Rapt Animation

This is the fourth year for Opera New England – an initiative that couples great vision with bold ambition.  Their offering this January was Verdi’s La Traviata in which Violetta, a high-class courtesan (read ‘party girl’) returns to society but tragically succumbs to tuberculosis… not, however, before two suitors fight a duel over her.

The cast I saw was truly first rate.  Kathryn Williams, a soprano coloratura Masters graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music was electrifying as Violetta with enunciation so clear I heard every word!

Michael Butchard, a graduate of both the Sydney Conservatorium and the Royal college of Music, London was the most charming lyric tenor whose voice blended beautifully with Ms Williams’.  The quiet buzz of the night surrounded Timothy Newton as Dr Grenvil whose bass voice produced moments of gravitas both full and rich.  A graduate of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music we’re destined to hear much more from this superb young talent.

Months of work go into these productions.  The vocal mentor was the highly esteemed Rowena Cowley from the Sydney Conservatorium.  The 18 piece orchestra is drawn from Armidale and the surrounding districts and sounded wonderful! I saw their production of La Boheme in 2014 and Carmen in 2015.  The northern New South Wales region is inestimably richer for these productions and long may they continue!

I really love this play.  It effervesces with Oscar Wilde’s legendary wit, reveling in and at the same time lampooning the British upper classes with lines such as Gwendolyn’s: 

I always have my diary with me – I like to have something sensational to read on the train.

The cast were all equal to the superlative writing and found the right balance between poise and lunacy.  It was well staged with some inventive choreography that at one point got the butler from the city to the country in a single sweep from the ‘wings’ onto the stage.

The second of Sport for Jove’s summer season of plays which I saw at Bella Vista Farm just before Christmas, it’s another triumph for the hugely talented Damian Ryan and his cast.

The first of Sport for Jove’s summer season was a Shakespearean comedy that is rarely performed.  Full of scintillating, at times inscrutable wit, the play was quite possibly written for an eclectic, sophisticated audience.  Described by the director, Damian Ryan as a ‘sketch’, the business of Love’s Labour’s Lost involves courtiers withdrawing from political life for the purpose of academic reflection only to be interrupted by a delegation of women lead by the Princess of France.

This was a spritely production with evocative Elizabethan costumes and a dizzying sense of fun.  I particularly liked the witty ripostes between Moth (brilliantly played by Aaron Tsindos) and his master Don Adriano de Armado and others.  The men are shaken from their intended course but the women ultimately refuse their overtures.

Ryan’s adaptation, championing same sex marriage equality and its triumph for women certainly made it a contemporary and relevant offering.  A highly enjoyable summer evening’s entertainment.

November and the stage blood keeps flowing! Geoffrey Rush as Lear! Almost impossible to get tickets but I was lucky. I also bumped into Stephen Fry!

Another great Sydney Theatre Company exploration this time in a minimal white landscape, cold & austere. Deaths – a black smear on a white palm, were more symbolic than graphic and were a brave, abstract touch.

The play whose sonorous couplings resound with some of the greatest passages in English literature left me exhausted. Rush was excellent, of course, as was the whole company, and the tableau nature of the deaths became arresting and contemplative.

Sport for Jove continues to make a brilliant contribution to the cultural life of Sydney with their Edward II this October ’15. The surge of human emotion proves ultimately uncontrollable for King Edward when news arrives that the barons and nobles, despising and resentful, have murdered his beloved Gaveston and a blood bath looms…

I will have heads and lives for him as many As I have manors, castles, towns, and towers!

Many commentators opine that this is Christopher Marlow’s most complete play. Kings and palaces, power and influence, intrigues and allegiances… are all the stuff of plays from this period, but both Gaveston and King Edward prove rather weak, vacillating characters who are at times self serving or indulgent.  There’s an absence of noble qualities including among their opponents and the play falls short of becoming a classic.

