Category Archive: MUSIC
Dumbing Down Terracini
Sydney Opera House (photo by Diliff)
Every artist has occasion to groan about critics. Often it can amount to, in Verdi’s phrase, ‘stupid criticism, even stupider praise’, or argumentum ad hominem. As Peter Craven observed in last weekend’s The Australian, much online content falls into these categories but in the current context, the artistic director of Opera Australia has taken the bait and been hooked like a bullfrog. Diana Simmonds reports on her site Stage Noise that she was informed: “In response to some of your recent writing about the company, Lyndon [Terracini] asked that you be removed from the media list.” So what was Simmonds’…
Continue Reading →Aida
(Opera Australia, Melbourne, December 2009) (DVD, San Francisco Opera, 1981) You can’t miss with this one, although it does play a little like a Pharaoh’s Royal Command Performance; numerous parades, for example. This production touched all the staging bases, which it must, and then some, which you’d expect from Graeme Murphy. Well performed by all, particularly Warwick Fyfe as Amonasro. Jennifer Wilson looked the part more than Margaret Price (who, while singing well, played Aida like a worried little thing in a cafe from ‘Neighbours’ in the 1981 San Francisco filmed production) and the gentleman playing Radames managed to avoid…
Continue Reading →Joe Cocker and Bob Dylan
Image courtesy of Eddie
Christmas 2014 – and what have you done? Gluttony, jealousy, wrath…getting drunk and falling down…presents, presents, presents. P is listening to (& loving) his new vinyl (!) record, ‘Lost on the River: the new basement tapes’, featuring various artists adding melody and shape to some lyrics of Bob Dylan stuck in a drawer since 1967. Best so far: ‘Down on the Bottom’, ‘Kansas City’, ‘Liberty Street’, ‘Florida Key’ and the title track (# 12). Maybe a review in the fullness of time (at least 20 more listens first). Abject lesson to all: don’t throw away your turntable! Never discard your…
Continue Reading →Falstaff
Opera Australia, Melbourne December 2014 To the claustrophobic scarlet pit that is Melbourne’s Arts Centre for Verdi’s take on Sir John, a rather broad and heavy handed work drawing mostly from the plonking Merry Wives of Windsor with only salted bits from the history plays. First done at La Scala in 1893, this is a radically economical opera in structure: no overture, no recitative, almost no arias; melodies that rattle along, into each other and most formalities discarded as it cuts to the Garter Inn without ado. Shakespeare’s Falstaff is big in every sense but here he is merely fat,…
Continue Reading →Ariadne & Theseus at the Mortlock Chamber
Picture courtesy of Dr Daniela Kaleva
To the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library of SA, to hear L’Arianna abbandonata e gloriosa and Lamento d’Arianna (1608), works reconstructed from Monteverdi’s fragmented scores, with solo voice and harpsichord, accompanied by the odd stage effect to evoke waves crashing on lonely Naxos, where (failed Argonaut) Theseus has parked Ariadne to show his gratitude for her help surviving the labyrinth on Minos. This paring away eschews the go-for-baroque approach that could overwhelm the purity of the harmonics, which are quite reminiscent of Purcell’s Dido pieces…
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