AUTHOR: Patricia Maunder

BK Opera La Traviata

 23rd August, 2017

For all the talk about opera dying, there’s a surprising amount of it in Melbourne these days: from the adventurous Victorian Opera’s ongoing success and Melbourne Opera stepping up to the next level with Wagner at the Regent, to grassroots BK Opera. This fledgling company’s latest offering is Verdi’s La Traviata, presented in a North…Read More

Melbourne Opera: Lohengrin

 9th August, 2017

After making the metaphorical leap across Collins Street last year for Tannhäuser, Melbourne Opera returns to the Regent Theatre for its next shot at the grand Wagnerian experience, Lohengrin. What this production may lack visually – due to a limitation of budget more than imagination – it makes up for with splendid musicality, led by…Read More

Victorian Opera: Cunning Little Vixen

 26th June, 2017

Even before the singing, Victorian Opera’s Cunning Little Vixen captured the imagination as members of the adult and children’s chorus capered and crawled about the stage as various animals. Roger Kirk’s colourful costumes draw on elements of the human world in clever, playful ways: the bees, for example, had badminton racquets crossed on their backs…Read More

A Glimpse of Melba

 29th May, 2017

When I was a little girl, travelling to the Yarra Valley on a family outing, my father pointed out a massive cypress hedge: “That’s where Dame Nellie Melba used to live,” he said. I had no idea who she was, but was intrigued: who was this important sounding lady, and what was behind that hedge?…Read More

The Triplets of Belleville

 17th October, 2016

Experiencing The Triplets of Belleville again, its timeless appeal was even more apparent the second time around, over a decade after I first saw it at the cinema. Sylvain Chomet’s 2003 animated feature has a nostalgia for early- and mid-20th century animation and music, as well as a narrative, visual and (almost dialogue-free) aural inventiveness,…Read More

Opera: The Art of Emotions

 17th September, 2016

Arguably, more than any other art form, opera stimulates our emotions. Through dramatic stories, grand spectacle, and powerful music, singing and words, it has undoubtedly inspired profound feelings for centuries, but how have those feelings – the way they are conceived, expressed and experienced – changed over time and across cultures? Local and international academics…Read More