A big year of opening nights ahead for opera in Melbourne for 2016

Melbourne's six opera companies are preparing a bigger, beefier year of diverse works across an array of fine city theatres in 2016 with no less than 25 fully staged productions set to hit the stages.

Everything in scale from the titanic staging of Wagner's four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen, in a revival of Opera Australia's first Ring Cycle in 2013, to a small boutique staging of Malcolm Williamson's Our Man in Havana, as part of Lyric Opera of Melbourne's continuing Australian Opera Series, will invigorate local audiences with the ineffable power of opera.

As 2015 draws to a close, only Opera Australia and Victorian Opera have full details of opening nights, season runs and cast lists. Opera Australia will present three operas in the autumn season, of which Bizet's The Pearlfishers and Verdi's Luisa Miller are new productions. Victorian Opera's growth continues with a palatable mix of established repertoire and new works as they lead the way in innovation into a promising 11th year.

Melbourne Opera will kickstart the opera calendar in February with W.A. Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio but details are yet to emerge on the cast and creative team. A move from the Athenaeum Theatre to the colossal Regent Theatre for a new production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser in August is a great sign of optimism ahead.

From the smaller operatives, details are sketcky except that we know that Lyric Opera of Melbourne is building on its strengths to present three exciting productions in 2016. CitiOpera have indicated dates for their first production, Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and we should expect a second production later in the year. 

Most pleasingly, Gertrude Opera have set dates for a return to regional Victoria for the second Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival, featuring the Australian premiere of Jake Heggie's To Hell and Back. They have also indicated both a revival of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul and David Lang's The Difficulty of Crossing a Field.

Below is a list of opening nights throughout the year and links to either the production, with full details if known, or the the company's home page. Take a look and put them in your calendar.

Dominica Matthews, Jane Ede & Lorina Gore as The Rhinemaidens in Das Rheingold; photo Jeff Busby

Wed 3rd Feb: Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) W.A. Mozart
Melbourne Opera
http://www.melbourneopera.com/events/abduction-seraglio

Mon 15th Feb: Voyage to the Moon (2016) Calvin Bowman and Alan Curtis
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/voyage-to-the-moon/

Tue 1st Mar: Banquet of Secrets (2016) Paul Grabowsky and Steve Vizard
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/banquet-of-secrets/

Sat 2nd Apr: Ariadne auf Naxos (1916) Richard Strauss
CitiOpera
http://www.citiopera.com.au/whats_on.html

Tue 12th Apr: Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) Gaetano Donizetti
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/lucia-di-lammermoor/

Tue 3rd May: La bohème (1896) Giacomo Puccini
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/la-boheme-melbourne

Sat 7th May: The Pearlfishers (1863) Georges Bizet
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/pearlfishers-melbourne

Mon 16th May: Luisa Miller (1849) Giuseppe Verdi
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/luisa-miller-melbourne

May: HMS Pinafore (1878) William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
Melbourne Opera (date yet to be announced)
http://www.melbourneopera.com/

Mon 20th Jun: The Darkest Night
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/the-darkest-night/

Sat 16th Jul: Cinderella (1899) Jules Massenet
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/cinderella/

Thu 28th Jul: The Pied Piper (2016) Richard Mills
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/the-pied-piper/

Aug: Tannhäuser (1845) Richard Wagner
Melbourne Opera (date yet to be announced)
http://www.melbourneopera.com/

Sat 13th Aug: Laughter and Tears
Featuring Arie Antiche and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci (1892) 
Victorian Opera
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/laughter-and-tears/

Fri 2nd - Sun 4th Sep: Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival
Including Jake Heggie's To Hell and Back (2006) and  Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth (1847)
Gertrude Opera (Awaiting information on further production programming)
http://www.nagambielakesoperafestival.com.au/

Fri 30th Sep: Four Saints in Three Acts (1933) Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein
http://www.victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/season-2016/four-saints-in-three-acts/

Oct: Anna Bolena (1830) Gaetano Donizetti
Melbourne Opera (date yet to be announced)
http://www.melbourneopera.com/

Mon 21st Nov: Das Rheingold (1869) Richard Wagner
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/das-rheingold

Wed 23rd Nov: Die Walkurie (1870) Richard Wagner
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/die-walkure

Fri 25th Nov: Siegfried (1876) Richard Wagner
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/siegfried

