Review: Macbeth
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 […]
Review: Eight Songs for a Mad King
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, […]
Review: The Human Voice (La voix humaine)
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 […]
Review: The Don
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 […]
Review: The Elixir of Love
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 […]
Review: Kátya Kabanová
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 […]
Tosca top notch
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 […]