Mock auditions put Sydney Conservatorium students in the spotlight

Cathy McCorkill and Gregory van der Struik share tips and experience with interns
from the Conservatorium of Music in the Opera Centre's Joan Sutherland Studio 

The set up is not unlike the audition scenes from the popular television show The Voice. A panel sits behind a screen with their backs to a nervous performer, listening for every perfectly pitched note or mistimed breath. Only there are less flashing lights and no cheering crowd. 

This scene is taking place among the beams and music stands of the Joan Sutherland studio at The Opera Centre, as five music students from the Sydney Conservatorium conduct a mock audition for the discerning members of the Australia Opera and Ballet Orchestra (AOBO). The students are all participating in an internship program run by Opera Australia and the AOBO.

The standard is high, and the representatives from the AOBO are impressed. 

Associate principal clarinetist Cathy McCorkill and principal trombonist  Gregory van der Struik are on hand to offer tips and advice to the music students.

When the students next step up to a professional audition, they will take with them useful tidbits of advice from the seasoned AOBO performers.

These included:

•          Pick a variety of excerpts, so you can show your versatility
•           You can choose where to stand. Don’t accept the set up as it’s offered, make yourself comfortable.
• Try and choose a position where you can have eye contact with your accompanist
•          Tell your accompanist whether you would like the piano lid raised or closed for your audition, depending on your preference.

Rehearsing the Ring cycle: Stuart Skelton explains the wonder of Wagner

Stuart Skelton is performing Siegmund in the Melbourne Ring Cycle for Opera Australia in 2013. Picture: Lisa Tomasetti

There’s a certain energy in the air out at the Docklands rehearsal studios, as the stars of the Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013 workshop their singing with conductor Richard Mills, and their gesture and movement under the watchful eyes of director Neil Armfield. While singers are quick to laugh when they duck outside for burst of sunshine, it’s clear that inside the cavernous rehearsal space, serious work is being done.

Star tenor Stuart Skelton says that anywhere the Ring is staged, the energy follows. “It is such a huge undertaking. You can’t come into one of these things with mid-level commitment or energy.”

The Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013 will be Stuart’s third of the year: the heldentenor is renowned for his stirring performances in Wagner’s epic, and in the composer’s anniversary year, he is more in demand than ever. He has just performed the role of Siegmund in the Ring for Opera National de Paris, and before he reaches the Melbourne State Theatre stage, he will also perform Siegmund for Seattle Opera.

But while each Ring is different, it’s not too difficult to come to the same character three times in three different ways. “There are certain monumental aspects of a Ring Cycle that don’t go away, it doesn’t matter who the director is,” Stuart explains. “But how each of those monumental aspects gets portrayed is different.”

L-R: Neil Armfield, Stuart Skelton and Richard Mills
in the rehearsal room. Photo: Jeff Busby

While the Ring has a huge cast, there are usually only two or three characters interacting on stage at any one time, Stuart said. “If you take the Chorus as a character, the Ring really is a very small, Ibsen-esque family drama. There’s always the relationship between two characters and a third, that comes in and goes out of that relationship.”

That’s where the director comes in. “Every director comes with a different idea and different approach to how they want to show all of the tiny little interactions in those relationships,” Stuart says.

“You have to be absolutely meticulous in how you prepare the music. You have to be prepared to work very hard and very long on very small sections as you go along. It’s not an easy thing to stage, it’s not an easy story to tell, because there is so much going on.”

But Wagner, and Wagner’s music, will always control part of the action. “Wagner was incredibly specific about where and how things happen. You’d never be left guessing what he wanted,” Stuart says. “Almost every thought, or phrase, or feeling or physical bit of prop and set and even every concept has a specific musical motif attached to it, called a leitmotif.”

If the music is portraying something that the characters aren’t acting, it would look at odds to the audience, Stuart says. It’s part of Wagner’s genius.

“The whole concept of these four operas being composed almost solely of leitmotifs, which give us a musical vocabulary for what we’re seeing or feeling on stage, is mind-bending!”

Stuart has been singing Wagner and the Ring for more than a decade, but his love for Wagner is not waning. “There’s not a note out of place. I never get tired of singing it, or seeing it.”

And while many of the international artists rehearsing the Ring in Melbourne are seasoned Wagner performers, there are some artists coming to the music for the first time, which is magical to watch, Stuart says. “It is big music and the opportunity for really big German repertoire doesn’t come along very often.”

Working with Neil Armfield is always a privilege, Stuart says, but the tenor won’t be drawn on Neil’s vision for the show. “At the end of the day his work speaks for itself. He brings the best out of the performers.”

Diva, interrupted

Opera Australia's leading ladies Cheryl Barker and Emma Matthews explain how they find balance between their lives as in-demand divas and their most important roles: being mums.

By Jennifer Williams

Cheryl Barker
Photo: Keith Saunders

CHERYL Barker and Emma Matthews have a lot in common: ravishing good looks, dazzling soprano voices and a penchant for playing bloodsoaked, insane or tragic women.

They are also mums, proof positive that even opera singers with glamorous careers can have it all.

Cheryl didn’t always think it was possible, nearly giving up her singing when her son Gabriel was born. “One of my friends who had two teenage children encouraged me to stick with my career, she stressed that what I do is part of who I am.”

Thirteen years later, the celebrated soprano is glad she took her friend’s advice. “Not to say I didn’t have moments where I was racked with guilt about having to leave my son, but now he is older he is thrilled when I go out to do a performance and I’m not nagging him to do his homework,” she says.

Cheryl Barker starred as Salome in Melbourne last year. Photo: Jeff Busby

In her award-winning performance as the bloodthirsty 16-year-old Salome last year, Cheryl was even able to draw on her experience as a mum.

