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Sydney Opera House

Sibyl 

Sydney Opera House
by
03 November 2023

The use of the word ‘protean’ has become clichéd. Similarly, ‘Renaissance man/woman, polymath’ etc., have been used to describe many artists, perhaps never more appropriately than in the case of William Kentridge. His output is staggering, ranging over stage works, a wide range of performance art, installations, film, and several other areas, yet whatever the work might be, it is immediately recognisable.

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Twelfth Night 

Bell Shakespeare
by
27 October 2023

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a perennial favourite on the Shakespeare calendar (pun intended). The twelfth night of Christmas celebrations was the olden-day version of New Year’s Eve, not because it was the last day of the year but because it was the last day of festivities, with everything returning to normal after the hangover. As such, it was celebrated as a topsy-turvy night where homeowners would play servant to their servants and bring them gifts, with much frivolity and goodwill – a bit like the boss getting pissed at the staff party.

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Macbeth 

Bell Shakespeare
by
03 March 2023
There is a moment often conveyed in romantic films (and it was certainly the case with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet) when fresh eyes meet across a crowded room and become fixated, unable to stop ‘looking’, searching for more and more of the alchemical fire that triggered an intense magnetism. ... (read more)

Amadeus 

Red Line Productions
by
30 December 2022
Amadeus is English playwright Peter Shaffer’s most resilient work. Antonio Salieri’s battle with both his god and his rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been frequently performed and revived, with actors of the calibre of Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, and David Suchet as Salieri, and Simon Callow, Tim Curry, and Michael Sheen as Mozart. It says a lot for the play’s durability that so much of its power and pertinence can survive a production as basically misguided as the one at present in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. ... (read more)

Fidelio 

Sydney Symphony Orchestra
by
25 November 2022
Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, was one of his most troublesome compositions; the work has never ceased to engender critical controversy, yet remains deeply revered and popular. Thursday’s concert performance at the Sydney Opera House proved no exception in terms of troublesome complications, but more of that later. ... (read more)

At drinks following the first performance of this sold-out run of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, conductor Simone Young chatted to mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, the latter’s hoarse voice alarming the two of them. ‘We need to call Debbie,’ Young told a colleague, wary of what the morrow would bring. ‘Right now!’

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Daniel Barenboim, then primarily a pianist, last visited Sydney in 1970. He and his wife, Jacqueline du Pré, performed the complete piano and cello sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven at the Sydney Town Hall. They also visited the site of the Sydney Opera house, which opened three years later ...

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