The performances were strident and passionate, bristling in places, the fights were energetic, but the staging felt a little stilted – restricted by the conventional layout of the auditorium, I suspect. The violence at the King’s end left little to the imagination!

And get me a spit, and let it be red-hot!

Heroism, undying love, jealousy, rage, betrayal, revenge – big themes that resonate profoundly in the human condition and La Bayadère has them all. There was virtuosic athleticism from the male dancers, spell-binding synchronism and a narcoleptic presence in the corps of Shades (24 beautiful ballerinas) and the exotica of the Ganges, woven coloured silks and a Bengal tiger in this very strident and powerful production by the Australian Ballet.

My sister took me to see La Bayadère at the Sydney Opera House not long before the curtain ran down on 2014. For more on that exquisite production see the Sydney Morning Herald.

Well, last night was a real delight! Simon Tedeschi regaled a large audience & me at the Lane Cove Music club with his carefully collated recital Gershwin & Me. Phew! – what awesome talent. What consummate musicianship! From the first ripple over the keys to the final reverberation I sat spellbound by his technique, his fingers freeing a rapport of rich jazz harmonies and familiar melodic skips in a dazzling assortment of colours from a very streetwise-looking grand.

Highlights would have to include Percy Grainger’s arrangement of “Love Walked In” and a gob-smacking rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” A perfect interpretation of Debussy’s “Clare de Lune” briefly filled the room with the whimsical dissonance of the French impressionist and he gave a lively piece by Fats Waller a sound tuning.

A gracious japester with a big smile, he capped the night’s piano fun with an encore: Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” in a boogie-woogie style. I’m still smiling! Another favourite of mine was his opening sortie, “Rialto Ripples Rag,” but I’ve always been a sucker for ragtime.

Last night I saw Sport For Jove’s production of The Crucible at Bella Vista farm.

Opening the play Ezekiel Cheever leads us the audience through the homestead grounds past the hangman’s noose in a tree. Treading across the hard rustic yard into the austere farm house we slip into total immersion. Confrontingly real. A severe, loveless couple read the bible. In another room we hear a young woman being beaten. While from upstairs we hear Mr Parris preaching against the terrors of the devil and the damnation of the wicked.

Then over by the far fence under the most generous fig tree we see a group of teenage girls with Tituba, dancing to primal Barbados rhythms, shedding their clothes as they throw off the kneck-high strictures of an oppressive religion. A near full moon rises in the twilight of the eastern sky!

Then they are discovered by Mr Parris.

The central tension of the play now brilliantly set up, we’re guided to the spacious old barn-cum-theatre in the round and we witness the community we’ve just observed tear itself apart over the next two hours.

The set was sparse – mainly chains and floorboards. The performances – visceral, faultless, coloured by rural Puritan accents. Rarely has theatre moved me this much. I woke this morning thinking about it. Yes, Arthur Miller wrote this following McCarthy’s communist witch hunts in 1950s America, but the themes and textures of the play resonate with too many issues today! Miller’s genius was well matched by Damien Ryan’s dazzlingly brilliant use of space at the old Bella Vista homestead. Insuperable!

Not so long ago, before CATALYST reinvented itself, I animated quite a few 1 minute spots for the ABC’s must see science programme. Here’s a frame grab…

The whole film can be seen at:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3453193.htm

Dreaming around the cosmos treading the dawn of a new year one thought demands freedom in the interweb. Science has brought us to our current state of affluence and security, applied through a kaleidoscope of disciplines that weave the fabric of our cultural present. Science, too, holds the promise of alleviating and possibly resolving the yawning issues of climate change, pollution, land degradation and species extinction – devils that have been our close companion since the industrial revolution.
We live in a complicated and rapidly changing world, but if we’re all more scientifically literate then we can choose the kind of earth we ultimately bequeath to our descendants.
Science literacy is as important as reading, writing, eating and drinking, music and the arts. With some understanding of science we can dare to hope for a brighter future for ourselves and for our great great grandchildren.