Latest news
‘The Three of Us’- Jacqui Dark, Kanen Breen and Alexander
Jacqui Dark and Kanen Breen are two of the most popular opera starts with Opera Australia. Behind the scenes they are firm friends and together bring up 1 year Alexander. This is a no holds barred story which is touching as well as ridiculously funny and barefacedly honest. “He offered to co-parent; I didn’t have…
‘Spheres’ CD Giveaway
We have three copies of a fabulous new CD to give away! Violinist Daniel Hope’s Spheres on the DG label is a brilliant compilation of 18 tracks of mostly 20th century music by Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Elena Kats-Chernin, Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei) and Alex Baranowski. Spotted by Yehudi Menuhin at the age of 11, Hope has he has…
‘Musical Malaproptionary’ – twists and ‘terms’
In the world of Paula Hollins, Abendmusik is ‘a method for making printed music lie flat on a stand’, and Abandonne is ‘What Pinkerton did to Buterfly’! These whacky definitions come from her new sunny yellow covered publication, Musical Malaproptionary: A dictionary of musical terms redefined humorously. Aimed at ‘music lovers, screwball musicians, irreverent iconoclasts…. and anyone with a…
Alexia Voulgaridou sings ‘Tosca’
In echoes of the past, a Greek soprano will take the role of Tosca in Opera Australia’s winter production directed by John Bell and conducted by Christian Badea. Soprano Alexia Voulgaridou will sing the role with which the name of her compatriot Maria Callas is inextricably linked. It is not the soprano’s first performance in Sydney. She…
Eistedfodd update – choral championship winners
The Sydney Eisteddfod presented the John Lamble Foundation Australasian Choral Championships in the Concert Hall at The Concourse, Chatswood in early June. The program featured choirs of all ages and types which had won places during the previous week’s various events of the Sydney Eisteddfod Choral section. The primary and infant school choirs competed in the morning, the…
‘pulse:heart:beats’ – “A Kaleidoscope of Sounds and Imagery” from Taikoz and Synergy Percussion
‘Kaleidoscope’ – a word of Greek origin and a composite of kalos, meaning beauty, eidos, meaning shape, and skopeo to look or to examine. Together, they refer to the ‘observation of beautiful forms.’ It is a word, says Ian Cleworth , which has recently been used a lot in the vocabulary of TaikOz and its…
Latest reviews
A Superb Cast Takes a Roman Holiday – ‘Don Pasquale’ reviewed
Don Pasquale – Gaetano Donizetti Opera Australia , 18 July 2013 When Donizetti wrote Don Pasquale for Paris in 1841, it was an immediate success. Within six months it had been produced in Milan, Vienna, Brussels and London and it has remained one of the most popular comic operas ever since. So it is surprising…
‘Tosca’- A Welcome Revival For The Future
Opera Australia’s new production of Puccini’s Tosca was premiered on 6 July, just three years after they launched their previous new production. That 2010 production was widely regarded as a dramatic disaster – a travesty which completely reinvented the work so that it bore only a passing resemblance to the plot for which Puccini wrote…