TWO INTIMATE OPERAS: OPERA OTAGO AT OLVESTON
The Drawing Room @ Olveston Historic Home, Dunedin
08/04/2016 - 10/04/2016
Production Details
Reviving the traditions of ‘entertaining at home’ Olveston Historic Home is very pleased to announce that Opera Otago will present two intimate operas in the sumptuous setting of the Drawing Room at Olveston during April this year.
While Opera Otago has presented small-scale chamber operas in the recent years, including on tour, this is its first venture into ‘House Opera’. Though widely practiced in the UK, it is not often done in New Zealand. “Bringing opera into people’s homes creates an intimacy it’s hard to achieve in the formal opera house,” says John Drummond, composer and director of one of the works to be performed at Olveston. “It allows for subtlety in acting and vocal delivery. The characters have to be believable in an everyday setting.”
Choosing the works has meant looking for operas that take place in a real world situation. Drummond’s Dearest Maurice takes place in the modern day doctor’s consulting room of Dr Chale. Chale keeps receiving letters addressed to ‘Maurice’ and hesitantly opens one to discover it is a love-letter from Flora. Soon he is reading them all, and this leads him into yielding to temptation, with potentially disastrous results. . .
The other opera in the double bill is Menotti’s well-known opera The Telephone. Here the action takes place in Lucy’s modern-day flat. She and her boyfriend Ben have a good relationship, marred only by Lucy’s reluctance to let the telephone ring without answering. There’s only so much of that that Ben can put up with. His resolution to the problem is a neat one.
Opera Otago has chosen young singers for these productions, to give them the opportunity to display their talents and gain experience.
Singing in Dearest Maurice are Ingrid Fomison-Nurse, who sang the Queen of Night in Opera Otago’s 2015 production of The Magic Flute, and Ben Madden, who sang Monostatos in the same production. Ingrid was a finalist in the Aria Competitions in 2015 and Ben studied at the Wanganui Opera School in January this year. The singers in The Telephone are Julia Moss-Pearson, who sang First Lady in The Magic Flute, and was a finalist in the Aria Competitions, and up-and-coming baritone Harry Grigg. Making her debut as director in The Telephone is well-known local opera singer Claire Barton.
Opera Otago at Olveston
8–10 April, 6–7.30pm
The Drawing Room @ Olveston Historic Home
Tickets: $40 General admission
Available from Olveston, 42 Royal Terrace
or on line: www.olveston.co.nz
Theatre , Opera ,
Operatic rom-coms hit all the right notes
Review by Kathryn van Beek 09th Apr 2016
You walk up the box hedge-edged drive, past tall walls rendered in Moeraki gravel and trimmed with Oamaru stone, past delicate leadlight windows. An elegant woman in black greets you at the door and leads you into the warm reception room before ushering you down a grand hall, past the internal telephone system and into the drawing room. Welcome to an evening of intimate opera at Olveston historic home, surrounded by fine art and all the trappings of Edwardian luxury.
The first opera, Dearest Maurice, composed and directed by John Drummond, is based on a short story called Shadows by English writer and Orwell contemporary W L George. In the story, Dr Ivan Chale (Benjamin Madden) moves into a new house where he receives a series of mysterious letters from a woman called Flora (Ingrid Fomison-Nurse). Madden delivers a delightfully cheeky performance as the mischievous doctor, and Fomison-Nurse’s stirring voice gives depth and poignancy to the quirky story.
During the intermission you walk down the stairs and past tiled walls into the mint green “drying room”, where you sip champagne and discuss the lengths people had to go to for love in the days before Tinder. A bell rings and you sneak a peek into the opulent dining room as you head back to your seat.
The second opera, Menotti’s The Telephone directed by Claire Barton, is about young soldier Ben (Harry Grigg) who has a very important question to ask his sweetheart Lucy (Julia Moss-Pearson)… if he can ever get her off the phone. Grigg and Moss-Pearson give charming performances as the young lovers – both have fine comedic chops and enchanting voices. Moss-Pearson’s voice tinkles like a waterfall as she laughs on the phone.
The evening is pleasantly short and deliciously sweet. You find yourself wishing that a fraction more thought had gone into the costumes and props so that they better complemented the timelessness of the surrounds. And then you chide yourself for being churlish. After all, it’s been a fabulous evening being entertained by opera’s young stars in a house fit for the most demanding of prima donnas.
Two Intimate Operas hits all the right notes.
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