Vale Margreta Elkins

Margreta Elkins
16 October 1930 - 1 April 2009

Elkins (Margaret Geater) was born in Brisbane and studied piano and singing, with Ruby Dent, while at school and at seventeen won a Queensland Government scholarship to study dramatic art and music theory. In 1950 there was no conservatorium of music in Queensland and Elkins studied at the Sydney Conservatorium with the well-known concert singer Harold Williams and also with Marianne Mathy and in Melbourne with the singer Pauline Bindley. She entered several competitions including the 1952 Sun Aria Contest and the Mobil Quest in which she competed against Joan Sutherland. The two became friends and their professional paths would cross on many occasions.

She married Harry Elkins and joined the National Opera Company of Australia and - Margreta Elkins - during 1953, 1954 and 1955 sang the roles of Carmen, Azucena in Il Trovatore Siebel in Faust and Suzuki in Madama Butterfly on tour throughout the eastern states of Australia and also in New Zealand (where the company was joined by the New Zealand mezzo Heather Begg). At one point during these tours she sang Azucena every night for two weeks!

Having won the second prize in the 1955 Mobil Quest she used the money to travel to London where she was engaged to sing Carmen and Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte for the Grand Opera Society of Dublin. In England she auditioned unsuccessfully for the Royal Opera but joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company in what proved to be the final years of its chequered history. With the Carl Rosa she toured England and Scotland singing Maddalena in Rigoletto, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Nicklause in Tales of Hoffmann and, a considerable rarity for any company at the time let alone the declining Carl Rosa, Ascanio in Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini.

The Carl Rosa company disbanded in 1958 but Elkins had attracted considerable attention by then. The Manchester Guardian had described her instrument, in the Berlioz opera, as "a fine, big voice which is yet cuttingly exact on intonation and wonderfully flexible in all but the very top register," and that "her singing of the difficult entr'acte aria in Act III was something to remember long after the performance." Elkins sang with Joan Sutherland in a number of the London Handel Opera Society stagings and was accepted into the Royal Opera Company at Covent Garden, where her friend and now colleague, Sutherland was also a member. At the Royal Opera Elkins's first roles were in the Ring Cycles (in which she and Sutherland sang Rhine maidens), Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera, the Priestess in Aida and Alisa in the production of Lucia di Lammermoor in which Sutherland was launched into super stardom.

Further roles at the Royal Opera brought wider attention including Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Amneris in Aida, Hippolyta in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Marina in Boris Godounov and Helen of Troy in Michael Tippett's King Priam which she created in 1962. She had made a special study of the role of Octavian, travelling to Vienna where she was coached by Alfred Jerger, the famous baritone who had been a favorite of Richard Strauss's and who had created Mandryka in Arabella. At this time she also received further training in London from Margaretta Kraus (Kiri Te Kanawa's teacher) and Vera Roza and in Italy with Ettore Campogalliani, the teacher of Renata Tebaldi, Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni.

Elkins made her American debut in 1965 alongside Sutherland in Handel's Alcina in which she was singled out by the New York Herald Tribune as "easily the most secure stylist of the evening". During 1964 and 1965, with Bonynge's encouragement, Elkins extended her range to encompass soprano and in 1965 was one of the featured artists in the Sutherland-Williamson opera seasons returning with Sutherland to their native Australia. In Australia she undertook soprano roles such as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin.

Elkins returned to Australia in 1976 and continued to sing with the Australian Opera and was an active recitalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and, re-settling in Brisbane, lectured and taught the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Her engagements continued to be varied and - in one where she sang the alto solo in Mahler's Song of the Earth at every performance of The Australian Ballet's staging of Kenneth MacMillan's choreographed version - extraordinary . An honorary life member of Opera Queensland Elkins made her final operatic appearance with them in 2002, aged 71, in Cavalleria Rusticana.

Elkins was lucky on records and her friendship with Sutherland and Richard Bonynge resulted in her selection for a number of Sutherland's recording which, despite the vagaries of the recording industry, have remained in print. She also sings Alisa to Maria Callas's Lucia in EMI's second recording of the opera featuring Callas. As a soprano Elkins is featured in the title role of Williams Shield's ballad opera Rosina (currently available on ABC Classics Australian Heritage 461 922-2).

