★★★★★ A testament to the vivacity of Australian music culture. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

How a Parisian composer’s experimental efforts resulted in a stylistic movement much closer to home. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Pasticcio it may be but Vivaldi's Bajazet is more than the sum of its parts.

Clive Paget and Pinchgut Opera’s Erin Helyard consider who was the real winner. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Why, oh why is Gluck’s Ipigénie en Tauride still a relative rarity on the stage? In his late, post-reform operas, the German Classical composer and noted Francophile achieved an almost unmatched marriage of text with music – an emotional ‘rightness’ that alas went the way of all flesh once the brassy bel canto of Rossini and co. took over in the 19th century. Perhaps its modest lack of showiness works against it – there are no da capos here, no flashy vocalisations on display. Gluck can be a slowburn composer, his sublimities revealing themselves on further hearings rather than smacking you between the eyes first time round. And it is, after all, Greek drama in its purist form – no romantic entanglements, no mad scene, no laughs – just a searing human drama of almost domestic proportions. In his adaptation of one of Euripides’ most potent masterpieces, Gluck was able to dish out hope, grief, despair and that oh-so-crucial cathartic relief of the happy ending in two hours of intense, introspective suffering. Hardly box-office, then, to offer up to today’s sensation-craving “where are the crackers?” opera on the harbour crowd. Fortunately, Lindy Hume, in her handsome classically proportioned production for…

Nothing makes a bad opera like a bad libretto. Luckily Gluck knew a thing or two...

Tyrants, lovers and fools aplenty to be found two rarely performed operas premiering in Australia.

Sweeping the cobwebs from one of Salieri's smuttier masterpieces.

History rapidly forgot him and 'Amadeus' sought to paint him black but who was this much-maligned composer?

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Tragédie en musique Castor et Pollux received merely a lukewarm reception when it was first performed at the Paris Opéra in 1737. However, its 1754 revision turned out to be a complete triumph. That’s the version Australia’s Pinchgut Opera presented in Sydney, December 2012, from which live performances this recording was assembled. One of Rameau’s most popular operas, containing music of exceptional quality and beauty, it’s surprising this was the first time the work had been performed in Australia in its entirety. Better 258 years later than never, I suppose. It is also of great comfort that this is such a fine interpretation. The story is straightforward. The immortal Pollux offers to marry his deceased mortal brother’s widow, Télaïre. She’d rather have her husband back, which request Jupiter agrees to grant providing Pollux takes his slain brother’s place in Hades. Castor’s filial love is too strong, however, and he insists on spending one day only with the grieving Télaïre. Impressed, Jupiter makes Castor immortal as well and both brothers are placed among the constellations as the heavenly twins. Conductor Antony Walker and harpsichord continuo player Erin Helyard are fully conversant with the style of the French Baroque, and…

David Hansen takes the philandering title role in a 400-year-old opera receiving its Aussie premiere next month.

Pinchgut Opera explores Rameau’s bizarre operatic love triangle. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in