| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 27-Apr-2013 City Recital Hall Angel Place | Jazzy thrills: ACO Weimar cabaret evening with Barry Humphries and Meow Meow a delight |
_photo_credit_Karl_Giant.jpg) When one sees the word “Erotica” in connection with classical music, one is usually safe in assuming that it’s a misprint in the title of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. And yet, at the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s concert on Saturday, it was no Freudian slip: Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata Erotica, which the composer suggestively marked “nur für Herren” (for men only), was on the program. Think of the famous diner scene from the film When Harry met Sally, and you’ll have the gist of the piece: a few minutes of unaccompanied female orgasmic noises.Read full review... | |
| 17-Apr-2013 NIDA Parade Theatres | Wagner with a twist: Jack Symonds' bold response to Parsifal with Sydney Chamber Opera |
 Three days after seeing the Metropolitan Opera’s broadcast version of Wagner’s Parsifal, I attended Climbing Toward Midnight, Jack Symonds’ compositional response to this same opera, directed by Netta Yashchin. This act of homage differed hugely from its parent work in terms of scale: a 70-minute work for two singers and four instrumentalists could have little in common with Wagner’s five-hour music drama with a cast and orchestra in proportion.Read full review... | |
| 7-Apr-2013 Sydney Conservatorium of Music: Verbrugghen Hall | Inspirational performances of Mendelssohn, Dohnányi and Franck at the Musica Viva Festival |
 At one point in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the narrator is listening to a sonata for piano and violin by the fictional Vinteuil, when “at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he tried to grasp the phrase or harmony – he did not know which – that had just been played and that had opened and expanded his soul”. Some suspect that the author might have had Franck’s Sonata for violin and piano in mind.Read full review... | |
| 6-Apr-2013 Sydney Conservatorium of Music: Verbrugghen Hall | Enigmas and emotions: Outstanding chamber musicians at the Musica Viva Festival in Sydney |
 The noted Beethoven pianist Artur Schnabel was famously interested only in music that he felt was “better than it can be performed”. This idea of works which transcend any individual performance seems particularly true when it comes to Beethoven’s late string quartets, enigmatic masterpieces which continue to pose challenges to interpreters nearly two centuries after they were written. But what makes the String Quartet in B flat Op. 130 so great?Read full review... | |
| 4-Mar-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Visionary music-making: The Australian Chamber Orchestra in The Reef |
 For many reasons, the ACO’s most recent show The Reef was an artistic experience like no other in all my years of concert-going. It is difficult even categorising the event: an orchestral concert with accompanying video footage? A film with live soundtrack?Read full review... | |
| 15-Feb-2013 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | A belly-full of laughs at Opera Australia's production of Verdi's Falstaff |
 Tragedy seems to age better than comedy. The works of Aeschylus have been more influential than those of Aristophanes, and Shakespeare’s darker plays are far more popular than his pure comedies. This same propensity for gloomy subjects can also be seen in the opera world. With notable exceptions in the cases of Mozart and Rossini, the composers whose works are most frequently performed today tend to be better known for their tragedies than their lighter works: think of Puccini, Wagner, Bizet.Read full review... | |
| 10-Feb-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Mozart to Brett Dean: Australian Chamber Orchestra on form in eclectic, partly-electric concert |
 Spot the odd one out: a symphony by Haydn, another by Mozart, a violin concerto by Mozart, and Electric Preludes by Brett Dean (2012). The bill of fare offered by the Australian Chamber Orchestra on Sunday cannot be called typical for them, since their programs evade any easy categorisation, but the gesture of mixing old and new is certainly a familiar gambit.Read full review... | |
| 29-Jan-2013 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Efficient Trovatore at the Sydney Opera House |
 Simultaneously one of the most loved and most mocked operas in the canon, Il trovatore has some of Verdi’s catchiest melodies set to one of his silliest plots. Against the backdrop of a 15th-century Spanish war, a cast of nobles, gypsies, nuns and soldiers enact a drama which hinges on that hoariest of dramatic clichés: children swapped at birth.Read full review... | |
| 24-Jan-2013 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Memorable re-visioning of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera at the Sydney Opera House |
 “I would ask what the management’s drama has in common with mine. The title? No. The poet? No. The period? No. The place? No. The characters? No.”