Review - Don Giovanni - Victorian Opera

White Knight
Jean Pierre Mignon’s production of Don Giovanni scales the opera down and in a production with as much farce as drama makes for an exhilarating rather than grandiose story. In a gleaming white costume, the reverse of his true colours, this Don (Samuel Dundas) looks as though he stepped out of a Mills & Boon bodice ripper. Although his voice is still young (remember that Luigi Bassi, the first Don Giovanni, was only 21) and light toned, he uses it with great skill, projecting the text, in very good Italian and giving it shape and nuance. For a young singer he has a good grasp of the Don’s mercurial character even if it beggars’ belief that so young-looking a Don has so extensive a catalogue of conquests. Physically he is everything you could want (ie: barihunk) but also conveys the swaggering, aristocratic arrogance, arm resting raffishly on his sword-hilt and, above all, the snake-eyed charm. With only three modest solos Don Giovanni's persona lives through music involving other characters. Dundas savors the recititative passages, making them carry the bulk of his characterisation. An example is the brief scene with Zerlina (Michelle Buscemi) before their duet where his words drip like honey. Only the softest parts of the music, the opening phrase of “La ci darem la mano” and the act two serenade would have benefited from a softer tone but, overall, Dundas manages many impressive things.

Zerlina’s music suits Buscemi’s silvery voice and she conveys Zerlina's gentle eroticism, ecstatically sighing the words “toccami qua” in ‘Vedrai, carino’ with same understanding as Dundas conveying Giovanni’s lust, . A terrific Zerlina in her own right Tiffany Speight steps up to the dominant female character Donna Elvira. Speight’s radiant soprano easily encompassed the music including the often-difficult lower passages (including marvellous downward runs in the epilogue) . She is a very subtle comedienne too, doomed by her unshakable obsession with the faithless Don her Elvira is like a frustrated schoolmistress and flusters about like an operatic Maggie Smith. The insistence now on either the Prague or Vienna versions of the opera (from the looks of it the über-urtext Bärenreiter edition is used here) is a pity; if Speight had been allowed her big aria ‘Mi Tradi’ it would have crowned a spectacular performance.

As Don Giovanni’s sidekick Andrew Collis is another more experienced singer who creates an oily Leporello, the director relating him back to the character, Sganarelle, in Moliere's play Don Juan, clowning the part without overdoing it. He clearly hates his master but in the 'catalogue aria' there was just a hint of admiration. With no sign of stage nerves, Dundas is a natural clown too and with Speight and Collis makes the serenading scene in act two hilarious without undermining the beauty of the music.

Donna Anna is a big sing and challenged Caroline Wenborne. She managed the difficult fioritura without any compromises but the fearful drama in "Or sai chi l'onore" was less evident. She does a terrific stage faint. James Egglestone was equally adept at Don Ottavio's 'Il mio tesoro'. Pity his 'Dalla su pace' (another post-Prague variant) was omitted, it provides a few moments of reflection and repose. Anthony Mackey's is a really interestingly rebellious Masetto, holding back from physically attacking the girlfriend usurping Don but ultra sarcastic in 'Hai capito' (the Figaro rebelliousness again?). His voice had a slight backward sound but a genuine bass baritone. Occasionally too rigid, as in the ensembles but adding the bass weight to important ones like the act two sextet where Don Giovanni and Leporello are absent.

The vocal preparation of all of the soloists was obviously thorough. The smaller scale allows for some details that would never work in a larger theatre. The Don, for example, gives Zerlina a flower which drops suggestively from her hand at the end of “La ci darem la mano”, it is retrieved and passed again, along with the Don's come-on lines, until it ends up planted in Elvira's hopeful cleavage.

Richard Roberts’s set is a marvel of economy transforming from back streets to a Moorish palace and sinister tomb. The lighting, however, could have been more varied. The overture like most of the music in general moves swiftly with the action. The omnipresent fate theme that begins the overture or the mysterious few seconds of string music that follow it was somewhat understated but, thanks to the intimacy of the production, it was like examining a masterpiece under a microscope. The ensembles ending each act shone like little gems and balance allowed the younger singers to show their potential and the more experienced singers, like Speight, to hint at glories yet to come in their careers.

