THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

A copy of the little OA Summer Season pamphlet came in the mail today. I almost ignored it, but I'm pleased I didn't, as it contains a few happy little pieces of casting information not included in the original subscription booklet. So we now know that:

— I'm informed via email that Antoinette Halloran sang the title role of Madama Butterfly in Melbourne on Saturday, filling in for an indisposed Nicole Youl, and evidently scored a triumph. Brava, Antoinette, and we look forward to seeing your Butterfly here in January. (Apparently it was a bit of an ill starred evening, with Rosario La Spina going off sick after Act One as well. I don't know who replaced him at the end, though I'd be curious to find out.) [Update: Jamie Allen sang Pinkerton in Act 3 -see comment below]  

— Danish architect Joern Utzon, who designed the Sydney Opera House, died on Saturday aged ninety. The sails of the opera house were darkened on Sunday in mourning. Thomasina has an eloquent tribute to his iconic creation.

After an internet pre-sale yesterday, single ticket sales for Opera Australia's 2009 season opened at the Opera House at 9 o'clock this morning. If you went there this morning to book, you may have discovered the box office in the midst of a system failure. I'd like at this point, rightly or wrongly, to take credit for breaking Tessitura. It was at a crucial moment in my transaction that the first terminal froze. The others followed. I don't know how long the meltdown lasted, but I'd like to think it was the sheer force of my devotion which the Opera House computers simply couldn't withstand.

There's intimate, and there's intimate. We praise the intimate nature of performances in the City Recital Hall. Even the Opera Theatre seems pretty intimate compared to a grand American opera house. Intimate is a relative concept.

Intimate is one thing. Pacific Opera's fundraising concert last night, billed as "An Intimate Puccini Evening" was quite another. The Barnet Long Room at Customs House is a pretty tiny venue to begin with, seating only 160 in what they call "theatre style". For last night's concert, I doubt it sat even that many. We entered via the stage, stepping down into the seating area to find only four or five long rows arranged lengthways in the centre, facing a stage not much larger than a reasonably large dining room table. 

This was intimate and then some, the sort of set-up where it feels almost inappropriate to sit in the front row. Almost. I did, of course, sit in the front row. Front and centre. Hardly surprising, since I am always a front row kind of girl, but even less so when you realise that this intimate evening was to be shared with the extraordinary Cheryl Barker and her gorgeous husband, Peter Coleman-Wright. Masterfully accompanied by Pacific Opera's music director Andrew Greene, they sang excerpts from Madama Butterfly, Tosca and Manon Lescaut, interspersed with shorter pieces from Pacific Opera alumni, James Roser and Penelope Mills, and commentary and anecdotes from the always engaging Moffatt Oxenbould. 

Moffatt opened proceedings, praising, before anything else, the extraordinary acoustic of this unusual venue. He was clearly excited as he explained to us that they had discovered, in first trying the room out, that it produced a "rehearsal ambience", that live, resonant acoustic which performers always strive to reproduce in the more cavernous space of an opera theatre, but which, in its raw, ideal state, is not often experienced by us mere punters. He promised us something "quite extraordinary", underlining repeatedly the intensity of what was to come. His words could also have been construed as a warning to the faint hearted. 

Intense was putting it mildly. Incredible acoustic, small space, singers in full flight and an audience so close that even those in the back row were probably not much further from the stage than a front row audience at the opera house would be. It's not every day you experience a concert in such conditions, and thank god for that — this was magnificent, but if all performances were like this, it would be a health hazard. As it was, the sheer power and richness of sound might have proved a bit overpowering for some tastes. The concert might have been on a very small scale, but the performances certainly weren't. If you loved the voices in question, this was heaven; if you didn't, well, it might have been hard going. 

But I can't imagine anybody could have felt anything but love, or at the very least, admiration, for these four voices. Penelope Mills was all sweetness and light, particularly touching as Mimi in the duet with Marcello (one of only two points in La bohème which soften my stony heart) and James Roser's smooth baritone was lovely to hear. 

And then there were Cheryl and Peter. Are we spoilt, or what? I know it's standard Antipodean practice to gaze, green-eyed, at the concert schedules of Paris, New York, London and Milan but there are moments when such jealousy is left in the dust. This was one of them. There was nowhere I would rather have been last night than Circular Quay, sitting barely five feet away from the one soprano I'd rather hear than any other in the world, listening, awestruck, as she blazed her way through the kind of "Vissi d'arte" which, had I been hidden away in a big, dark theatre, would have made an embarrassing mess of me. The fact that all I had to do to get there was finish work, change my shoes and take a two minute train ride just adds to the preposterous good fortune of it all. 