Mon 28th Nov: Götterdämmerung (1876) Richard Wagner
Opera Australia
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/gotterdammerung

Details of opening dates yet to be announced:

Pygmalion (1748) Jean-Phillippe Rameau

Lyric Opera of Melbourne

http://www.lyricopera.com.au/

Our Man in Havana (1963) Malcolm Williamson

Lyric Opera of Melbourne

http://www.lyricopera.com.au/

Il Signor Bruschino (1813) Gioachino Rossini  

 Lyric Opera of Melbourne

http://www.lyricopera.com.au/

The Consul (1950) Gian Carlo Menotti

Gertrude Opera

http://www.gertrudeopera.com.au/

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (2002) David Lang
Gertrude Opera
http://www.gertrudeopera.com.au/

Los Angeles Opera's magnificently sung and other-worldly Norma

Two striking leads, soprano Angela Meade and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, share the stage in Los Angeles Opera's magnificently cast and fiercely sung new production directed by Anne Bogart.

Angela Meade as Norma and Jamie Barton as Adalgisa

Despite the two leads and two characters having no familial connection, what is achieved is a remarkable pairing of artists in a work set ablaze with emotional conflicts, forgiveness and ineffable love which unfold in spectacular and dramatic fashion. Norma and Adalgisa have secretly broken their vow of virginity, are in love with the same man and in bed with the occupying enemy, the Roman Consul Pollione.

Meade and Barton seem to work from within and together in order to create a perceived sibling relationship full of intensity as only siblings know. In the subsequent fleshing out of unfolding events their attention to vocal detail is palpable and their unity in performance is sublime.

Meade portrays Norma with such verisimilitude that her final self-sacrificial act of death feels in accord with the immense potency she expresses in her character's complexities. Meade does so with a precious vocal instrument that impresses both technically and dramatically. In Meade's Norma we feel her wavering emotional state and her outwardly stalwart determination before she allows us to feel at peace with her own final atonement and death-walk to the pyre. From the start, Meade imbues confidence in her performance with a meditative and thrilling rendition of the opera's bel canto pinnacle, "Casta diva", all the way from recitative through to aria and cabaletta. The voice has staying-power, is agile and luscious, and the many register shifts are counterbalanced gloriously with range of volume and depth of colour.

Russell Thomas and Angela Meade 

At Meade's side, Barton is no shadow as Adalgisa. Recent winner of the 2015 Richard Tucker Award, Barton matches Meade's resilience with a polished and creamy mezzo-soprano. Plump with exciting expressivity and sympathetic control when blending in duets and ensemble, Barton's delectable talents are poignantly on show in Act II's duet with Meade in "Mira, o Norma" as the two melt harmoniously into song as Aldalgisa compels Norma to show empathy for her children before the two make a heartfelt declaration of friendship.

In an imposing Los Angeles Opera debut, Russell Thomas portrays a formidable and adrenalised, battle-ready Pollione, infusing his ember-warm and whipping resonant tenor with a cooling, attractive vibrato. Morris Robinson is a reckoning cornerstone as Oroveso, Norma's father and head of the Druids, with his thunderous, granular and stout bass. Young artists Lacey Jo Benter and Rafael Moras fill the roles of Clotilde and Flavio respectively with finely voiced, admirable performances. The Los Angeles Opera Chorus particularly impress with perceptible individual flights of voice and collective fluidity as the impatient men and women of Gaul.

Although a clear sense of contrast and conflict pervade the work, Anne Bogart's direction is characterised by a well-intended duality of approach but limps along and lacks sophistication. A softly stylised choreographed flow, danced by the young virginal priestesses (choreographed by Barney O'Hanlon), occasionally seeps into the gestures of the cast who otherwise move with weighted-down majesty. Even Norma's two children are curiously choreographed as she raises the dagger in a vengeful act of borderline insanity before throwing her weapon down in self-loathing.

Angela Meade at right as Norma with the Los Angeles Opera Chorus

The duality continues, but successfully so, in Neil Patel's visually minimalistic and single set design that is both economical, intelligent and striking. Norma's 50-100 B.C. setting in Gaul is given an other-worldly light. A curving solid wall with rectilinear openings on stage left appears to symbolise the Roman occupation of Gaul's contrasting lightweight natural timber construction on stage right. Much of the drama and ritual becomes focused on a disc-shaped cutout in the warped, timber-ramped central stage area that appears at times to be the enormous moon in the background's shadow, perfectly juxtaposing the 'grove's' ritual significance. Duane Schuler's lighting design adds mystical depth and James Schuette's costumes pay period homage.

