I went into Macbeth at the St James completely cold — I know Verdi’s later operas, including his later Shakespeare operas; Otello and Falstaff. But I’ve somehow missed Macbeth, and decided to keep it that way, I guess because it’s so exciting to go into something completely fresh and new, even if it was written […]
TW: Suicide, overdose, trauma I reviewed a production of La Voix Humaine in February. It’s been a strange wormhole of a year and it feels like a million years ago but also maybe yesterday that I was sitting in Suite Gallery, experiencing this piece for the first time. Writing this review with the last one […]
King George III, despite having been a learned and enthusiastic sponsor of scientific and industrial progress, a faithful husband and father, and in many ways very liberal for his time (except pro-slavery, just saying), is basically famous for having gone mad. That madness has been scrutinized, diagnosed, and mocked roundly in modern literature, film, TV, […]
TW: Suicide Jean Cocteau wrote La Voix Humaine in 1928 as a one-act play. Francis Poulenc set it to music 30 years later, despite having already known Cocteau well for years, and gave the reason for the delay as having needed more life experience to do it justice. During those years he struggled with depression […]
During the interval of last night’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, I popped outside for a bit of cold air and second-hand smoke. As I stood reading the playbills, a group of four people bustled out, one of whom was loudly and petulantly proclaiming “But I want PUCCINI!!!” They did not […]
Verdi’s Rigoletto is a classic, and deservedly so. The story was based on a Victor Hugo play, adapted somewhat to avoid censorship. Hugo, by all accounts, was not at all happy that his play was being plagiarised (and by an Italian!) until he attended and was amazed by a performance. Musically it was rather revolutionary, […]
Lust, Murder and Revenge. The Don is a bastardization of Don Giovanni, and I mean that in a very good way. One man, accompanied by a musician, several films, and a puppet, aims to recreate the entirety of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in just under an hour and thoroughly succeeds. This show is an hour of glorious manicism, of many, many accents, and of […]
Friends, ploughmen and countrymen, you’re invited to the Elixir of Love, NZ Opera’s utterly madcap new creation. Though my companion and I were likely the youngest and the poorest in the audience (opera continues to be an art form seemingly granted to those above a certain age), it was a show that could be enjoyed […]
At BATS Theatre: Starting this week is an encore season of Onstage Dating by performance artist Bron Batten. Watch as she goes on first dates on stage. (These are actual first dates with a stranger, not with a performing audience plant.) Witness the vulnerability, thrills and heartbreak of the dating experience up close, as Bron […]
Dido and Aeneas: Recomposed is a fringe fest style opera brought to BATS by UnstuckOpera. Directed by long time Wellington creative Frances Moore and re-composed by one of NZ’s leading young composers, Alex Taylor, their re-work of Henry Purcell’s classic includes samples from Stravinsky, Jazz Greats, and even Beyoncé and is performed by singers in over-the-top gowns, crazy make-up […]