Don Giovanni (originally Il Dissoluto Punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni)
Music - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto - Lorenzo Da Ponte, after the Don Juan legend an in part by the libretto by Giovanni Bertati for the opera Don Giovanni o sia il Convitato di pietra (1786) by Giuseppe Gazzaniga
First performance - 29 October 1787, Prague National Theatre
First Australian performance - 21 October 1861, Theatre Royal, Melbourne (8 performances)
cast
Don Giovanni - Samuel Dundas
Donna Elvira - Tiffany Speight
Donna Anna - Caroline Wenborne
Zerlina - Michelle Buscemi
Don Ottavio - James Egglestone
Leporello - Andrew Collis
Masetto - Anthony Mackey
The Commendatore - Steven Gallop
Conductor - Richard Gill (3,5 & 7 March) Nicholas Carter (10, 12 & 14 March)
Director - Jean-Pierre Mignon
Costume Designer - Christina Smith
Set Designer - Richard Roberts
Lighting Designer - Paul Jackson
National Theatre, St Kilda 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 & 14 March 2009
followed by a metropolitan and regional Victorian tour between 28 March and 25 April
175 minutes (including one interval)
Victorian Opera

performance reviewed 5 March

Review - The Arditti Quartet - Melbourne Recital Centre

I'm in new music meltdown, having been at a concert of fairly tough modern music nearly every night. Into the mix throw three concerts by the Arditti Quartet of string quartets representative of benchmarks in the history of modern music. As they did during the 2001 Melbourne Festival they planned a residence during which they played a potted history of the modern string quartet.

The Ardittis view modern music as do historians and began with the revolutionary epoch. Originally intended as the finale of the op 130 quartet Beethoven's Grosse Fugue op 133 added just too many more technical difficulties to a quartet already crammed with them. The Ardittis began it with a biting attack and smoothed out its unusual progression from fugal to sonata form and other so-called difficulties. The main part of the work was almost elegiac.

Harrison Birtwistle's Tree of Strings (2007) was premiered by the Arditti Quartet only last year at a concert to mark the 100th birthday of Elliot Carter (who's music features in this series). The rather perfunctory programme note records it as being "described as a study in creative fragmentation, as depicted by the music and the choreography of the players." It may be that there is deliberate fragmentation built into the work but, whenever an instrument breaks away from the ensemble (usually by playing a sudden and jagged five note phrase) a unifying theme (sounding not unlike the 'sleeping' theme that punctuates the movements in Britten's Nocturne). When the quartet physically fragment, getting up from their desks and walking to another desk placed at the outer extremities of the platform (as though, pardon the 'tree' pun, transferring to an outlying branch) the work is reaching its climax and five note phrase has become part of a cycle that breaks away the players and then reunites them. In this case it becomes their exit music as each player leaves the platform (a la Haydn Farewell Symphony).

Finally Schoenberg's notorious second string quartet which perplexed players and audiences as much as the Grosse Fugue in the previous century. As demonstrated in 2001 when they played this quartet, all difficulties drop away. In the first two, purely instrumental, movements the attack was sharp and sudden, like in the Beethoven. In the second movement the waltz theme was made to seem like a Brahmsian waltz. Joined by Merlyn Quaife for the vocal movements the clinical quality of the hall's acoustics become apparent. The sound is very immediate here, the reverb is quick too and not very kind to voices. Recordings can interveave the voice with the instruments (except in the famous premiere recordings by the Kolisch Quartet where the soprano was asked to step further and further back from her microphone) in this work but as performed here Quaife's voice tended to dominate proceedings.

Arditti Quartet

Irvine Arditti, violin I

Ashot Sarkissjan, violin II

Ralf Ehlers, viola

Lucas Fels, cello

Merlyn Quaife, soprano (February 19)

Melbourne Recital Centre

February 19, 21 & 23 Melbourne Recital Centre

Reflection - Orlando - Opera Australia

The stage action begins with the overture and at its conclusion it has set in place an incredible magical/psychological landscape. General Orlando's office, with its looming map of the Middle East and Africa is suddenly crowned by a starlight sky.