This excerpt from Verdi’s legal proceedings against the management of San Carlo, who were trying to foist changes on Un Ballo in Maschera, came vividly to my mind last night at Sydney Opera House. Read full review... | |
| 6-Dec-2012 City Recital Hall Angel Place | Pinchgut Opera offers a marvellous performance of Rameau's Castor et Pollux in Sydney |
 For the past ten years, Pinchgut Opera has established a reputation for excellence through mounting one opera production annually in Sydney (the name derives from an island in Sydney’s harbour, established as a prison from the beginnings of settlement). Their focus has hitherto been on lesser-known Baroque works, with a few later 18th-century outliers. Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, performed here in the revised 1754 version, was an excellent choice, allowing audiences to hear a work thought by some to be the composer’s crowning achievement.Read full review... | |
| 26-Nov-2012 Carriageworks | Full house for Sydney Chamber Opera's innovative staging of Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse |
 Sydney Chamber Opera’s latest venture, a production of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ 1979 piece The Lighthouse, played to a packed Carriageworks theatre on Monday. In an era when the continued viability of classical music institutions is debated hotly, the fact that this new company can pull in the crowds for a challenging modernist work is cause for congratulation.Read full review... | |
| 12-Oct-2012 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Heady stuff: A visceral production of Salome at Sydney Opera House |
 Salome was a huge, scandalous success at its 1905 première, and stagings of this, Richard Strauss’ third opera, have continued to shock audiences over the past century. This is hardly to be wondered at: after all, the title character’s final monologue ends with her kissing the severed head of John the Baptist, whom she has had executed for spurning her advances. The trifecta of religion, sex and violence was very much to the fore in Opera Australia’s new production, designed by Gale Edwards and her colleagues, which amped up the brutality and raunchiness considerably.Read full review... | |
| 28-Sep-2012 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Emma Matthews delivers in Opera Australia's Lucia di Lammermoor |
.jpg) For many opera fans, especially here in Australia, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor is indelibly connected with the late, much lamented Joan Sutherland. She made her breakthrough as Lucia in a Covent Garden production of 1959, and continued to sing the part for over three decades, thankfully leaving several celebrated recordings. All eyes and ears were therefore on Emma Matthews on Friday night, as she took on the role in a new production of Donizetti’s masterpiece at the Sydney Opera House.Read full review... | |
| 21-Sep-2012 Independent Theatre | Rossini's Silken Ladder lacks real sparkle at North Sydney |
| There are few performing venues as iconic as Sydney’s Opera House, the home of Opera Australia during its Sydney seasons. However, operatic activity in the city is not confined to this space: a surprising number of smaller companies, some of which have particular repertoire specialisms, provide alternatives at a range of different locations. Read full review... | |
| 24-Jul-2012 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Latonia Moore shines in Sydney Aida |
.jpg) Virtually every reviewer of Aida mentions elephants, generally only to note their absence: the elephant not in the room, as it were. Like most others, the current Opera Australia production was lacking in pachyderms, but few of last night’s audience will have felt short-changed. We were treated to some of the most thrilling singing I have yet heard at the Sydney Opera House, in a production that was traditional but not unthinkingly so.
Read full review... | |
| 9-Jun-2012 City Recital Hall Angel Place | Danielle De Niese and Australian Chamber Orchestra unite in Sydney |
 The Australian Chamber Orchestra, known both for its innovative programming and for the tightness of the ensemble playing, displayed both qualities on Saturday night, the second stop in a five-city, nine-concert tour. In the first half, two works by contemporary Australian composers were sandwiched between pieces by Mozart, while the second half was given over to Schubert’s Death and the Maiden (both song and quartet in adaptations for string orchestra).Read full review... | |