They began with Butterfly, the scene between Sharpless and Cio Cio San. What a luxury to have Peter as Sharpless. I love his voice more all the time, partly by association, it's true, but mostly because he's fabulous. He's one of few baritones whose voices I think I would recognise immediately. Nobody else sounds quite like Peter, and nothing sounds quite so good as Peter did in this particular venue. And if we're speaking of luxuries, the greatest of all is to have such an intimate audience with the Butterfly of Cheryl Barker, one of the Butterflies of her generation. Adjectives are redudant, she just owns this role, and that's that. Her "Che tua madre dovra" was wonderfully hard to take at such close range, and when she mimed the sword-in-neck on "Morte!", I flinched. 

Then Tosca, the duet between Scarpia and Tosca. The woman who, only ten or fifteen minutes earlier, had been such an earnest and finely wrought Butterfly, was instantly a fiery, imperious Tosca, so terrifyingly real that you'd scarcely believe it was the same woman, in the same dress. And yet she was, and she was...oh, I don't know. Supply your own superlative. Peter was indecently smooth and suave, quite genuinely lecherous in his advances even if they were on his own wife. Peter and Cheryl, it has to be said, do chemistry remarkably well, be it this kind or the Arabella kind. Their duetting was fantastic, but Cheryl's "Vissi d'arte" was on another plane — despite all of us breathing down her neck, and without sets, costumes or more than a few minutes of context, she was utterly, thrillingly in character, singing those oh so familiar words with revelatory conviction and that steely yet graceful voice of hers, the one which slices my heart into a thousand besotted shards. 

Finally, a fragment of Manon Lescaut, truly only a fragment as they'd opted to drop Manon's "In quelle trine morbide" and begin from "Poiche tu vuoi saper". A shame to miss out on the aria, but just quietly, I love the subsequent duet even better. It's included on the duets disc they recorded for ABC Classics, and I never tire of hearing Cheryl's impassioned "Vieni! Vieni", so it was bliss to hear it (and the rest) in the flesh. Peter was a beautiful big brother, and Cheryl an irresistible Manon, moving convincingly from coquetry to sincere affection and concern. As if I needed another reason to look forward to her debut in the role next season. 

And that was it. No encores, partly, I suspect, because the set-up in the theatre meant it took them most of their ovation just to get backstage again. My calculations tell me it was a two hour concert, so I suppose it must have been, but it felt quite a lot shorter. I could happily have taken a lot more of the same. Then again, just that "Vissi d'arte" should sustain me for quite a while yet. So, thank god for Pacific Opera, and for their need to fundraise. Philanthropy never felt so good. 

Richard Hickox conducted the first opera I ever saw as a Sydneysider, Janacek's Jenufa. That was a matinée, two weeks after I moved here. Even before that, just a few days after I arrived, when I was still camped out in a backpackers in King's Cross and wondering what on earth I'd done, the first performance of any kind I saw as a resident was Opera Australia's 50th Anniversary Gala, also conducted by Richard Hickox. Part of the reason I'd moved here was because I needed to live somewhere with regular opera. Opera Australia has provided it ever since, and Richard Hickox is the only Music Director I've known. For those who knew the company under previous régimes, there are points of comparison to be made, some to Hickox's advantage and some, I suppose, not. I can't make those comparisons. Since my first, tentative steps into trans-Tasman fanaticism, Opera Australia and Richard Hickox have been synonymous as far as I've been concerned.

And maybe it's just coincidence — and maybe it's not — but while parts of the opera community were blaming him for a perceived slip in artistic standards, the three finest productions I saw at Opera Australia this year were all led by Richard — Billy Budd, the extraordinary revival of The Makropulos Case and, above all, Arabella, whose opening night was quite simply the best night I have ever spent in any theatre, anywhere. 

It is a pity that, as has been pointed out elsewhere, several of the Australian newspapers have chosen to report this awful tragedy as the next installment in the sorry saga of Opera Australia's embattled administration. Such an approach does justice to nobody — neither Richard, who deserves far more dignity, nor the dissenters who, for all the complaints they made and insults they levelled, obviously never, ever wanted it to end like this. 

I have always felt myself in capable hands with Richard in the pit. In some cases, I've felt myself in the best imaginable care, above all in the British works which were his joy, his passion and his unquestioned forte. The performances he led of Billy Budd and of Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress were both of the kind which made me think: this is as good as it gets, nobody does this as well as that man right there, and what good fortune that all it takes to experience his incredible skill is a ticket and a twenty minute train ride. And it always made me inordinately happy when, arriving at the theatre well in advance, I would see him perched at the cafe in the Opera House concourse, enjoying a pre-show snack with his son. 

