Sydney Reviews

Left – Tama Matheson. Photo courtesy Opera Australia

It is a pleasure to be reviewing for a journal devoted to critiquing the vast riches of dramatic and musical talent in this country. And this year it has been a singular pleasure for me to review two events which are in obvious ways uniquely Australian. The first was that brilliant brainchild of the artistic director of Opera Australia, Opera on the Beach, at Coolangatta. And today locals and visitors to my neck of the woods (the Northern Rivers) had the delightful experience, on a perfect summer’s day in midwinter, of Opera at the Channon. Held in the open air in a park, just outside what must be one of the most gorgeous cricket grounds even in Australia, on the edge of the Nightcap mountains near Lismore, today’s was the 17th in an annual event now firmly established in the local calendar. For many years given by members of Opera Queensland, today’s performance was the second sung by rising stars of Opera Australia. It is organised, as it has been throughout its history, by the local branch of the Rotary Association.

And what a great quartet of singers they were. All of them technically faultless in a series of arias and duets very well-chosen for their particular voices,

Soprano Natalie Aoryan’s Puccini was strong and vibrant, particularly in “un bel di” from Madame Butterfly. She and tenor Martin Buckingham most movingly sang a section from La Bohème,  in which Aoryan will sing the role of Mimi for Opera Australia’s production on New Year’s Eve. Not to be missed.

Margaret Plummer, a mezzo-soprano with a thrilling high register, won everyone’s hearts with her Rosina from Rossini’s Barber of Seville, a role where she was able to show off both her capacity for sweetness and her ability to be the vengeful viper. Michael Honeyman, whose baritone is so high and plangent it is practically a tenor, sang with Plummer in the Rossini excerpts, in what was probably the most engaging display of character-singing of the evening.

I loved Martin Buckingham’s Pavarotti impersonation in “Nessun Dorma”! Though even when he isn’t being Pavarotti his voice, within its basic quality of cello-on-the-A-string, always altered subtly to match the characters he was singing. For many, the high point of the afternoon was the duet from The Pearl Fishers, sung by Buckingham and Honeyman. The duet speaks of a fraternal love which is worth more than the desire both of them have for the same woman, and their voices blended, I should perhaps say, fused, in a way which embodied the sense of the text. That is one of the things opera is there for.

Yes, it’s amplified, but Opera Australia, providing as it does hundreds of operas a year in traditional conditions in both Melbourne and Sydney, certainly has nothing to prove about its commitment to unplugged music. And although the bass of the electric keyboard, swash-bucklingly played by Thomas Johnson, sounded perhaps a little submarine, the singers were completely clear and distortion-free. And with mikes you can hear every single word.

The show was compèred by Tama Matheson, in that sort of post-Dylan-Moran British style of a mixture of 9 parts funny and one part deeply serious, which held together the whole of this program of arias from all over the 19th century in an extremely entertaining way.

This was altogether a great Australian experience. Top-quality singing, almost wantonly relaxed atmosphere, and perfect weather.


Opera at the Channon

Venue: The Channon NSW
Date: 27 July 2014
Info: operaatthechannon.com.au

Hosted by Combined Rotart Clubs of Lismore