“….the biggest losers of this stale safety bias will be Australia’s opera makers of tomorrow. When a culture of predictability and drab conservatism finally atrophies the expectations of the opera-going public, artists attempting to escape from that trope will likely be met with hostility.”
Maxim Boon in The Guardian takes a refreshingly honest view of opera in Australia.
Being a conductor has got to be one of the strangest of jobs! In the cascade of music that the audience comes to hear, the conductor makes not one sound; he touches no instrument. The audience doesn’t even witness the emotions of the maestro/maestra at work and indeed, some gestures may even be completely obscured. Tom Service…
Wagner specialist conductor Christian Thielemann’s reading of the complete Ring Cycle at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2011 was recognised as one of the greatest Wagnerian events of recent times. On August 2nd, Deutsche Grammophon releases a recording of this performance as a boxed set of 14 CDs of the four Ring operas and 2 DVDs featuring four…
For centuries, opera has been an European art form – its tales and music emerging from the literature, the librettists and the composers of the European continent. With the discovery of the New World, the art form reached across the Atlantic. It was only in 1955 that Marian Anderson (b1897) became the first African-American to…
In her first studio album for five years, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko celebrates the Verdi bicentenary and the dramatic power of his music with a new recording on the Deutsche Grammophon label, available from August 9th. Anna Netrebko – Verdi is a compilation of arias selected by Netrebko herself. They include some rarely heard works from major…
Applause Musical Theatre Academy is offering children and teens short courses in the skills of performing in music theatre in summer holiday programmes in four venues across Sydney’s north. The courses will teach music, drama and dance in two and three-day workshops in Chatswood, Roseville, St Ives and Killarney Heights. Participants will learn to sing, dance…
Pianist Young Kwon Choi has been awarded the 2012 biennial Albert Paul Landa Scholarship. In a small ceremony at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, presented by Musica Viva, the CEO Mary Jo Capps made the award on behalf of the NSW Government. The award of $25,000 is a travelling scholarship in memory of the…