★★★★☆ The showgirls return as Ring revival kicks off in style. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A study in China used fMRI technology to test this hypothesis on 18 male participants. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

US composers last century sought something distinctively American. Was it under their noses the whole time?

Voices shine in the concert hall, despite a programme meant for the forest.

Opera Australia’s Valkyrie talks about the highs, the lows, the hojotohos and how Anna Wintour inspires her interpretation. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

STC’s new AD will direct Britten’s Roman tale for Sydney Chamber Opera as part of Carriagework’s ambitious 2017 season. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Permission to Speak aims to explore parent-child relationships through sound, action and percussive cutlery.

Jeremy Rose read The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes’ seminal account of Australia’s invasion, colonisation and transformation into a penal colony, in 2012. He was struck by the brutal reality faced by prisoners shipped over from the continent, as well as by the Indigenous population, and eventually found a way to engage with that dark history through music. Iron in the Blood is a series of scenes performed by Rose and the Earshift Orchestra, underscoring narrated excerpts of Hughes’ work, read by actors Philip Quast and William Zappa. The excerpts give an overview of the struggle of the convicts, as well as the cruelty of British officers and lawmakers. The descriptions of the treatment of the original population – particularly the genocide of Tasmania’s Aboriginals – are harrowing. Musically, Iron in the Blood is an eclectic experience. Tracks draw on more conventional jazz idioms, while art music traits are present too, including sonic landscapes with dislocated, chromatic harmonies and extended instrumental effects. Some of the most intriguing features are the extended, frantic, improvised solos, often underscoring the most disturbing parts of the narration. Individual performances and sound are excellent, and the narrations are enjoyable both on a theatrical and… Continue reading…

Despite a sprawling plot that offers precious little in the way of hope for humanity, La Forza del Destino is blessed with one of Verdi’s finest scores. Martin Kušej’s psychologically complex staging for Bavarian State Opera won’t appeal if you’re looking for a chocolate-box production, but it packs a punch and makes much sense of this rambling Spanish Revengers Tragedy. Set in a world of scrappy urban warfare, the kind haunting many a modern war zone, it conveys a constant threat of terrorist atrocities. The direction has its unrealistic moments – people leap, roll and slide on and off the family dining table like nobody’s business, while simulated sex and Verdi don’t always gel – but its visceral nature tallies with the opera’s grim themes of honour and revenge, and  graphic imagery of modern-day massacres will strikes chords. Musical standards are very high indeed, with Asher Fisch leading a dramatically punchy reading of the score. Kaufmann is thrilling, yet subtle as Don Alvaro and, despite a silly wig, puts in a convincing portrayal. Anja Harteros is a perfect, neurotic Leonora, voice rich and text imaginatively handled. Ludovic Tézier is a robust Don Carlo, Vitalij Kowaljow plays powerful double roles, and…

Paint Your Wagon is one of those shows that, despite the fine craft of its lyricist and composer, proved difficult to revive thanks to a less than compelling book. A morality play set in gold-rush California, grizzly Ben Rumson and his daughter Jennifer strike gold and found Rumson Town attracting a horde of roughnecks. Jennifer falls for Mexican Julio Valvera so is packed off east for schooling, but not before Dad purchases a Mormon’s spare wife. Jennifer returns but the gold has run out so she and Julio settle down to farm the ravaged land. The show opened in 1951 but ran for a disappointing 289 performances, doing better in the 1953 West End run with 477. I Talk To The Trees and They Call The Wind Maria became popular hits. Years later Hollywood took a sledgehammer to the book, dropped several fine songs with replacements penned by André Previn and let loose Josh Logan who, despite his Broadway origins, had a knack for spoiling fine shows on celluloid. The result was an overwrought mess at a somnolent 158 minutes with Lee Marvin’s Ben Rumson a drunken buffoon mugging for the camera and growling out Wand’rin… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Louis XIV was 15 in 1653 when he took part in a lavishly staged ballet performed on seven evenings in the Salle du Petit-Bourbon at the Louvre Palace. It was engineered by his ministers as a clever piece of political propaganda to cement the divine authority of the monarch along with a centralised government after the unrest of the Fronde rebellions. The spectacle was remembered for decades after and gave Louis his title of “the Sun King”; the four “watches” of the night with some sinister post-midnight revelries culminated in a glorious dawn with the King strutting his stuff in a costume of glittering celestial glory. Sébastien Daucé has spent three years recreating this work from fragments and disparate sources; a project of great scholarship, integrity and imagination. Amongst the anonymous dance tunes, and those of Jean de Cambefort, Daucé has interpolated airs du cour by Michel Lambert and Antoine Boësset, while scenes from Cavalli’s Ercole Amante and Rossi’s Orfeo have been added to remind us of the dominance of Italian opera in Parisian theatres before Lully. Ensemble Corespondances are superb exponents of this rarefied repertoire and the expansive forces of 18 voices and 33 instrumentalists… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Now he is thought of as an old Dutch master, but Louis Andriessen a former apostle of Marxist modernism would doubtless shy away from such titles.