At times like this, there's little worse than manufactured emotion. I will not now fabricate a deeper affection than I felt. But even if Richard Hickox rarely inspired me to rapture, he has been a significant and positive presence in all of my Australian opera going, and I have always felt it a privilege that an artist of his standing, reputation and skill was all the way over here, looking after Australia's — after my — opera company. Opera is my maddest passion, the love of my life, and for the last two years, the nature and nourishment of that passion has been almost entirely in Richard's care. The seasons he designed, the performances he led, the artistic vision which he and this company have pursued — whatever you might think of them, these have been the basis of the most significant phase in my development as a lover of (and writer about) opera. For that I will always remember him, I will always be grateful, and, yes, I will miss him.

The loss to music is huge, but the personal loss is of course far greater and more painful. My thoughts now are with those closest to Richard, his friends and colleagues, both here and in the UK, and most of all, his family, his wife Pamela and his children. May they find strength and peace in this extraordinarily difficult time.

As we continue to mourn the unexpected passing of Opera Australia's Music Director, Richard Hickox, let's nevertheless pause for a moment to celebrate another vital figure in Australian opera. A very happy birthday to the great and gorgeous Yvonne Kenny AM. 

Media release 24/11/08

Opera Australia regrets to announce the tragic death of Richard Hickox CBE, its Music Director. Hickox died of a massive heart attack on Sunday in the UK.

‘All of us at Opera Australia are profoundly shocked and saddened by the news of Richard Hickox’s death. We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife, Pamela Helen Stephen and their children, Abigail and Adam. They are very much in our thoughts during this terribly sad time,’ said Adrian Collette.

In his long association with Opera Australia, Mr Hickox has conducted new productions of Julius Caesar, Billy Budd, The Love of Three Oranges, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Rusalka, and Arabella (which won this year’s prestigious Helpmann Award for Best Opera), The Tales of Hoffmann and Alcina. CD recordings of The Love of Three Oranges and Rusalka have been released by Chandos and received very positive reviews in the international and local press. Mr Hickox has also led major revivals, including The Makropulos Secret, Tannhauser, and Death in Venice.

The devastating news is filtering through tonight that Opera Australia's Music Director, Richard Hickox, has died suddenly in Cardiff of a heart attack. He was sixty years old. 

I'm still struggling to grasp this, and haven't a clue what to say. My thoughts are with his friends, colleagues and especially his family. He will be sorely missed.

See also:

Articles from The Age | The Australian (I) | The Australian (II) | Sydney Morning Herald | The Herald | BBC News | Wales Online | Llanelli Star | Mail on Sunday | Musical Criticism | Telegraph | ABC Online | ABC News | Guardian | The Independent | Times Online | Gramophone |

Blog posts from Jessica Duchen | One More Take | Chandos Records | I am a liminal being | Stumbling on melons | Not another music blogger | Mr Norris Changes Trains | The Omniscient Mussel | Strangers & Aliens | Tom Service (Guardian.co.uk) | The Fool and The Opera | Stage Noise | On An Overgrown Path 

It looked for a while like pathological laziness might win out, but ultimately a few wise words of encouragement from a persuasive person convinced me I really must take myself to the Sydney Symphony's Dream of Gerontius. And so I did, if only to prevent myself feeling guilty at having failed to take advantage of any offerings in the orchestra's Elgar festival, led by my candidate for Most Adorable Maestro Ever, one Vladimir Ashkenazy, whose tenure as the SSO's Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor begins next year.

The Age today has an interview with Franco Farina, the American tenor singing the title role in Opera Australia's Melbourne season of Otello, which opens tomorrow night. To judge by the accompanying photo, he's going to be a bit more blacked up than Dennis O'Neill was here. As with Butterfly, I'm keen to hear reports of this production from anyone attending, especially as the Melbourne papers seem to have stopped reviewing opera, or at least publishing the reviews online. 

A few days ago, I came across this article, about a New Zealand gangster turned tenor, whose star may or may not be in the ascendant. The point which caught my eye was that he has been invited to audition for Opera Australia. There is nothing unusual or particularly newsworthy in that fact, but what struck me was that my mind immediately leapt from "invited to audition" to "next great shining hope". That's wildly optimistic, even for me, but it is symptomatic of the state of affairs regarding tenors in this country. We simply don't seem to have enough. 