The magician who is controlling Orlando's most dangerous mission ever - to fall in love and battle with his own jealousy - enters holding a naked flame in his hand. Justin Way's production sets the opera in a unspecific HQ somewhere during World War Two and (unlike Harry Kupfer's disappointing Otello, which relocates the story to the mid twentieth century but proceeds to ignore the fact and cause more dramatic problems than it sets out to solve) refers, humorously to dozens of wartime romance films and various jingoistic wartime propaganda.

The clever and canny self-referencing is like Dennis Potter only using Baroque opera instead of popular songs from the era. The wall that shatters into many columns is especially effective, becoming a maze for the love-struck and love-lorn characters to wander around. The magician, in silver military dress and modest walrus moustache, looks a little too much like the soviet propaganda images of Stalin 'defender and savior' suggesting he may not be as benign as we would think. The shepherdess Dorinda is a cross between a land-girl and Red Cross volunteer, perpetually knitting socks. The Princess Angelica (Emma Matthews) appears to be a mysterious, border-crossing and glamorous refugee (a spy?). Orlando is in red leather throughout and with his tendency to violence, that he is mad for most of the opera and that his staff wear black shirts - one even sports a eye patch - could even suggest that the hero and army are Fascists. The sheep become a bit of a problem, was there a special deal on novelty sheep statues and Way couldn't help himself and bought the lot?

Musically it is gorgeous, the singing especially by Matthews and Tobias Cole (as Medoro) is crystalline (considering the size of the theatre). The trio that ends act one is one of Handel's most beautiful creations and, despite its languidness, creates the dramatic tension of the rivalry in love between the protagonists. Matthews deals valiantly with the relentlessly low tessitura, occasionally singing a passage up an octave just to give it some variety. As with her performance in Hoffmann last year she has a very special ability to declaim and her voice projected into the big house easily and tirelessly. If you only see one thing by Handel this Christmas, don't make it Messiah, see this.
State Theatre, The Arts Centre
December 10 & 13 2008

Singing High - The facts about castrati, male soprani and other related matters in Handel's Orlando

CaStraight
In 1994, a controversial collection of essays in a book entitled Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, brought some very famous musicians and their music out of the historical closet. One of the authors, Gary C. Thomas, gathered enough evidence about lifelong bachelor George Frideric Handel to come up with a ‘homotextual Handel’ who gravitated toward the most homo-centric places in Europe at the time: the Italian and London theatres, where he wrote operas especially for the famous Italian castrati. These castrati – men castrated before puberty in order to preserve their high voices – dominated the opera houses, attracting legions of both female and male admirers.

Nearly 300 years later, Handel’s fantasy operas seem camp inversions of male heroics: particularly an opera like Orlando, where a castrato sang the title role while the other male lead, Medoro, was taken by a female singer! In Opera Australia’s new production of Orlando, director Justin Way bends the gender the other way, with the title role being sung by a woman: mezzo soprano Dominica Matthews.

“There were two types of castrato,” Ms Matthews explains, “soprano castrati and alto castrati. They sang both female and male roles; the soprano castrati sang female characters while the alto castrati specialised in male ones, boys on the verge of manhood. “These days mezzo sopranos sing the roles that are young men, and Orlando is one of these characters, so his music is way down in my boots. I’ve had to put away my mezzo soprano voice for the time being to concentrate on the lower contralto music.”

Queering the Pitch claims that because castrati sang male and female roles and women sang male roles the audience at the time did not automatically associate high-pitched voices with women. In some operas they “were confronted with men who sang their love for each other in similar registers, regardless of the gender assigned them by the libretto” Baroque opera gave rise to a kind of 'aural homosexuality'.

