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Peter Rose

Peter Rose

In 2001 Peter Rose became the Editor of Australian Book Review. Previously he was a publisher at Oxford University Press throughout the 1990s. He has published several books of poetry, a family memoir, Rose Boys, and two novels, the most recent being Roddy Parr (Fourth Estate, 2010). He edited the 2007 and 2008 editions of The Best Australian Poems (Black Inc.). His newest book of poems is Rag (Gazebo Books, 2023). Peter Rose’s long experience in publishing and the literary world complements the magazine’s history of central involvement in Australian letters.

'Juan Diego Flórez in Recital: The Peruvian tenor’s Melbourne début' Peter Rose

ABR Arts 06 November 2023
Juan Diego Flórez, now fifty, rose to prominence in his early twenties. His first La Scala success, in 1996, was promptly followed by débuts at Covent Garden (1997), the Vienna State Opera (1999), and the Metropolitan Opera (2002), houses where he still performs regularly. His major roles have included Count Almaviva and Nemorino. Alfredo Germont, in La Traviata, is a new addition; he was singin ... (read more)

'Die Frau ohne Schatten (★★★★) and Tosca (★★ ½): A fortnight of music and more in the Austrian capital' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 24 October 2023
The ABR/Academy Travel Vienna tour, now drawing to a close, has revealed some of the riches in this monumental city – the architecture, the art collections (especially the mighty Kunsthistorisches Museum and the brilliant, newish Leopold Museum, with its host of Schieles and Klimts), Emperor Franz Joseph’s Ringstrasse, the general ambience of the city, not to mention the Kardinalschnitte at Ge ... (read more)

'The Makropulos Case: Janáček at the Paris Opera' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 10 October 2023
A week in Paris (Billy Strayhorn’s moody panacea) gave ABR Arts a perfect opportunity to savour some of the city’s abundant musical life. We’ll start with an important revival at the Opéra National de Paris, performed at the Bastille. Decades ago, during what we might now regard, a little wistfully, as the heyday of the national company, the operas of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) were fix ... (read more)

‘Gladstone’ by Peter Rose

September 2009, no. 314 01 September 2009
Saturday. The usual 9 a.m. flight. The man beside me hefts a Gladstone. ‘I haven’t seen one of those in years,’ I say, this being sociable Saturday. I recall a worn one from my twenties owned by someone else. Always empty it went everywhere with him, like a statement of intent. This one ... (read more)

Editorial - Peter Porter (1929–2010)

June 2010, issue no. 322 01 June 2010
Poetry in English has lost one of its paragons, Australian literature one of its finest ambassadors, and Australian Book Review a beloved friend with the death in London of Peter Porter, aged eighty-one. He died on 23 April – Shakespeare’s birthday – by which time our May issue had already gone to print. Peter Porter’s first collection, Once Bitten, Twice Bitten, appeared forty-nine years ... (read more)

'Maria Stuarda: Donizetti’s wonderfully impure opera' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 15 September 2023
The fecundity of Gaetano Donizetti in the 1830s – when he was in his thirties – was exceptional, even during those rampant years for Italian opera. His successes were frequent: Anna Bolena (1830), L’elisir d’amore (1832), Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Maria Stuarda (1834), and Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), perhaps his finest achievement. Donizetti, who wrote about seventy operas in all before his ... (read more)

'La Gioconda: A memorable performance of Ponchielli’s opera' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 11 August 2023
Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–86) wrote ten operas, but only one of them is still performed – La Gioconda – and few attending Opera Australia’s concert performances in Sydney will have heard it often. Ponchielli – Italy’s leading composer between Verdi and Puccini – was born in Paderno, near Cremona. He was taught music by his father, the church organist. After graduating at the Milan C ... (read more)

'Idomeneo: A secular Passion from Mozart' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 07 July 2023
Inspired by everything he had learned and seen at the Mannheim Court in 1777–78, Mozart, aged twenty-four, was primed when he received a commission to write an opera for the 1781 Munich carnival. His years in Mannheim had been formative, exposed as he was to Elector Carl Theodor’s court, which rivalled that of Frederick II, king of Prussia, in discrimination and cultivation. The vehicle was t ... (read more)

'Siegfried (★★★ ½) and Götterdämmerung (★★★★★): A triumphant end to the Bendigo Ring' by Peter Rose

ABR Arts 05 April 2023
Of all the major operas, Siegfried had the most curious gestation. After completing Act II in 1857, Wagner put it aside for twelve years, ‘as if weary of Siegfried’s progress: this improbable hero’s search for love, fulfilment, individuation’, as I suggested in my review of Opera Australia’s production in 2016. During those years – in a matchless digression – Wagner wrote Tristan und ... (read more)