By my count, Opera Australia's 2008 season contained twelve leading or significant supporting tenor roles, shared among fourteen tenors. So far, so good. But among those fourteen, only four were singers currently under contract with the company. Of the remaining ten, two (Aldo di Toro and Julian Gavin) were Australian singers engaged as guest artists, two (Dennis O'Neill and Carlo Barricelli) were what you might call honorary Australians, and six were overseas imports. Unlike some, I see no fundamental problem with engaging overseas singers: provided they're well cast (and most were) they bring variety and vibrancy to the company's artistic output and enhance its standing internationally. Nevertheless, when Opera Australia continues to take pride in its status as an ensemble company, it must be a concern to note that, at least in this voice type, they've had to rely so strongly on singers from outside that ensemble, regardless of their nationality. 

The drought is not limited to tenors. I have the sense we're running low on sopranos, particularly of the full lyric variety. However, a similar survey to that above yields rather different results. The 2008 season contained fifteen sopranos, all of them Australian and almost all of them contracted. (Though it should be noted that 2009 sees an influx of six imported sopranos, three of them for the role of Aida alone.) Our soprano pool is definitely in need of expansion and improvement, but for the moment at least, we've enough to get by. There's also the added hope of young singers, with recent vocal competitions dominated on several occasions by sopranos, some of whom are just what the doctor ordered. Meanwhile, even at that student/competition level, tenors seem few and far between. The only stand out lately has been David Corcoran, and, not surprisingly, he's been snaffled by Opera Australia's Young Artist Programme. 

So, where are all the tenors? And, more to the point, why aren't they here? 

The obvious answer is that they're overseas. Like many other professionals, and not just those in the performing arts, tenors could hardly fail to notice that there's a big wide world out there, and that opportunities which are scarce in this hemisphere grow rather more abundant further north. I've no doubt that there's a significant number of tenors (and singers from other fachs as well) who've moved overseas for training or for work, and have decided to stay. As they should, of course, because overseas success for Australian singers is good news for everybody. The concern is whether opera companies here are doing all they could to lure such singers back. It's all well and good to engage internationally established Australian singers as guest artists, but it would be just as worthwhile — perhaps more so — to find a way to make promising young artists an important part of company life from the outset, to allow rising stars the chance of building an Australian profile in conjunction with, rather than subsequent or incidental to, their international success. I'm not suggesting this doesn't already happen, but perhaps it needs to happen more. 

Is it as simple as the age-old "brain drain", though? I'm not convinced that it is. If Australia was quietly pumping out tenors and sending them overseas to glory, I'm sure we'd have heard about it. I wonder if some tiny part of it might just be genetics, plain and simple. We'd all agree, I hope, that if one is not born with some little flicker of the operatic gift, no amount of money or world class training will cause it to materialise. (There may be singers whom you deem an exception to that rule, but mostly that comes down to personal taste in the end, and there's always somebody who adores the voice you detest.) So perhaps Australia just isn't giving birth to enough boys with the tenor gene? Judging by the current OA roster, and the singers doing the rounds of competitions, twenty or thirty years ago there must have been a baritone in every second bassinet, but tenors? Maybe not. The rest of the babies had the mining gene, or the IT gene, or the whining MySpace gene, but the Cavaradossi gene seems to have remained in Italy, where it was created. 

I use Cavaradossi as an example on purpose. I'm reliably informed that Opera Australia will revive its Tosca in 2010, and it was considering this — and wondering who our tenor would be — which started me thinking about this whole issue. The brilliance of our Tosca is assured (it's Cheryl, reportedly) but could I think of a single tenor currently on the roster who could make a successful Cavaradossi? Barely. The only contracted tenor who might claim it among his repertoire is Rosario La Spina, but I expect I'm far from alone in hoping the company does not cast him. Dennis O'Neill had significant success in the role earlier in his career, and, while his voice remains strong, it's not the voice of a young, ardent artist anymore, and no longer able to compensate for the mindbending suspension of disbelief which he'd now require of his audiences. The third name is perhaps the strongest contender, the Italian (and vaguely Australian) tenor Carlo Barricelli, whose reasonably strong showing as Rodolfo suggest he is a singer with the power, presence and stylistic understanding to pull it off. The audio samples available here of his "E lucevan le stelle" and "Recondita armonia" bode well, as do — let's be superficial for a moment here, because it's the way of things and because this is theatre and it does matter — the photos. 

But Barricelli's appearances with Opera Australia have been fleeting and barely publicised so far, and he is not cast for anything in the 2009 season. Is Opera Australia interested enough in him to have secured his services as Cavaradossi, or in a similarly worthy role? Even if they are, we don't have an answer to our underlying problem. He's an internationally active singer with his own career path to follow, and he's only one man, with strengths only in his particular parts of the repertoire. We still need a wider range of talented resident tenors, singers who can revitalise their division of the ensemble or, if overseas engagements prevent their being contracted, at least make guest appearances with reliable frequency. 

