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Category: Past Productions

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Past Productions

O Mensch!

O Mensch! Photo by Lisa Tomasetti
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O MENSCH!

Australian Premiere

In association with Sydney Festival

Music by Pascal Dusapin
Text by Friedrich Nietzsche

Restoring the voice to one of the mightiest minds in history, O Mensch! transforms 21 poems by Friedrich Nietzsche into a series of shattering musical declarations in French composer Pascal Dusapin’s intimate and inspired recent opera, and successor to Passion.

In a virtuoso performance by baritone and piano, audiences are plunged into the agonies and the ecstasies of this era-defining genius as fierce ideology collides with high emotion. A stark production directed by Sarah Giles and lit by lighting installation artist Katie Sfetkidis, O Mensch! features the indomitable baritone Mitchell Riley, who appeared in Sydney Chamber Opera’s …pas à pas – nulle parte… – for the 2014 Sydney Festival.

Director
Sarah Giles

Lighting & Set Design
 Katie Sfetkidis

Costume Design
 Charles Davis

Dramaturg
Dominic Mercer

Assistant Director
Danielle Maas

With
Mitchell Riley
Jack Symonds

Supported by
Goethe-Institut Australia 
Piano sponsored by Kawai Pianos Australia

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Track 8, 245 Wilson St Eveleigh

duration

60 minutes

Press Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★★
“a profound work…it exemplified that group’s ethos to perfection”
Bachtrack
★★★★★
“utterly compelling”
RealTime
★★★★★
“superbly integrated singing and acting”
Categories
Past Productions

An Index of Metals

An Index of Metal, Photo by Zan Wimberley
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AN INDEX
OF METALS

Australian Premiere

Music by Fausto Romitelli
Text by Kenka Lekovich

Video by Paolo Pachini & Leonardo Romoli
In association with Ensemble Offspring’

Immerse yourself in a furnace of the senses. This is how cult Italian composer Fausto Romitelli described his final work An Index of Metals, an ‘electric poem’ that explodes the possibilities of the art form.

New music innovators Ensemble Offspring join forces with SCO to tackle a work inspired by everything from ancient initiation rites to rave parties. Director Kip Williams (STC’s Macbeth, SCO’s The Lighthouse) meets Romitelli’s challenge with his own bold aesthetic. Virtuoso soprano Jane Sheldon, last seen in the shattering Exil, returns to the stage to perform this fiercely modern Australian premiere.

NOTE: This performance contains nudity. It is not recommended for patrons under 16 years of age.

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Kip Williams

Set & Costume Design
Elizabeth Gadsby

Sound Design
Bob Scott

Lighting Design
Ross Graham

Assistant Lighting Design
Alexander Berlage

Soprano
Jane Sheldon

Actors
Tom Burt
Christian Charisiou
Kevin Clayette
Blake Feltis
Richard Hilliar
Tom Mittelheuser

Instruments
Ensemble Offspring

Veronique Serret
James Wannan
Tyler J. Borden
Lamorna Nightingale
Ben Opie
Aviva Endean
Tristram Williams
Nigel Crocker
Joe Manton
Cat Hope
Zubin Kanga
Damien Ricketson

These performances of An Index of Metals by Fausto Romitelli are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Casa Ricordi of Italy

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

55 minutes

Press Reviews

Limelight
★★★★★
“more than the sum of its parts and well worth the experience.”
The Australian
“A thrilling and visionary work”
The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★★
“This is audacious, arresting and original work of the sort we have come to expect from these artists even as they retain the capacity to surprise”
Categories
Past Productions

Fly Away Peter

Fly Away Peter. Photo by Zan Wimberley
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FLY AWAY PETER

Presented by Sydney Chamber Opera, Carriageworks (Sydney) and Arts Centre Melbourne in association
with Melbourne Festival

Music by Elliott Gyger
Libretto by Pierce Wilcox

David Malouf’s novel Fly Away Peter is a contemporary classic. Elliott Gyger is an Australian composer at the height of his powers. They return to World War One in this centenary year to create a profound new contribution to Australian opera, with a libretto by SCO’s Pierce Wilcox.

Jim Saddler is a visionary young birdwatcher thrust into the nightmare of the Western Front. Fly Away Peter travels from a land of life to a panorama of horror through Jim’s voice of delicate insight.

This is a story of the Australian spirit that begins at peace, builds into tragedy, and ends in transcendence.

Conductor
 Jack Symonds

Director
 Imara Savage

Set & Costume Design
 Elizabeth Gadsby

Lighting Design
 Verity Hampson

Movement Director
 Lucas Jervies

Singers
Mitchell Riley
Brenton Spiteri
Jessica Aszodi

Instruments (Sydney)
James Wannan
Jaan Pallandi
Peter Smith
Alison Evans
Rainer Saville
Matthew Harrison
Alison Pratt

Instruments (Melbourne)
James Wannan
Emma Sullivan
Lloyd Van’t Hoff
Matthew Kneale
Tristram Williams
Jessica Buzbee
Peter Neville

Sydney Chamber Opera wishes to acknowledge the donors who made Fly Away Peter possible