Conducting in the pit, the indefatigable Los Angeles Opera Music Director, James Conlon, sculptured glowing, sympathetic and appealing musical support for his on-stage artists. The Los Angeles Opera Orchestra spun their beauty with tautness, the strings and woodwind in particular displaying impeccable underlying energy. If anything, Maestro Conlon kept a lid on musical volatility, punctuating the score sparingly while providing generous space for the large voices to project across their entire range. It was only in Act II's climactic run when the lid truly lifted off and percussive largesse overflowed.

Despite the production's occasional inertness, the magnificence of the voices complete the dramatic narrative with overwhelming strength and, combined with its contemplative visual beauty, this Norma soars heavenly high.



Production photographs: Ken Howard

A blissfull union of comedy and music in Pinchgut Opera's L'Amant Jaloux

In 1778, a sparkling comedic opera received its premiere in France at Versailles. André Grétry's L’Amant Jaloux (The Jealous Lover) enthralled for near on 50 subsequent years but it was not until Thursday night, some 237 years later, that it tickled an audience in theatrical form Down Under.

Alexandra Oomens, Jessica Aszodi and Celeste Lazarenko

Sydney's Pinchgut Opera have a knack for resurrecting the neglected, showing no interest in the sweets of popular repertoire - the less performed or the more obscure baroque and early classical work, the more intriguing they seem to become. It's a point of difference from any other opera company in the country and it offers unique marketability. With it, the now reliable quality and vitality of Pinchgut Opera's productions bring enormous appeal.  L’Amant Jaloux is no different.

The three-act opera is a petite music box of glittering arias and ensembles full of vivid colour, fascinating depth and a delightful freshness that melts away any preconceptions that only the big names of the musical firmament possessed genius and originality.

Both at the harpsichord and conducting, Erin Helyard's authority over Ghétry's music allowed it to leap with energetic beauty. Helyard conducts as if every note emanates from his fingertips and he stands amongst the finest conductors who contribute to the pleasure of 'watching' music.

On opening night, the 27 musicians of The Orchestra of the Antipodes transferred his energy with exquisite shape and precision, as well as providing affecting support for six sensational, well-cast soloists who brought harmonising strength in voice and humour.

Jessica Aszodi as Jacinte and David Greco as Lopez

Baritone David Greco entertains as the wealthy and smug merchant, Lopez, with a voice of broad smokey appeal that billows with pomposity. At just 20 years old, Léonore, Lopez's widowed daughter (who he wants to prevent from remarrying), is fervently performed by Celeste Lazarenko. With unattractive traces of spoilt girlishness as she stomps about her room, Lazarenko charms with expressive acting, a secure, crystalline soprano and pulsating coloratura. Don Alonze is her jealous lover to whom Ed Lyon mustered the immaturity of a child and the passion of bullfighter while thrusting forth his adrenalin-charged, legato-rich and warm tenor.

Don Alonze's sister and Léonore's friend Isabelle is daintily portrayed by the sweet soprano-voiced Alexandra Oomens. Isabelle takes refuge in the Lopez home after fleeing from her guardian with the aid of the French soldier Florival who Andrew Goodwin endears with bumbling boyishness accompanied by a gorgeously radiant tenor. And running about while running the household and just about the entire opera with acute bubbliness as the maid Jacinte, soprano Jessica Aszodi impresses across a vocal range as hearty as it is lucent.

Léonore's patience with Don Alonze's jealousy is put to the test as is his awareness of having to curtail it. Everyone hopes for something but only in a maelstrom is resolution achieved. Contentment isn't handed over on silver platter and change doesn't come easy.

Director Chas Rader-Shieber guides the story with clarity, eliciting exaggerated gestures and pantomime-like expression from his cast in a marvellous period piece presented with vibrantly coloured, quirkily proportioned attire by costume designer Christie Milton.

Set designer David Fleischer shapes the stage area with an obliquely set, high-panelled wall punctured with concealed doorways and cupboards which provide ample hidey-holes for quick escapes - often not quick enough. After a marginally trepidatious start to Act I's parlour setting, the dramatic and comedic flow settles into gear, reaching its best form in Act II as the action shifts into comedic crossfire in Léonore's bedroom.