The other possibility is that this country contains a wealth of untapped latent talent. Are potential tenors receiving the education they need to put their gifts to use? At the most basic level, there's the question of young singers receiving an upbringing, and a primary and secondary education, which present opera singing, and classical music-making of all kinds, as a possible and positive career path. Every year at Idol audition time, I wonder how many secret opera singers troop past the judges, singing pop music badly because they just don't realise they could be singing Mozart beautifully. 

Beyond that stage, is it possible that some conservatories, schools of music and so on are not fully equipped to foster healthy and artistically sound tenor voices? Sometimes a particular institution, by accident or by design, specialises in producing particular kinds of voices, so it could be that budding tenors are being lost in an educational environment to which they're not best suited. This inevitably brings us back to the overseas factor: so many singers, even those who've had the best possibly Australian training, need to go abroad to consolidate their talent and broaden their experience. It's little wonder if they're tempted to stay for good, and if their Australian training has not, in fact, been the best, then that temptation must be all the more irresistible. 

And what about those who discovered their voices, did the training, tried the career and then decided it wasn't for them. If that's a personal choice, then of course we've no business dragging them back into our mad world. I can't help thinking, though, that there must be naturally gifted singers who made it halfway along the career path, but, seeing jobs in Australia so thin on the ground, and disinclined to try their luck overseas, simply opted for a steady income and personal life, and chose another profession. I can think of at least one Antipodean singer of some promise who seems to have decided to do exactly that. Again, there may be any number of factors influencing that decision, musical and otherwise; but if the clincher is the lack of opportunity in their home country, then surely there must be more Australia can do to convince gifted singers to stick at it. There are plenty of stories of singers who knew they had voices, but gave them up and did something else instead. The gang member I mentioned at the start is only one of them. We rejoice when these singers come back to surface, and they certainly make good press, but how many have we lost for good? In David Parkin, Australia appears to have produced a basso profundo of, pardon the pun, profound talent, but if the ABC hadn't decided that an Australian Operatunity would be good for a lark (and for ratings) — and if Parkin's friends and family hadn't persuaded him to apply at the last minute — would anyone other than David's inner circle ever have known? 

Returning to the voice type at hand, Operatunity Oz did provide us with one tenor. Roy Best has made a CD of favourites, given a series of pops concerts and been engaged by Victorian Opera. Whether Opera Australia will make an approach remains to be seen, and it's hard to say whether they'd be wise to do so or not. Best is a very nice guy and he has a genuinely appealing voice, but I'd say he has some pretty significant limits too, which is hardly surprising for somebody who spent most of his life being a carpenter and a mechanic before a TV show gave him the chance to unleash his voice. If he'd been brought up as a tenor from the start, it might be a different story. But again, as with Carlo Barricelli, we're talking about one solitary tenor, when what we need is a flock of them, and, beyond that, an environment which creates and nurtures tenors and which, having done so, knows how to use them. 

Over all this wondering hovers the spectre of the grievances raised by Fiona Janes and others. The tenor shortage is genuine, and I doubt we could blame it on the English even if we wanted to, but we must consider the possibility that it has been exacerbated by poor casting decisions. A company which misuses the tenors it does have should not, perhaps, be surprised to find new victims lacking. But it's a bit chicken-and-egg, because, after all, if there's no better option, then what choice does the company have? Either you cast a tenor who's not quite up to scratch, or you design a season where all the men are baritones. The latter might be fun for a few months (I know I'd enjoy it) but it's obviously absurd. So we have an overstretched Don Ramiro, or a Puccinified Prince in Rusalka, and we cry "surely it could be better than this", but perhaps it can't.

And whether it could or not, for the time being, it isn't. We have what we have, and we need more, and better. What's to be done? I've no idea. I'm the one with the questions. I'll sit patiently (and sometimes impatiently) in the stalls and wait for those who can provide the answers to do so — and to follow up on them. For the indefinite future, this opera company is my opera company and I want the very best for it, and from it. I could live by baritones alone, but an opera company and its wider audience cannot. Opera Australia needs tenors, so whether they need to beg, borrow or build them in a lab, let's hope they find some, and soon. Tosca makes us forget God. We need a Cavaradossi who can make us forget Tosca. 

Opera Australia's Melbourne season of Madama Butterfly opened at the Arts Centre on Tuesday night, but so far I haven't found any reviews online. So if you were there, or if you're going to a later performance, consider yourself officially invited to share your impressions here. Is Nicole Youl a lovely Butterfly? I'd imagine she probably is. Conventional, I'm guessing, but sweet. I won't speculate about Rosario La Spina's Pinkerton. I'll have my chance to hear him in the role here next year, when he — lucky, lucky man — is paired first with Antoinette Halloran and then with Cheryl Barker.

