Have you seen or are you planning to see The Love of the Nightingale? What do you think about the production?
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Experience the transformative power of song when Australia’s brightest and boldest artists star in the Sydney premiere of The Love of the Nightingale.
Sisters Procne and Philomene are separated by marriage, then united by brutality, when Procne’s husband rapes and mutilates Philomene. Rather than stay silent, the women extract a terrible revenge, then take flight.
Librettist Timberlake Wertenbaker and composer Richard Mills (video interview above) bring a dark beauty to the confronting tale of Procne and Philomene. The arching melodies and lush, romantic harmonies combine with words, mime and dramatic coups de theatre to confront the hardest questions. Where does violence come from? Why women?
The premiere season of this work won four Helpmann Awards, including best female performer for Emma Matthews.
Sisters Procne and Philomene are separated by marriage, then united by brutality, when Procne’s husband rapes and mutilates Philomene. Rather than stay silent, the women extract a terrible revenge, then take flight.
Librettist Timberlake Wertenbaker and composer Richard Mills (video interview above) bring a dark beauty to the confronting tale of Procne and Philomene. The arching melodies and lush, romantic harmonies combine with words, mime and dramatic coups de theatre to confront the hardest questions. Where does violence come from? Why women?
The premiere season of this work won four Helpmann Awards, including best female performer for Emma Matthews.
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Love of the Nightingale - only three more performances of this opera, difficult but brilliantly staged and acted and wonderfully sung. Amidst the clamorous discord and threat of the first act, the elegant symbolism of the play-within-a play, and flashes of ironic wit from the chorus, emerge constant warnings to the sisters Procne and Philomele to be careful but the impossibility of naming the irresistible violence hanging over them and over all women. Then the second act - lyricism of moonlight and water quickly overtaken by bloody mutilation, the shocking silencing of Philomele and the bacchanals' response - infanticide ans the only way to prevent further millennia of violence against women. Truly outstanding singing by Anke Hoppner (the homesick, ostracised sister who became a swallow), Taryn Fieberg (a very elegant, cool and irresistably controlling Aphrodite) , Dominica Matthews (the nurse who has seen too much to believe that safety lies in anything but submission) and a very strong Chorus of women asking why women still go in fear of car park attack. Then the resolution after the women have taken flight and been transfigured - the timelessness of the principals now white-clad in contemporary casual dress, and the breathtakingly brilliant final aria of Emma Mathews metamorphosed into the nightingale - soaring, transcendent, utterly beuatiful, remarkable music and singing.
ReplyDeleteAnne Junor a.junor@unsw.edu.au
On Friday night I had the pleasure of an extraordinary night of opera theatre. Love of a Nightingale is challenging in plot terms, but the music (conducted by composer Richard Mills), the singing and the production are outstanding. The singing and acting of Emma Matthews, Anke Hoppner, Taryn Fiebig, Richard Alexander and women's chorus was some of the best I have ever seen and heard in Opera. The final scene where Emma Matthews sings as a nightingale produced in me tears of admiration. I have been going to opera for over thirty years. I suspect I will remember this night for the rest of my life. Only 3 performances! So don't miss it! Such a pity the house was not full. Contemporary opera is a risk, but this production should be in the repertoire of mainstream opera companies. This is a little over the top perhaps but that is how I feel on Saturday morning. John O'Brien bruceville@optusnet.com.au
ReplyDeleteI saw this opera last night and can only agree with all of the praise that it has received. It is a major landmark on the home-grown opera scene. It was the finale of my 2012 subscription and nothing this year has impressed me more. I hope that someone is recording this momentous production. Paul Hager Paul.Hager@uts.edu.au
ReplyDeleteI was completely mesmerised by Opera Australia’s riveting production of The Love of the Nightingale. It was a powerhouse performance combining my love of opera and Greek tragedy respectively, with a smattering of social commentary on the side.
ReplyDeleteYou’d be hard-pressed to find a storyline more suited to opera than this one, which scaled the heights of human emotion, providing a perfect platform for the performers to shine. Emma Matthews and Anke Hoppner were brilliant as the sisters at the centre of this tragedy. The joyful innocence of the sisters in the first half of the opera was in stark contrast to the horror that was to unfold by the end of it. Indeed, it was this innocence – or more precisely, the loss of it - that was so poignant and made the brutality that followed all the more shocking.