Tobias Cole, who sings Medoro, knows one of many examples of this. "There is an opera, Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra by Hasse and the great castrato Farinelli was in the first performance of it singing the role of Cleopatra," he says. "I suppose to the ears of people of that time the idea of a male character being sung up high was not as peculiar as it is to us. Life was so different, think of the camp costumes men wore! I feel there must have been a very wide spectrum of what it means to be male. How strange and challenging the castrati must have been. It was a freak show certainly and people thought they must see this. Audiences now expect quality of story and a certain truth of character so there is more pressure now to make the love scenes more sexy and even show a bit of flesh. That expectation of audiences today for verismo in theatre makes it necessary to have the lovers as male and female. Of course you could also go for the lesbian bent but it does make a difference and more importantly gives a director more opportunities to consolidate that by having a male in a male role."

"I was in a production in Perth, the revival of Lindy Hume’s for OzOpera where both Medoro and Orlando were sung by men. The funny thing was when she did it originally for the Melbourne Festival she had two women in the roles but in the Perth revival she had men and could take it further; she had Christopher Josey (as Orlando) taking off all his clothes for the mad scene, as he does in the Ariosto Orlando Furioso."

Cole is a counter tenor, a male voice type which can extend into the soprano range creating a sound similar to the extinct castrato. Like Handel's and other operas from the Baroque, the modern interest in the counter tenor voice began at about the same time in the mid-twentieth century. One of first important singers was the male alto Alfred Deller. Deller came to prominence just after the Second World War and began to make recordings and give performances and experiment in early music performance practice with his ensemble of singers of musicians, the Deller Consort. Such was the impact of Deller's voice that composers began to write again in earnest for that voice, Britten amongst them with the role of Oberon in his opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Audiences soon began to appreciate the sound of the counter tenor, if not fully understand it - a French woman, upon hearing Deller sing, asked him "Monsieur, vous êtes eunuque", to which Deller replied "I think you mean 'unique', madam".

But even to Cole himself, that sound is still surprising. “Whenever I sing," he laughs, "I think ‘Oh! I wasn’t expecting that,’ a high voice coming out of a man,’ so what we have to do is create that ‘sound scape’ that the audience accepts. In performing a Baroque opera now,” he explains, “the first aria is used to ease people into that world and often it takes the first act to take people into that sound scape. Handel took the story from the epic poem Orlando Furioso about the medieval knight Orlando and his adventures in exotic and pagan worlds but Way’s production uses twentieth century references.“The idea that he wanted,” says Cole, “is to capture a time when going off to fight in a war was a good thing. You couldn't do that today so he sets it in the Second World War when people felt that going to fight was a necessary evil. There is a brilliant design idea starting it in what looks like Churchill’s’ War Room with a map on the wall. The room flies out and a larger version of the map is revealed which begins to fracture and becomes the forest. At the end it goes back to the War Room and people feel that the opera is Orlando’s dream”.

“Orlando is a great military general,” says Matthews, “who spent all his life fighting and who has no experience in sexual matters. Now he is in love for the first time and does not know what to do.” In Way’s production Orlando is a very masculine war hero, looking like a fighter pilot and Matthews is perfecting masculine attributes to do that conception full justice. “I’m getting used to the idea of walking like a man,” she laughs. “When a woman walks she takes small steps, putting one foot in front of the other, men, particularly Australian men, don’t, they take wide steps. And just this morning,” she adds, “I asked three different men how I should put my hands on a table because I know it would be done differently.”

Orlando (1733) by George Frideric Handel is at the State Theatre, The Arts Centre on November 27, 29 and December 2 & 10

Now in its second edition Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology is published by Routledge.

This is an expanded version of the interview published in the arts, entertainment and lifestyle publication Canvas magazine

Review - Madama Butterfly - Opera Australia

Blossom Time

Spooky but, opening on Remembrance Day (11 November) this is the first of three operas featuring a hero from the armed forces. Written three years after the death of Verdi, Madama Butterfly is a remarkable achievement, a quantum leap from his previous opera that “shabby little shocker” Tosca, instead it reshapes the nature and form of Italian opera. By now a remarkable orchestrator Puccini’s score is obviously melodious but in equal measure the melody is responsive to the drama in a very modern way, shifting a long way from Verdi.