One mildly alarming rumour has reached my virtual ears: that Tuesday night's premiere saw Pinkerton strip down to his underwear. Can it be true? Unwilling to trust my own memory, I broke my ban on Butterfly (I'm dieting before my January/February binge) and checked the DVD from 1997. And, as I expected, Pinkerton remains modestly attired throughout, removing nothing but his jacket, shoes and socks. Moffat Oxenbould is rehearsing this revival of his own magical production — has he been tweaking?

Update: One review found, at On Stage (and walls) Melbourne. No mention of the underwear...
Update #2: Breathe a sigh of relief: there's no underwear scene. See comments below.

I am appallingly slack about updating it, but if you care to look to your right and scroll down a little, you might notice the blogroll is now sporting a number of shiny additions, all of them (gasp!) Australian. Or, if you don't care to scroll your way there, here they are in a convenient list:

Pinchgut Opera. I'm more than a little surprised to realise it's taken me this long to blogroll the Pinchgut blog, but perhaps I just (shamefully!) removed it during a dormant period. Anyway, for the third year running, Ken, Liz et al are blogging the rehearsals for Pinchgut Opera's annual production. This year it's Charpentier's David et Jonathas. Pinchgut's is one of my favourite opera company blogs, and not just because I'm biased: they update almost every day — sometimes more than once a day — and provide a genuine insight into the nuts and bolts of putting on a show, complete with copious photos and the odd tantalising hint of what's in store. Check daily or you'll fall behind. And book, if you haven't already!

The Fool and The Opera. The blog of a soon-to-launch radio show of the same name on Melbourne's JOY 94.9. Blogger and producer Dan Vo promises to "poke and prod at Australian opera until all the delicious and delectable treats and goodies come pouring out" and so far he's delivering quite fabulously. If the show is as enjoyable as the blog, then I'd heartily recommend it to all Melburnians so inclined.

Not another music blogger... Where Lady Blogger offers "my opinions, like 'em or lump 'em", although not as frequently as I might like! However, when she does post it's plenty of fun, so I'm willing to forgive. I plugged "Not another..." soon after she launched but somehow didn't add her to the blogroll then. Error amended — sorry for the delay!

Stumbling on melons. Marcellous blogs anonymously and eloquently on music, law, life and a kaleidoscope of other topics besides.

Thomasina's last waltz. What it says on the tin — "Words, music and other enthusiasms – the weblog of Yvonne Frindle." Currently being updated with delightful frequency.

I am a liminal being. "Dreaming my dream in urban and rural New South Wales." Wide-ranging and frequently wonderful words — and images — from Wanderer.

Esoteric Rabbit. Theatre, art, music, politics and lots, lots more from Matthew Clayfield, "journalist, cultural critic, wayward filmmaker and bon vivant currently based in Sydney, Australia." Matthew blogrolled me many moons ago, and I, shockingly, am only now returning the favour. Posts on opera are few and far between, but always worth the wait, and perhaps now that he's moved to Sydney we can hope for a few more. And he's a Cheryl fan, which can only be a good thing!

Demanding repertoire, a new record company and the passage of time have allowed Patricia to tame her not-so-inner child without throttling it. In the four years since her last solo disc, her voice has matured beautifully. It's a rounder and duskier sound now, still happy in the stratosphere but now just as exciting — maybe more so — closer to earth. Her surprisingly convincing lower register occasionally puts me in mind of, of all people, Lucia Popp, while the wide-ranging repertoire suggests DG might see her as their answer to Diana Damrau.

She sings Mozart, Haydn and Gluck, theoretically a series of portraits of "women in love", although the definition is stretched to include a giggly teenager, a mother bent on vengeance and a nonsense spouting travesti role. Her "Der Hölle Rache" is magnificently vicious, although at the very top she shies away a little and sweetens her tone. Her new, improved fullness of tone is on gorgeous display in "Vorrei spiegarvi" and, best of all, in an utterly disarming "Deh vieni, non tardar". Bonus points for the inclusion of Barbarina's "L'ho perduta", surely one of the loveliest pieces of music Mozart ever produced, but such a tiny slip of an aria that nobody thinks to record it outside the opera.