Every musical moment soars and each soloist found every skerrick of character portrayal with ease when soaked in the French-sung music. But the recitative-empty English raw word, delivered with an array of accents, sometimes felt disconnected. It's a small quibble which, despite the production's enamouring charm, also highlighted how successful L'Amant Jaloux could be if presented with an updated, contemporary or abstract shot.

With two stunning entr'actes cleverly blended with the scene changes, featuring Stephen Lalor on mandolin in the Hummel's Mandolin Concerto in G major and Melissa Farrow on baroque flute in Grétry's own Flute Concerto in C major, the musical richness and comic delights on stage united as blissfully as the happy ending brings.


Production photographs: Prudence Upton

Opera Australia's Aussie-baked ripper results in The Elixir of Love in Melbourne

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/opera-review-the-elixir-of-love-opera-australia-arts-centre-melbourne/news-story/0f70826d8f8a305743b67397c78fbc6a

Opera Australia's visually radiant and expertly sung The Marriage of Figaro in Melbourne: my Herald Sun review

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/opera-review-the-marriage-of-figaro-opera-australia-arts-centre-melbourne/news-story/230360424873014a155844aafea9371c

Great Scott! Skyrocketing bel canto in The Dallas Opera's world premiere of Jake Heggie's latest opera

Artists in the rehearsal room for Rosa Dolorosa in Great Scott

Maybe, just maybe, the art of bel canto singing can skyrocket in the context of contemporary opera. Great Scott, The Dallas Opera's formidable new commission of Terrence McNally's story and libretto, with music by Jake Heggie, certainly makes it possible.

In the manner of Rossini and others, Heggie employs bel canto composition in the service of a fictional never-performed long-lost opera score, for which fictional opera star Arden Scott is determined to make a success of during a triumphant return to her hometown. Her discovery of the 1835 work Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei, by fictional composer Vittorio Bazzetti, makes for a fascinating story, one which centres around various corridors of American Opera (seemingly representative of American opera companies and the risks they face). In it, we get a peep at the behind-the-scenes chaos, its assortment of temperaments and the intricacies that drive artistic passion. Great Scott is amusing but not a comedy, its clever, sometimes indulgent and a tad poignant. It's also a work of geodesic-like interconnections, a confident work with its own uniqueness and, for its world premiere, a stellar cast gave it a remarkable outing.

In Act I, American Opera is rehearsing Bazzetti's work and Joyce DiDonato, for whom the role of as Arden Scott was created, sings to impress. While seemingly at play with her voice, DiDonato catapults the art of coloratura, singing with unbounded joy through highly expressive vocal shifts with rich textures and a fountain of effervescence. Doing so, she aims her sling-shot fun at ballsy co-star and diva-hungry Uzbekistani (or thereabouts) Tatyana Bakst, spectacularly sung and bubbly acted by Ailyn Pérez. If that's what opera singers are doing in rehearsal, an audience needs to hear more of that on the stage in modern opera. Even though it's trepidatiously employed for a fictional opera, Heggie seems to have opened the door for bel canto, giving it modernity like never before as part of contemporary storytelling.

Nathan Gunn and Joyce DiDonato

Much is riding on the success of American Opera's Rosa Dolorosa. It's a risky operatic venture that mimics the travails and excitement of risk-taking choices, much what could mimic The Dallas Opera's initiative in staging Great Scott.

Heggie's musical brew even seems to root the story in the geographic epicentre of the USA, gratefully writing an overture that begins with a sprawling sense of space and uncluttered beauty. Later, with rousing brassy Sousa-like pageantry, American football and patriotic fare is celebrated. It feels very much like it starts in Dallas for which conductor Patrick Summers demonstrated the music's strength with an overtly tempered ardour.

The bel canto premiere has to compete with Super Bowl on opening night and everybody is hopeful of a victory for the Grizzlies. In the end the Grizzlies lose but Rosa Dolorosa succeeds, even though for Scott it is accompanied by thorny issues to deal with on a personal level. Scott reconnects with an old flame, architect Sid Taylor, sung with broad muscularity by Nathan Gunn. And though written for her, Scott loses out to Bakst for the title role of a new opera, Medea Refracted. Her dressing room becomes steeped in poignant reflections on love, loss and success, and all the while the tattooed DiDonato gives her both classy sassiness and modern believability.