Richard Anderson was well cast as Tereus – physically imposing, with a rich, resonant voice. Also effective was the Greek Chorus, prophesising doom. The audience knows what is going happen to poor Philomele and we want to join the Chorus in shouting out their ominous warnings, but we are merely spectators and are thus powerless to stop the inevitable. A special mention must go to young Oliver Brunsdon in the role of Itys. What a sweet-voiced child – the epitome of innocence. He held his ground in the company of some of Australia’s finest opera singers – most notably in his duet with Emma Matthews.
The costumes were suitably Greek and clever use of rolling platforms gave the set a nice sense of movement, with lighting used to great effect to mirror the emotions and subject matter portrayed.
Richard Mills has done a remarkable job in taking this classic myth and keeping it fresh and relevant to a contemporary audience. His music traverses the emotions – from whimsical melodic passages full of hope and innocence, to dissonant frenzied choruses foreshadowing violence and brutality of a most graphic nature.
The Love of the Nightingale definitely lived up to its promise of being “a very fine contemporary Australian composition of which we should all be very proud”. It was utterly compelling, thought-provoking viewing which kept me absolutely enthralled. Despite the intensity of the horrors witnessed by the audience during the course of the evening, The Love of the Nightingale ended on a hopeful, albeit bittersweet note. In the end, the audience was left with a pervading sense of calm. And questions - oh so many questions...
Paris Rosemont paris@rosemonts.com.au
Lovers' Metamorphoses: Your correspondent's comment was too long for the system. So use this link instead: http://wp.me/pD1Gy-8c
ReplyDeleteYes, the harmonies were beautiful beyond words. The spirit soared. Will we always need to plumb the depths of depravity and cruelty before we can ascend to the heights of love and redemption?
ReplyDeleteThis morning, the magpies sang more gloriously in my garden.
Thankyou.
Katherine Knight knightka@iprimus.com.au
The nightingale trills its song of forgiveness
ReplyDeleteRichard Mills has digested his Britten and Strauss, and knows the keen skill of pacing and varying the temperature of his highly approachable music. Most of all his opera, The Love of the Nightingale, is singable. In its short Sydney Season, 4 performances only, this 2007 opera, which was premiered at the Perth Festival, is given a beautiful and moving outing. The horror and pity of the story is reflected in music of wide ranging aptness. Mills conducts his own opera directing the on form Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, who respond to his clear direction, ensuring the power and complexity of this rich score is made clear to an appreciative audience.
It is, at its heart, an opera about reconciliation (the horror and recognition of Strauss’s Elektra comes to mind) – worked out as apotheosis in its finale. Like Strauss’ Daphne, the finale unleashes transmutation – a tortured women, through forgiveness, turns into a creature of the earth and sky – in Mills’ case the nightingale (for Strauss a glorious tree).
The performance of Emma Matthews in this scene, and throughout the opera, shows how truly she earned her Helpman award for the premier season of this opera. The trio at the heart of the drama, Tereus, Procne and Philomele (Matthews) are beautiful drawn, with Anke Höppner superb as Procne, while Richard Anderson delivers no cardboard cutout villain, but a complex lumbering man, awoken by Aphrodite to lust, violence and revenge – in a subtle, beautiful modulated performance.
Elisabeth Campbell is arresting and laconic as Niobe and Taryn Fiebig is suitably erotic and ecstatic as the Goddess. David Corcoran delivers beautiful delineated performances as Hippolytus, the Captain and the male Narrator – Britten's Lucretia is an obvious model for Mills with this latter role. Several others singers shine in ensemble work. Dominic Matthews ratchets up the temperature with her delivery of the Queen’s carefully crafted asides. The opera is full of such musical warning – about impending tragedy, whether in individual interventions or group edicts.
The libretto by Wertenbaker is stark and simple – though dotted with sly humour and stark projections into contemporary concerns – such as when the Bacchae question and condemn human violence with examples of the here and now.
Young Tama Matheson comes up trumps with his restudied production – his Shakespearean experience shows in his excellent pacing of the drama; he secures committed performance from all the cast. What a joy it must be for a living composer to have such full-hearted singing and passionate acting.
All in all, a riveting night in the theatre, with a gloriously artful finale. The truthful and trilling Matthews sends out a benediction across the orchestra and reminds us of the transformation human being are capable of. Unrealistically, in the midst of this warm glow, one might long for the entwined birdsong of the other transformed human beings – Procne and Tereus (swallow and hoopoe). Richard Strauss may have been able to achieve this – but tantalising wishes cannot undermine the full-bodied glory of Mill’s creation and the catharsis that we experience. Mythology and opera are reunited once more. Opera Australia deserves the highest praise.
Gar Jones
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