Category: Opera

And now, a change of pace. After three brooding operas this cold Sydney winter – a staid Lucia Di Lammermoor, a sombre Rigoletto and a dazzlingly dark Aida – levity arrives in the form of one of Gioachino Rossini’s least remembered operas. The Turk In Italy is little performed for some good reasons. But this

Blood-red clouds swirl apocalyptically overhead. A black panther with piercing green eyes stands warily close by. A gold-plated serpent is charmed to coil around the crowd and bare its fangs. Or is it all a dazzling mirage? No surprise in an opera set in the deserts of ancient Egypt, especially one as tricked out as

There is, as we’ve come to expect in the globalised market of principal opera talent, some world-class voices quaking the tiles of the Sydney Opera House this winter. Starry seasons of two mid-19th century Italian works, Lucia di Lammermoor and Rigoletto don’t excavate anything opera lovers didn’t know about these works, or indeed these well-worn adaptations of contrasting

Andy Morton has been directing traffic harbourside for the last six Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour spectaculars: from Gale Edwards’ infectious Carmen in 2013, to La Fura dels Baus’ contemporary Madame Butterfly in 2014, Edwards’ brash Aida in 2015, Chen Shi-Zheng’s thoughtful Turandot in 2016 and a Carmen remount in 2017. But in each production

Don Quichotte, the last surviving operatic treatment of the canonical Spanish work of literature, debuted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1926, 16 years after its Monte Carlo premiere. It was performed nine times and, near a century later, never since. The reviews were barbarian. One in particular, by Lawrence Gilman in the Herald Tribune,