Anthony Roth Costanzo, Joyce DiDonato and Frederica von Stade

The three-hours over two acts can feel too long in its first viewing. Outside the bel canto style, the vocal line rises naturally off the music. McNally makes them understood with a casual, uncensored language of today though occasionally the unexpected humour falls on an nonreactive musical line and a few icky lines make an attempt to cover every possible modern dilemma. The audience needn't be told "the world needs food, health, peace and beauty."

Director Jack O'Brien evokes real-time sensibility and ease, supported truthfully with simple but functional modern rectilinear spaces, minimal trappings and day-to-day streetwear (but rather drably robed Pompeian streetwear for Rosa Dolorosa) by set and costume designer Bob Crowley. Brian MacDevitt's lighting design adds realistic edge while Elaine J. McCarthy's projection designs do service to creating a football stadium and opera theatre within the confines of the stage.

The opera-within-an-opera scenes sometime feel like filler, gorgeously sung as they are, but the artists of the company endear and their performances stick memorably. After another settling orchestral opening for Act II from Heggie, "The Star-Spangled Banner" gets an amusing take from Bakst. If the audience stood for Pérez's botched up but vocally searing rendition, it wouldn't have been surprising. As Winnie Flato (Artistic Director of American Opera), Frederica von Stade makes a solid return to the stage and her opera company, with her opening night post-performance speech after Rosa Dolorosa able to bring tears.

Kevin Burdette, as the conductor Eric Gold, portrays the one eye on music and the other on stage manager Roane Heckle with bland appeal. Then doubling as the ghost of Bazzetti, Burdette gives powerful weight and commanding vocal dimension to the supernatural in what could have been a blundering insertion to the opera. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is perpetually shining as the ever hard-working, loveable and hip Roane Heckle. As the good-natured tussling tenor and baritone pair Anthony Candolino and Wendell Swann, Rodell Rosel and Michael Mayes deliver a complimentarily entertaining act and young Mark Hancock courageously overcomes the demands of the stage with shouts of "Vesuvio sta per scoppiare" as Sid Taylor's son though his skateboarding across the opera-within-an-opera stage in Great Scott's final moment bemused.

Ailyn Pérez as Tatyana Bakst singing "The Star-Spangled Banner"

With Rosa Dolorosa brought to the stage, it's hard seeing it become the success it was but that's part of the amusement. Opera, like all the arts, is a difficult medium to gauge presumptions about how its audience will respond. But for Great Scott, its gift is very much its ability to get under the skin, a wanting to analyse its raison d'être, its highs and lows and intricate structure. With three world premieres of works commissioned by The Dallas Opera alone this year, a winning formula prevails and with it, the sense that opera and Super Bowl can comfortably coexist for seasons to come.


Production photos: Karen Almond, Dallas Opera

CitiOpera's La Cenerentola delights with unstoppable vitality at Hawthorn Arts Centre

Kristen Leich as Cinderella and Henry Choo as Prince Ramiro

There is no fairy godmother, no pumpkin transformed into an ornate carriage and no glass slippers in the familiar story of the beautiful young cinder-stained girl called Cinderella in Gioachino Rossini's version, La Cenerentola which premiered in Rome in 1817. Rossini took the magic wand-waving out and instilled comedic realism, but the unmistakeable rags to riches story of liberation from persecution and forgiveness of perpetrator remain deeply on show.

Small independent opera company CitiOpera's new production of La Cenerentola from director Theresa Borg turned the spacious hall of Hawthorn Arts Centre's detailed Victorian classicism into a party-like atmosphere. Borg not only maintains the manic entertaining sharpness of Rossini's two-act operatic dramma giocoso but recycles the story yet again while turning up the frivolity with a delightfully tacky appeal.

With a party-hat-dressed orchestra, a stage festooned with streamers, balloons and fairly lights, and costumes seemingly inspired by the luridly bright fluorescence of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, set and costume designs by Marc McIntyre dazzle and lighting designer Daniel Jow's restless cocktail of colours is a feastly dramatic knockout. It's all achieved effectively on a shoestring, and lots of plastic, paper and rubber.

