voluptuous sound Wagner can muster needs a companion but the duets she shares with Gorrotxategi often left the tenor in the shade. And, for the tricky ending that Puccini never lived to compose conclusively? Wagner’s nuanced treatment of the abrupt change of heart that Turandot has when she melts into love with Calàf took the finale winningly over the line as the two walk into the distance. 

All the characteristic momentum, the crests and troughs and delicately threaded passages came together emphatically under conductor Christian Badea. Act 1 could benefit from reining in the opening cracking pace, as would cutting out the interval between the first and second act. The Opera Australia Orchestra played superbly with special mention to the brass players who brought shuddering grandeur to the recurring  ceremonial brass exhalations. 

It may not be long away but regardless when the national company decide to retire this 1990 production, the strength of Murphy’s concept will resonate for decades to come for those fortunate enough to see and feel its energy. 


Turandot 
Opera Australia
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Until 30th March, 2018



Production Photos: Keith Saunders