The libretto’s origins as a stage play remain obvious, and Puccini seems confident and unconcerned about leaving conversational passages essential to the plot. Instead he accompanies them music that is equally conversational and constantly illuminating the importance of character and situation like a subtext that threads together the growing tragic themes and which gives the opera its power. At one point, in act two when Sharpless asks Butterfly what she would do if Pinkerton were never to return she is stunned, the orchestra play only a few stammering, unconnected chords matching her own speechlessness. When her father’s hara-kiri knife is first sighted the orchestra screeches a fateful motif that returns time and again, reminding the listener that, for Butterfly, honour is everything and without honour only death remains. Even before the lugubrious ‘humming chorus’ the theme emerges pointing toward the tragic outcome and that, although we see Butterfly, Suzuki and ‘Sorrow’ patiently waiting for the dawn and Pinkerton’s return, we are told musically the dawn will only bring death. Emerging out of this conversational music "Un bel di" seems obtrusive.

The conductor Shao-Chia-Lü relishes these orchestral felicities, highlighting one after another. The first hearing of the knife and death themes in act one, where Butterfly’s prattle about her worldly goods is interrupted by Pinkerton’s enquiry about the knife, the theme suddenly lurches out. Even in "Un bel di" he underlines its orchestral postlude, reminding us that the vocal part stops in musical mid-phrase and is continued and concluded by the orchestra - even managing to hold the traditional applause at bay until that phrase is complete.

Nicole Youl is at her best in the second and third acts. A century later it is dramatically more important to present the noble and honourable aspects of Butterfly’s character rather than just creating a believable 15-year-old. The impression of her in act one is of creating a Butterfly entering into the marriage in order to save that family honour and rescue her and her mother from destitution. When she is cursed by the Bonze and abandoned she similarly entrusts herself to Pinkerton for the sake of honour. Without resorting to overt melodrama she sighed, spoke and sobbed the part with equal attention to its musical and dramatic structure. In “Che tua madre dovrà” she faces the prospect of returning to her Geisha calling, this time, and like it was for her mother, with a child in tow, her despair at the prospect - again with that knife theme when she vows she would rather die -beginning a great arc of desperate emotions that carries through the rest of the act, right through to the end of the opera.

With the conductor intent on merging the orchestral subtext with the stage action, to experience it this way is doubly overwhelming. Sally-Anne Russell blends well with Youl vocally as well as creating a sisterliness in the relationship rather than one of mistress and servant. Russell also manages the high-lying parts of Suzuki's music easily such as the 'flower duet' and "Piangerà tanto, tanto" just before her last scene with Butterfly.

Pinkerton could be considered little more than an unfeeling 'sex tourist.' I still recall from an earlier staging of this production when Butterfly revealed that was only fifteen. "Quindici anni!" says Sharpless looking hurriedly from her to Pinkerton. "Quindici anni" Pinkerton repeats, nodding his head while a revolting leer spread across his face. Rosario La Spina is less insightful. When Sharpless warns him that Butterfly is entering into this sham marriage in earnest and that Pinkerton may "plunge a trusting heart into despair" La Spina manages a derisive chuckle (then a sad face when Pinkerton and Sharpless assume the same positions in the third act when Sharpless tells him 'I told you so'). His singing is varied, "Dovunque al mondo", the closest to a conventional aria, is his most successful contribution but "Addio, fiorito asil" gets pulled away from the action to make an exit aria rather than be a culmination of the subtle trio and ensuing fluid ensemble that begins with Sharpless' "Io so che alle sue pene". In the act one love duet - one of the longest and most inspired Puccini wrote - La Spina's Pinkerton is sexually nonthreatening or urgent, his 'vieni, vieni' as he urges her to bed has no urgency but, in fairness, the dangerous sexuality of the scene is drained by Moffat Oxenbould's production which - as the house disappears and a night sky is revealed - turns into a pleasant nocturnal stroll.

Oxenbould's stylised production to a certain extent dumbs down Puccini's ingenious score. Supernumeraries (with masks and gowns more appropriate to an operating rather than opera theatre) whisk on and off with the knife every time it is suggested rather than let its fearsome presence in the music speak for itself. Within the stylised designed the set numbers and dramatic flow, while occasionally interrupted by these 'supers', of act two and three still emerge very convincingly.

