opera

Review: Eight Songs for a Mad King

by Sophie March 3, 2020

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, […]

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Review: The Human Voice (La voix humaine)

by Sophie February 2, 2020

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 […]

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Review: The Don

by Emma Maguire July 11, 2018

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 […]

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Review: The Elixir of Love

by Emma Maguire June 24, 2018

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 […]

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Review: Kátya Kabanová

by Joanna October 7, 2017

Kátya Kabanová was the first opera I ever saw, back in 1996 when it was here for the International Festival. I was 16, and we got $5 tickets to the dress rehersal through drama class. I was overwhelmed by the music and the draaaaama and the rain on stage and the cliff that rose up on hydraulics […]

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Tosca top notch

by Joanna October 12, 2015

When I invited my friend Keith to Tosca and he told me he’d seen it before, I asked for no spoilers. He sent me a text saying “Psh. It’s an opera. There is singing. People die. From a feminist view it is problematic. That’s about all there is to it”. His text was true, but also […]

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