Everyone’s doing it

Cosi fan tutte, Sydney Conservatorium School of Music Opera School, 8 October

Oh Mr Mozart. Signor Da Ponte. You are so wicked, mixing your weasel words and  melting harmonies into the outrageous confection that is Cosi! You set declarations of love, hope, faith and tenderness to some of the most beautiful music in the repertoire, then you put in the mouths of dissemblers, tricksters and fools.

Is a love song still a love song, if the person singing it isn’t in love?

The Conservatorium’s Opera School has put together a production of Cosi which, in the spirit of Mozart and Da Ponte, is simultaneously straight, musically, and thoroughly crooked, dramatically — the ultimate anti-rom-com. On a simple set (with several handy hidey holes) the cast camp it up to generate lots of laughs.  Director Narelle Yeo uses a wide repertoire of theatrical tricks and pratfalls to keep the action engaging, so that there is always something to see. Indeed, there are so many visual gags that one sometimes finds oneself watching the action on the margins — a chorus member clipping hedges, Despina pigging out on chocolate, and a scene-stealing nurse who seems to have got lost on the way to a fancy dress party in Darlinghurst. But while it is distracting at times, it’s so well choreographed and so downright entertaining that it seems churlish to criticise.

The six-hander cast all pull their weight, vocally and dramatically. Tristan Entwistle cuts a fine figure as Guglielmo, the alpha male, and sings like a dream, finding the solid centre of every note. Chris Berg’s Ferrando is more fragile: when he sings well — which is most of the time — his sound is achingly seductive, but there are moments in this treacherous role where the voice sounds unsupported.

Deepka Ratra is a scarily effective Despina. She handles the vocal challenges without drama, her voice fine-tuned and agile, but what is most impressive is her ability to maintain a character, a melodic line, an intricate part in a sextet while in a basket, or handling complicated props, or dressed in a fat suit, wearing a false nose. Michael Halliwell – who is associate professor in the vocal and opera studies unit – is a pitch perfect Don Alfonso, with a fine bass which provides a great anchor for the ensembles.

As Dorabella and Fiordiligi, Sarah Kemeny and Jessie Wilson are a well-matched duo who cope with awkward costumes — the fabulous inventions of Brendan Hay — intricate stage business and the work’s prevailing subtext misogyny with dignity and style. Indeed, through their solo arias they build characters with more integrity and emotion than any of the other characters. Yes, they’re being played, but they lose with honour. Wilson nails both her big arias and her blazing ‘Per Pieta’ is a moving portrayal of a someone genuinely trying to be a good human being.

Cosi is often cited as an ideal opera for young artists, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The standard of singing here was consistently high. So too was the orchestral playing, which music director Stephen Mould drove at a cracking pace. And if things threatened to come apart on occasion, it all came good in the end.

Cosi is on for another three performances, on Tuesday 11th and Thursday 13th at 6.30pm and on Saturday 15th at 2pm, all in the Music Workshop at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

The Madness of King George

When I go mad, I want to go mad like King George. Specifically, like Peter Maxwell Davies’ King George. More specifically, like Simon Lobelson’s Peter Maxwell Davies’ King George. I want to find the music in the howls, the poetry in the pain. I want to smash violins.

Oh alright, maybe not that last bit, but it is good to see how shocking it still is to watch someone whack a violin into the stage so hard that it cracks and splinters into pieces. It’s the culmination of Eight Songs for a Mad King, the moment where the King kills a bird, kills a song, kills part of himself. I knew it was coming, but it was still a shock. My neighbour had no idea, and hearing her sharp intake of breath, momentary disbelief, then horror, was everything you could wish for. This is not a gratuitous gesture. It is a key moment for the audience, the players and the central figure, a moment where art and artistry completely loses it. A glimpse into the abyss.

Simon Lobelson is a magnificent King George in this fine performance by the Verbrugghen Ensemble. He makes the role his own (as, indeed, everyone who attempts this crazy work must) with an endlessly inventive repertoire of noises. What I found most impressive, and most affecting, was the way his performance seemed so organic, so frighteningly natural, whether he was matching his voice with birdsong or bowdlerizing Handel or howling. And how the ensemble was gradually lured into being an extension of the king’s byzantine mind, brilliant and brutal and beautiful at the same time. It was deeply moving.

Before that, some sybaritic Villa-Lobos —  seamless lines from flute, saxophone and oboe, over gritty textures from harp and guitar — and a world premiere, Matthew Hindson‘s This Year’s Apocalypse. Cue sirens.

In his program note, Hindson hopes that the effect will be ‘suitably terrifying’, and it is. He opens with relentless barrage which reminds me not so much of the abyss as of that feeling of lost panic when your alarm clock goes off in the middle of a deep, deep sleep. You know why it’s there, you get what it’s doing, but you still want it to go away. It’s loud and, I suspect, a little more rhythmically chaotic than intended in this first performance. The horn solo, however, magnificently played by David Thompson, cuts through the chaos with virtuosic eloquence, a voice of reason in a messy world. And from this, threads of sense start to shine dimly through the hectic texture of the closing bars. A good performance of a promising work from this terrific ensemble. Can’t wait to hear what they’ve put together for next year.

 

 

The Kingfisher Project

Halcyon

Sydney Conservatorium, March 29
Reviewed by Harriet Cunningham

Soprano Alison Morgan and mezzo soprano Jenny Duck-Chong founded Halcyon in 1999 to go where other singers fear to tread, into the beautiful weirdness of exploratory new music. Now it is 2014 and, fifteen years on, time to reflect on this many-hued bird.

Halcyon is a creative powerhouse for Australian (and international) new music. In particular, the last five years have seen it champion emerging composers, through performances, commissions and mentor programs. But for its fifteenth birthday Halcyon has turned to older friends, composers who have been with them from the start, to compile an exquisite collection of twenty-one new works.

Last night’s performance featured ten of these four minute offerings. Andrew Ford’s To My Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship was a thoughtful scene-setter which pulled no punches in its technical demands of the singers. There was a spooky night scene from Jane Stanley, a watery blend of alto flute and voice from Dan Walker, and a flamboyant micro-drama from Graham Hair’s All About Anna. Nigel Butterley, Gordon Kerry and Andrew Schultz all demonstrated just how good they are at organizing sounds and words: Butterley’s gorgeous Nature Changes at the Speed of Life limited its palette to cello and soprano, while Kerry’s Music wove voices and instruments together in an almost orchestral mesh of textures. By contrast, Andrew Schultz’s deft prelude and fugue, Lake Moonrise, handed the main song to Duck-Chong and Morgan, with a choir of individual, instrumental voices underneath. A highlight, for me, was Gillian Whitehead’s setting of two poems from Dunedin artist and writer Claire Beynon. To create such a delicate arc of meaning, amplifying and reflecting on the words at every turn, but still hanging together as a cogent and very beautiful whole shows great skill. To do it in just four minutes is mastery.

The Kingfisher Project is an inspired and pragmatic approach to broadening the Australian repertoire for singer and chamber ensemble: 21 eminently do-able short works which, combined together, represent a major review of Australia vocal writing. It’s Halcyon’s birthday, but we get the present.

Edited version published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2014, copyright Fairfax Media.