Madama Butterfly (Madame Butterfly) (1904, final performance version 1907) by Giacomo Puccini.
Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa after the short story Madame Butterfly (1898) by John Luther Long as dramatised by David Belasco. Also based in part on the novel Madame Chrysanthème (1887) by Pierre Loti.

First performance 17 February 1904, La Scala, Milan (1st revised version 28 May 1904, Grande, Brescia)

First Australian performance 26 March 1910, Theatre Royal, Sydney

cast
Conductor - Shao-Chia-Lü
Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) - Nicole Youl
Suzuki - Sally-Anne Russell
BF Pinkerton - Rosario La Spina
Sharpless - Barry Ryan
Goro - Graeme Macfarlane
Kate Pinkerton - Sian Pendry
Prince Yamadori - Luke Gabbedy (Andrew Moran 11 November)
Commissioner - Andrew Moran (Andrew Jones 11 November)
Registrar - Gregory Brown
Opera Australia Chorus
Orchestra Victoria
Director - Moffat Oxenbould
Set & Costume Designers - Peter England & Russell Cohen
Lighting Designer - Robert Bryan
11, 15, 19, 22, 26 & 29 November 4, 6, 9 & 13 December 2008
165 minutes (including 1 interval after act 1)

CD Review - Puccini Romance - ABC Classics

Arias and duets from La Bohème, Tosca, Le Villi, La Fanciulla del West, Turandot and Madama Butterfly. Chrisantemi for strings.

Antoinette Halloran, soprano.

Rosario La Spina, tenor.

The Queensland Orchestra.
Stephen Mould, conductor.

ABC Classics 476 6404

This disc faces a marketplace already crowded with similar compilations from major companies who can raid their archives to offer similar repertoire at bargain prices. None the less this disc has some attractions. They are not, however, in the musical layout. Multiple selections from an opera are presented out of order. This is less of an issue with operas like Madama Butterfly or Tosca, where the chosen excerpts are separated often by an entire act, but informed listeners will be amused by the four La Bohème items which places “O soave fanciulla” before “Che gelida manina” and “Sì, mi chiamo Mimi” so that the young couple declare their love before making their introductions. More amusing still is that ‘Mimi’s farewell’ follows immediately so having “come to bother you at an inconvenient time”, she immediately declares her intention to return alone to her solitary nest to make fake flowers!

Rosario La Spina has the makings of a good tenor. He has a bright ‘Italianate’ voice, if occasionally backwardly placed on some higher notes but the biggest irritant are the intrusive aspirates that occur more often when he uses his middle range as well as occasionally assisting him into top notes; the Tosca duet is riddled with them. He has a natural feeling for Italian, singing through diphthongs and making some beautiful sounds although his actual handling of the words is disappointing. Phrases are dully shaped, salient words or the emotions they convey are rarely pointed. It would be hard to imagine any soprano responding to his serenades, let alone undergoing the emotional and physical tortures Puccinian women suffer for their men.

Halloran is another bright and intelligent Australian soprano. Her Mimi and Butterfly are well thought out and characterised. In the ‘Dream’ aria from La Rondine her voice expands into a rich and well controlled forte.

The unsung, so to speak, heroes are conductor Stephen Mould and the orchestra, underpinning the moods and commenting on the characters like old troupers from an Italian house that play this music daily. In “Sì, mi chiamo Mimi”, the short, blunted phrases as she details her dull daily routine suddenly swell, as she reveals the pleasure spring flowers bring her, into beautiful arching phrases. La Spina, incidentally, is not on hand to sing ‘si’ when she asks “lei m’intende?” The disc ends with the “Butterfly” duet where the orchestra respond superbly; the harp passage as Butterfly begins to remove her wedding gown almost suggests its silken texture. Similarly, the horns in the closing moments throb with suggestive anticipation as Pinkerton urges Butterfly into his arms and bed. The low gong strike in that closing passage hovers in mid-air and the overall sound is in the demonstration class. Anyone wanting vocal interpretations of these familar arias and duets might need to look elsewehere, too often the feelings behind the music are overlooked.