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Opera: It’s not over until…

It seems that half of Opera Australia’s singers are off to Weight Watchers after the Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini said fat singers need not apply. “If you’re seeing a couple making out and one of them is obese, who wants to watch that?’” he says with a theatrical grimace. “It’s obscene. You just think, ‘Jeez, for Chrissakes, don’t let the children see that’,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in July. There is no physical reason why opera singers have to be fat – look at Maria Callas, a rotund singer who lost all the weight, looked magnificent and could still fill the Royal Opera House with that distinctive voice, a mix of chainsaw and exotic bird. Mr Terracini is also within his right to tell his employees to shape up or ship out (I personally know of two OA singers who have been warned that the scales are not tipping in their favour). “You go to a movie and you see people who look exactly right for that role. They’re consummate actors and they’re completely involved in what they are doing, so their performance is totally believable,” says Terracini. Well that’s true, but the camera is right up close. Film…

September 7, 2012
Opera
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Deconstructing the 2013 Opera Australia season

It’s that time of year again. Opera Australia has announced its 2013 season. There’s a press release freshly landed in my email inbox and from the opening paragraphs, you’d be forgiven for thinking this might be a controversial season. Opera Australia, it says, will “re-position itself as Australia’s international role… taking a leading role as a pioneer of the artform”. “The question of ‘what is opera to contemporary Australia’”, we’re told, “now underpins every artistic decision” and reference is made to the “controversial” dialogue between Lyndon Terracini and “the wider public”. (Limelight‘s coverage yesterday included comments from an interview with Terracini.) Yet in the ensuing list of new production and revivals, I can’t say I see much controversy brewing – except maybe over the return (already!) of South Pacific, since I know the question of opera companies staging musicals is always a contentious one. There’s also a visit by avant-garde theatre group La Fura dels Baus, who will stage Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera as part of both the Sydney Festival and OA’s celebration of the composer’s bicentenary; but I’d hazard a guess that most savvy operagoers will be more intrigued and excited by that prospect than appalled…. Continue reading Get…

August 23, 2012