The Haydn lets her play about a little more, the gibberish of "Salamelica, Semprugna cara" proving that her gift for laugh-out-loud singing is undamaged. In the Gluck arias, from Armide and Iphigénie en Tauride, she is on home ground, singing in her native tongue and thrillingly idiomatic. In the tragic dignity of her Armide, one would struggle to recognise the teenaged Barbarina, and yet both are well within her expressive grasp. Her versatility, virtuosity and her fabulous voice have surprised me all over again, and I was already an avowed devotee. I worried that the DG gloss might damage her, but the opposite is true — this recital gives her more room than perhaps she's ever had to display her many splendoured gifts to the fullest. She's supported to colourful perfection by the wonderful Concert Köln, conducted by Daniel Harding — orchestral playing as full of personality as Patricia herself. It all makes for seriously compulsive listening. I've not gone a day without hearing this CD since I bought it.

Obligatory YouTube links:
Recording sessions: "Der Hölle Rache", "Ragion nell'alma siede" and mini-documentary.
Interview on French TV, including a live performance of "Salamelica" at the end, accompanied by the fabulous Susan Manoff.

Speaking of José Carbo, I think a few links are in order.

The official website. Updated recently, by the looks of it. Content includes future engagements (including OA 2009, not yet officially announced) and even, in the surreal-but-charming category, Carbo's complete — and I do mean complete — costume measurements. As a witty relative of mine pointed out: you could make one of your own with those!

Two management profiles: a slightly old one at the slightly odd Sirens of Song and a newer one at Patrick Togher.

And best of all, YouTube! Finding Australian singers (other than the obvious superstars) on YouTube is almost impossible, but there are five — count 'em, five — broadcast quality clips of José to be found here, drawn from performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia and L'elisir d'amore at the Teatro Real in Madrid. All wonderful, especially the Barbiere excerpts. We'll just try not to notice that the same user (presumably connected to the aforementioned Sirens of Song) has also posted a showreel for a group called the 7 Sopranos.

The website hints at an upcoming CD (with the slightly dubious titled Latin Passion) but so far I can find out no more about when, or by whom, this might be released.

I almost didn't make it. Missing a bus on a Sunday, when they only come every half hour, is not a smart plan. I can now report that it is possible, although painful and not advisable, to make it from Park St to the Conservatorium on foot in approximately twelve minutes. My ankles hate me for it today, but the rest of me is happy, because it was a seriously enjoyable afternoon of singing.

Unlike other aria finals I've attended lately, aria selection for this competition runs more along the lines of an audition: contestants select their first aria, and the second is selected on the spot by the judging panel. Singing competitions are the closest I get to watching sport, so I'm all for an element of chance to enliven proceedings, and I amused myself by trying to guess what sort of arias might be chosen to contrast with the first selections.

Not surprisingly — in fact it may well be a condition of entry — each of the six finalists sang at least one aria in German, which made for a refreshingly unusual programme. Alongside Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, we had Lortzing, Weber, Nicolai and Gustave Charpentier. And imagine it, three baritones and not a single "Hai gia vinta la causa" in sight!

Sometimes in competitions you come to the end of the night with no idea which way the judges will go. This time, though, it was pretty clear. At least, it was to me. About ten seconds into Charlie Kedmenec's first aria (Wolfram's "Blick' ich umher" from Tannhäuser) I thought: well, he's won it. The rest of the aria confirmed my opinion. As did his second aria, a brilliant "Aprite un po' quegli occhi", sung with comic flair and not a hair nor a note out of place. Even with four more finalists to come, it seemed certain Charlie would take the prize, and so he did.

But not without competition. Had a runner up been named, it must surely have been the captivating Emily Uhlrich, opera's answer to Reese Witherspoon. She's a soubrette of the loveliest sort, rather in the mold of Barbara Bonney. Her "Einst träumte" from Der Freischütz was extraordinary — a long, relentlessly perky aria which could so easily have become irritating but which, in Emily's care, was totally delightful. All the more impressive was her seamless change of gears for the second selection, Louise's dreamy "Depuis le jour", complete with requisite tear-inducing piannissimi — proof that there's more to Emily than -inas and -ettas. Definite star quality here.

And then, in Gilligan's Island style, there were the rest. Which is not meant as dismissively as it sounds. All six finalists were at an impressively high standard. Soprano Kerry Nicholson gave us a gutsy "Regnava nel silenzio...Quando rapito in estasi", although perhaps slightly too gutsy, as she seemed, understandably, a bit frazzled in her second selection, Konstanze's "Ach, liebte". Maria Okunev was another soprano called upon to deliver a demanding pair of arias, following Frau Flucht's flighty "Nun eilt herbei...Verführer!" (from Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor) with an impassioned, if slightly histrionic, "Ah, fors'e lui...Sempre libera". Baritone Adam Player enjoyed himself with Papageno's suicide aria; I was less convinced by the panel's selection, "Heiterkeit und Fröhlichkeit" from Lortzing's Der Wildschütz, but that possibly has as much to do with the aria itself as anything else. In terms of simple sonic splendour, the winner was James Roser, whose rich, burnished baritone made for a most enjoyable "Ha! Welch' ein Augenblick" and a drop dead gorgeous "Blick' ich umher".