Taking the drama off the raised proscenium stage to include entrances up the central aisle and from a small balcony, Borg's utilisation of the hall injects an unstoppable vitality to the pacing.

Genevieve Dickson, Carolina Biasoli and Adrian McEniery

It's not entirely clear but Don Magnifico appears to be the lazy and lecherous owner of a tawdry club and his two tarted up, self-obsessed daughters his club hostesses. Stepdaughter Cinderella is one of the premise's chorus of cleaners and her Prince Ramiro, disguised as a valet, is nothing more than a knockabout Mr Nice Guy, comfortable in his Game of Thrones T-shirt, and who appears oblivious to class division. His "servant" Dandini pulls of the charm in disguise as the "prince" and the tutor Alidoro is disguised as a leggy dishevelled drag queen.

Jacopo Ferretti's libretto is sung in Italian and peppered with dialogue in today's English. Despite the royal titles and endearingly fuzzy interpretation on stage, the recycled tale works well. The result is magically applaudable, one where wealth and rank is relative but finding true happiness and escape from persecution is paramount. The bottom line, however, is fun and a zero tolerance for mediocrity is evident.

A splendidly sung and orchestrally rich opening night made certain of that. Occasional loss of projection and imbalances in voice delivery and timing wafted into opening night during ensemble pieces (and a few precarious headpieces and cardboard props wobbled) but the ear was treated to overall beauty.

Kristen Leich as Cinderella

As Cinderella, Kristen Leich gives one of opera's scintillating mezzo-soprano coloratura roles star quality. A soulful, melancholic-dark tone in the voice's lower range captured the persecuted Cinderella marvellously. Leich opened the voice smoothly in the middle and upper range and pleasantly paced her impeccably shaped ornamentation to expose her character's determination and dreams. In Acts II's extended aria "Nacqui all'affanno ... Non piu mesta" Leich reached higher to cut through the orchestra with fluid cyclic register changes in a sensational coloratura display, navigating her way in her zany tulle and clear plastic gown lit up by fairy lights (put together out of the recycling green bin by Alidoro's generous good taste).

It's momentarily uncertain who the guy in the cap and sleeveless padded jacket is when he strays down the central aisle, but he turns out to be part of the cast. In disguise as the valet Dandini, Henry Choo as Prince Ramiro then sets forth with a performance of engaging strength and focus. Young Choo's vocal expertise improves with every new role he tackles and here a personal best seemed on show. An immediate warmth of tone and convincing interpretive attack shone brilliantly in his tenor and, in duet with Leich's Cinderella the pair's chemistry and vocal blending was well-honed. Even their comical dance with golden broomsticks elevated the romance as much as the kiss cementing their union.

Led by a chorus of street sweepers down the central aisle as the disguised "prince", Michael Lampard stepped into his status high position with alacrity as Dandini, his richly burnished baritone impressing while guiding it through momentary insecurities with breathing. Alcohol-fuelled and gladdened by his own skimpy glam-grunge style, Matthew Thomas amusingly strutted on heels all night and sang with no-mess mastery as Alidoro.

Act 1 scene, La Cenerentola

Adrian McEniery made a portentous, ill-mannered Don Magnifico while roaring out Rossini's robust pitter-patter treats. Those ill-manners sometimes overpowered in ensemble but his character could forgivingly steal anything. Genevieve Dickson and Carolina Biasoli, as stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe, managed to get through opening night with the most unmanageable costumes and headpieces with brighter, more harmonised singing the more their hopes of a "royal" marriage was doomed. A chorus of females took easily to the task in voice and broom with a pair of solid male voices curiously planted off-stage beside the orchestra.

Conducting around 20 musicians with celebratory flare, CitiOpera's Artistic Director Trevor Jones dished up Rossini in bucketloads of style. Rossini's recycled overture from his opera La Gazzetta was energised for a magnificent start on opening night and one's attention was easily drawn to the thunderous solid fortes, crispness of tones and thrilling crescendoes throughout. The dancing, textured strings and elegant brass playing were particularly satisfying.

It's CitiOpera's second outing this year at the Hawthorn Arts Centre after presenting a fiery and passionate Cavalleria Rusticana, a sign perhaps that the small independent company's itinerancy will settle there for the medium term. I hope so because it's a fine venue and CitiOpera is looking mighty comfortable in it.


Production Photographs courtesy of CitiOpera