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The Godfather, almost indisputably, stands as one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time; (the American Film Institute ranks it right behind Citizen Kane). And now the SSO has joined the family business. Directed by Francis For Coppola in 1972 (literally a dozen directors turned it down) and based on Mario Puzo’s eponymous novel,
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It’s Rent, really. With these sets and costumes, high rent. I’ve lost count of the number of times this production of Puccini’s punchy opera La Boheme has been around. But I do know it premiered at Melbourne’s Arts Centre on April 12, almost four years ago. (What’s four times 525, 600 minutes?)
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It’s one of the more eccentric and out-there events on the greater Sydney theatre calendar. Sport for Jove’s annual festival primarily focussed on Shakespeare, but which nibbles at the edges of other classics. This year (well, it actually bribes 2014 and 15, in two very separate, far-flung, locations), it means we get A Midsummer Night’s
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Richard Tognetti might be artistic director and lead violinist of the Australian Chamber Orchestra in all its guises, but, last night at Liverpool Street’s godforsaken (no air-conditioning in a packed house) Goodgod Small Club, it was Satu Vanska who visibly took charge.
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There are two words that spring to mind when I think of opera. Pomp. And circumstance. Pomp, in light of all the sets, costumes and theatrical excesses that so typify the big-end-of-town expressions of the form. Circumstance, because of melodramatic contrivances implicit in libretti, that stretch credulity to its outer edges.
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I didn’t expect to, nor did I hear it. Bitches Ain’t Shit, the perennially youthful-looking American singer-songwriter-composer-producer Ben Folds’ fearless dig at the more misogynistic side of hip-hop culture wasn’t really suitable material, I suppose, for an evening with the Sydney Symphony. But there was plenty of other grist to the mill, in terms of
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There’s a depiction on the cover of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s program for Tchaikovsky 5 (performed last weekend) which seems especially relative. It’s Makovsky’s Russian Beauty. Makovsky was a contemporary of Tchaikovsky. When we think of the fifth, we can’t help but think of Beethoven.
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Since The King & I is set in Siam, it’s only appropriate I address the elephant in the room. Hello, Jumbo.
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Gaetano Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love was once the most popular opera around. It took just ten years (from its 1832 debut in Milano) to become so. Runaway showbiz hits aren’t anything new. Opera?! Showbiz?! Yes; especially when you afford it the informality director Simon Phillips does in this Opera Austtraliaproduction, which has been around
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It’s one of those uncompromisingly, stubbornly, proudly Russian names: Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Poet, playwright, actor … you name it. But not just any poet. Stalin’s favourite. Which is far preferable to being Stalin’s least favourite.
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