The prize was presented by Robert Allman AM OBE, flanked by vocal coach Victor Morris and the ever-stylish Joan Carden OBE AO. There were also speeches before and after by a pair of Germans: Immo Buschmann from Audi, who provided a bonus lesson in luxury vehicle marketing strategy, and the wonderfully witty Wolfgang Grimm, chairman of the award. Australian tenor Glenn Winslade hosted, coping valiantly with temperamental sound equipment and adlibbing nicely through a delay as the stage was set up for the awards presentation. 

And as if all the above weren't enough, there was a cherry on top: a guest appearance by José Carbo. His "Vin, dissipe la tristesse" brought the house down, and his "Cortigiani" from Rigoletto — despite his prefacing it with the claim that he was "still ten years" from doing it justice — was stunning. We were even allowed an encore, a Tosti song (I don't know which one) which made me wish we could have spent another three hours just listening to José. If I hadn't already been his gushing fan, yesterday's performance would probably have made me so. This is one seriously fantastic singer: polished, engaging, preposterously charismatic. And that golden, glorious voice... it's enough to turn even this canary-fancier's head.

After a week or two of enjoyable silence, Diana Simmonds at Stage Noise has joined the I-daren't-call-it-a-media-bandwagon with an opinion piece about the trouble at the mill Opera Australia. It's a characteristic mix of the insightful and the offensive, and having declared my moratorium on the subject, I shan't say much more than that. I would like to point out, however, that if I am the "someone" whose comparison of the Hickox/Stephen pairing to that of Bonynge and Sutherland is pilloried here "ridiculous" and "insulting", then what I wrote has been rather nicely misread. I made that comparison (if it could even be called such) in a very specific context, namely, as a response to a suggestion I had read that no conducting husband should be permitted to engage his singing wife, ever. I merely remarked that such a blanket ban could deny the world of far more fruitful partnerships than Hickox/Stephen. There was no suggestion that the two couples were of equal musical significance. I'm not actually a delusional idiot. Of course, Simmonds may well be alluding to "someone" else, in which case, ignore me.

It's been a while since my last meme. However, the proprietress of Score Desk (to whom I wish a belated buon compleanno) has tagged me, and I'm inclined to oblige. Especially as she credits me with her discovery of baroque opera, a distinction I'm only too proud to hold. So here, staying roughly on-topic, is the Seven Things About Me meme.

1. I have softened quite a lot since starting this blog four (almost five) years ago. It surprises me sometimes to read older posts: I don't remember being quite so venomous!

2. If I didn't have opera, bluegrass would probably be my musical obsession of choice. Ask me my favourite singer in the whole wide world and chances are I'll choose, not an opera singer, but Alison Krauss.

3. My very first diva (of sorts) was Nancy Sinatra. I wrote her a letter when I was five. She never replied.

4. Back in day, I used to adore Parterre in a starry-eyed sort of way. Now I find it quite an unpleasant environment, and visit less and less. The vulgarity and vitriole in the comments is appalling: I cannot imagine anything worse than attending the opera with people like that.

5. It probably means I'm a terrible person, but I strongly dislike the singing of Dame Emma Kirkby. I appreciate her significance in the revival of early music, and for that she has my utmost respect. But in anything post-Hildegard (and especially Handel) I'm afraid I can't abide her.

6. I am still tortured by the knowledge that, about six months (or less) before my opera obsession declared itself fully — though I was already sliding slowly in that direction — there was a production of Der Rosenkavalier in Wellington, starring Yvonne Kenny as the Marschallin. Had it happened a year later, I would have been there. As it was, I wasn't, and so I'll never see her in what might just have been her greatest role. (Some consolation, though, in news along the grapevine that the 2010 season will include the Marschallin of another Australian soprano of whom I am also rather fond.)

7. 14 months after it closed, I can no longer sing the whole of A Streetcar Named Desire in my head, although large chunks remain. Even at this distance, I have no wish to hear it again, and yet, against all reason and good sense, it is possible I will travel to Melbourne in December to see it just one more time. More for finality's sake than anything else, I think.

I'm now supposed to tag seven people. But I think I will take my usual cowardly route and just say, if you feel so inclined, consider yourself tagged.