Outback Opera

Dr Rowena Cowley, is a senior lecturer in voice and opera at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and President of the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing. She is also a friend of Sounds Like Sydney. She voices her thoughts on the hit Channel 9 star seeker show – The Voice: http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newscategoryid=6&newsstoryid=9139C

Oh the joy of a serendipity….of discovering a lost score long after its composer is no more. This is the story of  Igor Stravinsky’s 1908 piece, Pogrebal’naya Pesnya (Funeral Song) written in memory of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, shortly after Rimsky’s death in June  that year. The 12-minute work was performed only once, in a Russian symphony…

Attending a dress rehearsal for a production by Opera Australia, I sense that the audience has all the expectancy and impatience of children on Christmas Eve, getting a sneak peek at the entertainment to come and to be the first amongst their friends to spill the beans. The orchestra is attired in mufti, the soft…