Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is widely regarded as the third member of the greatest classical composers trio, along with Johann Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. A child prodigy, whose music is much loved 230 years after he died, there was no field in which he didn’t excel. Whether it was symphonies , concertos, chamber music, religious…
HELEN MUSA.
THE opening night audience at Sydney Opera House early this week greeted the tiny cast of “Bluebeard’s Castle” with more rounds of applause there than any within my living memory.
Possibly an expression of sheer relief at seeing something unfamiliar on the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre.
This was a very short evening of just 60 minutes dominated by the music rather than the theatre – a treat to the connoisseur. Handled adroitly by conductor/arranger Andrea Molino, evidently sympathetic to the sinister music, which dominated by insinuating woodwinds and brass, balanced with the harmonious sounds elicited from the OA string players at their finest.
Priscilla Jackman. Photo: Phil Erbacher.
DREADFUL things happen to women in opera – they might be immured in a mausoleum, run though by a jealous lover or left to die in a sack, but nowhere is their fate sealed more grimly than in Béla Bartók’s only opera, “Bluebeard’s Castle”.
Not any more, as a new production of four performances only by Opera Australia is about to show.
“There’s no other way to see ‘Bluebeard’ but as a misogynistic work,” says associate director Priscilla Jackman, who joins director Andy Morton in staging the show for OA.
“But looked at in the light of day during 2021, it feels very timely.”