“Watching my son through the years, I know all about the hammering on for what you want and not taking no for an answer. Salome does just that when she asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter!”

At 13, Cheryl’s son Gabriel is old enough to enjoy the blood and gore of the opera, but he still attends “under sufferance.”

Emma’s two boys Brendan and Jack are yet to develop that boyish taste for blood. “When I was doing Lucia and I had stained red hands for most of the year, Brendan would say ‘You have blood on your hands, it’s sooo gross!’” Emma laughs.

Emma Matthews 

Her two boys are now 8 and 11, and it’s a big relief for Emma that they’re now old enough to watch her leave the house without tears. “When they’re happy and well, and my husband is happy and well, it’s wonderful to come home to a house full of love,” she says.

That’s the upside of a life that involves constant compromise between work and family life, Cheryl says. “Knowing that I have my husband and son to come home to after a performance is the payoff.”

Cheryl is married to the acclaimed baritone Peter Coleman-Wright, and with such a musical pedigree, one might expect 13-year-old Gabriel to be a budding opera singer.

Things certainly started that way – at four years old, Gabriel made his debut alongside his mother playing Cio-Cio San’s child in a Houston production of Madama Butterfly. “He had the last bow at the curtain calls and loved that, but these days he prefers to listen to alternative and dance music than opera.”

For Cheryl and her husband Peter, the reality of international careers and an Australian family life make life logistically difficult. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. Despite her many career highlights, including a recent Green Room Award for her performance in Salome, Cheryl still calls Gabriel her biggest achievement. “It outstrips any opera performance.”

Emma Matthews performs the mad scene in Lucia
Photo: Jeff Busby

Emma credits her boys for bringing her busy life balance. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Her boys see all her shows (except the recent Partenope – “that one’s a bit rude”) and are proud of their mum. While Jack’s showing promise as a footy star, Brendan looks set to follow in his mum’s footsteps. “He’s my competition now, he’s always singing,” Emma says. “I can’t get a note in at home!”

While an average night’s work might see Emma don a glittering ball gown, at home, she spent the first few years of motherhood with a tea towel tied around her face.  “When they’re young, you pick up every bug they have. That was really hard. You have to function on stage at your best.”  

It does all get easier in time, Emma says, a fact most mums will attest to. But having two energetic boys certainly diminishes the “me time” you might expect a diva to demand.  “You don’t have time to have facials and get your hair done,” Emma laughs. “All the things you think divas get to do with their time!”

Singing is still her passion, but Emma says her children come first. “It’s not the be-all and end-all thing for me anymore. My voice is such a huge part of me and expression of who I am ... but being a Mum is my most important role.”

Veteran Ring Performer John Wegner's Gallery of Costumes

John Wegner in his more "natural" state.

JOHN Wegner is somewhat au fait with the rigours of performing in Wagner’s epic the Ring Cycle.

The German-born baritone travels the world performing the roles of Wotan/Wanderer and Alberich, and over the years has seen his fair share of unusual costumes. Below, John shows off some of his outfits from Ring cycles around the world.

He returns to Opera Australia this year to perform in three of the Ring operas, as the dwarf Alberich who sets the entire cycle into action.

It is his second time playing Alberich in Australia – the singer won a Helpmann award for his portrayal of Alberich in the State Opera of South Australia’s production in 2004.

What will costume designer Alice Babidge have the distinguished singer in this time? You’ll have to wait and see...

As the Wanderer in Karlsruhe, 1994

As Alberich the dwarf in Stuttgart, 2000

As Wanderer in Mannheim, 2000

As Alberich in Dusseodorf, 2003

As Wanderer in Dusseldorf, 2003

As Alberich in Adelaide, 2004

As Alberich in Hamburg, 2012

MELBOURNE AUTUMN SEASON: IT'S (ALMOST) A WRAP

Graeme Murphy's production of Aida is a dazzling spectacle. Photo: Jeff Busby

THE MELBOURNE Autumn season closes this week with the ever popular Aida. 

There are still tickets left to the final few shows of Graeme Murphy’s visually stunning production of Verdi’s most famous opera.

Always a grand affair, Roger Kirk’s sumptuous costumes and set design take the beloved music of Aida and set it against a spectacular backdrop of gilded headdresses and giant hieroglyphics. 

WATCH as director Graeme Murphy explains his vision for Aida

(and get a glimpse of that sumptuous design).

A daring production of A Masked Ball by Catalan production company La Fura dels Baus divided critics and challenged audiences.

Lorina Gore and Diego Torre in A Masked Ball.
Photo: Jeff Busby

 Aussie Theatre credited the production with making opera relevant to today’s world. “When [operas] are created as works about us, they prove that these 19^th century European creations are just as magnificent and relevant as they were when they were first seen,” reviewer Anne-Marie Peard wrote.

The stars Diego Torre, José Carbó, Csilla Boross and Lorina Gore received universal acclaim for their polished singing, while the enormous set and creepy masks kept everyone talking after the show.

LOOK at a photo gallery of this adventurous production.

Emma Matthews and Kanen Breen delivered
captivating performances in Partenope.
Photo: Jeff Busby

A boutique production of Partenope showcased the incredible talents of soprano Emma Matthews and mezzo Catherine Carby in the pants role of Arsace.

A strong supporting cast did their best to steal the show.

The sexy and irreverent production by Christopher Alden dazzled critics as well as audiences.

READ as the stars talk sex, surreality and
cross-dressing in Handel’s forgotten opera.]

Praise flowed on social media, while The Age offered four and a half stars in their review.

“Christopher Alden’s gloriously stylish, amusing and wonderfully sung production of Partenope lit up the State Theatre with effervescence and style,” wrote Michael Shmith.