Executive Producer
Kim Williams AM

Producers
Martin Dickson
Hon Jane Mathews AO
Prof. Di Yerbury AO

Associate Producers
Andrew Andersons AO
William Brooks & Alasdair Beck,
David Catterns QC
Jennifer Solomon

Production Friends
Stephen Burley SC
Rowena Cowley
Terry Matthews
Wendy Michaels

Production Supporters
Jim Alexander
Roger Cruickshank
Tony Jones
Josephine Key
Robert Mitchell

Watch the show reel

Fly Away Peter

Gallery
VENUES

Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
100 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

70 minutes

Press Reviews

The Australian
“An impressive achievement”
Limelight
“An unqualified triumph”
The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★★
“A work of beauty and meaning”
Bachtrack
★★★★★
“Memorable…An intense, symbol-rich reflection”
The Conversation
“Masterful”
Crickey
“A work of dramatic and musical integrity”
TimeOut
“Uncompromising vision”
Australian Book Review
★★★★★
“Intelligence, imagination, and fidelity to the work [makes] great theatre”
Partial Durations
★★★★★
“A triumph for contemporary opera”
Concrete Playground
“Changing how we see opera”
Categories
Past Productions

Mayakovsky

Mayakovsky, Photo by Zan Wimberley
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MAYAKOVSKY

World premiere
By Michael Smetanin & Alison Croggon

Vladimir Mayakovsky: poet, lover, revolutionary. Innovative Australian composer Michael Smetanin joins forces with award-winning writer and librettist Alison Croggon to tell the incendiary story of Stalin’s favourite poet.

Mayakovsky blends Russian Futurism with hypermodern electronica in a dizzying ride through the 20th century. Its epic canvas is populated by a parade of figures: lovers, apparatchiks, writers, radicals, and Uncle Joe Stalin himself. It begins with a voice from the future and ends in cataclysm. It is fierce, uncompromising, and strangely beautiful.

Sydney Chamber Opera’s world premiere production brings the pulsing energies of rebellion to the Carriageworks stage.

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Kat Henry

Set & Costume Design
Hanna Sandgren

Lighting Design
Guy Harding

AV Design
 Davros

With
Simon Lobelson
Jessica O’Donoghue
Sarah Toth
Lotte Betts-Dean
Mitchell Riley
Brenton Spiteri

Instruments
James Nightingale
Nicholas Russionello
Michael Wray
Michael Dixon
Rainer Saville
Matthew Harrison
Joe Manton
Stefania Kurniawan

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

95 minutes

Press Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★★
"Mayakovsky by Sydney Chamber Opera captures the manic anarchy of an unsustainable life"
Limelight
“Another feather in the cap…of one of Australia’s most adventurous opera companies”
The Australian
“Thrillingly theatrical”
Categories
Past Productions

His Music Burns

His Music Burns, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage
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HIS MUSIC BURNS

Australian premieres

A staged double bill

… pas à pas- nulle part… by György Kurtág
Into the Little Hill by George Benjamin

Appearing for the first time in the Sydney Festival, Sydney Chamber Opera is joined by Sydney Theatre Company resident director Sarah Giles to present a double bill of contemporary masterpieces.

György Kurtág’s musical meditation on a series of absurdist poems by Samuel Beckett, … pas à pas – nulle part …, transforms a single virtuosic performer into a whirlwind of energy.

Renowned playwright Martin Crimp warps the Pied Piper legend into a dark political tragedy, as George Benjamin’s dangerously beautiful score for Into the Little Hill lures the audience into a maze of sound and story.

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Sarah Giles

Set & Costume Design
Katren Wood

Lighting Design
Matt Cox

Singers
Mitchell Riley
Ellen Hooper
Emily Edmonds

Instruments
Timothy Brigden
Rebecca Gill
Kelly Tang
James Wannan
Heather Lloyd
Mee Na Lojewski
Thomas Rann
Steven Adler
Jane Bishop
Peter Smith
Natascha Briger
Susan Newsome
Simon Wolnizer
Colin Grisdale
Matthew Harrison
Rebecca Lagos

These performances of … pas à pas- nulle part… Op 36 György Kurtág are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Editions Musica Budapest of Budapest

These performances of Into the Little Hill by George Benjamin are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Faber Music Ltd of London

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 17, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

70 minutes

Press Reviews

Backtrack
★★★★★
"Outstanding performances by Sydney Chamber Opera at Sydney Festival"
Limelight
“A masterclass in dramatic economy and cohesion”
The Sydney Morning Herald
“Again, Sydney Chamber Opera has presented important modern works with brilliant economy, clarity and utterly engaging directness”
Categories
Past Productions

Exil

Exil, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage
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EXIL

Australian premiere

by Giya Kancheli

Internationally acclaimed soprano Jane Sheldon joins Sydney Chamber Opera to perform a transcendentally haunting monodrama, Exil. Contemporary Georgian composer Giya Kancheli originally conceived his 1994 song cycle as a concert work, not for the stage. A setting of Biblical Psalms alongside post-Holocaust poetry by Paul Celan and Hans Sahl, it is an abstract twentieth-century drama of the soul in the face of unspeakable horror.

Melbourne’s Adena Jacobs stunned audiences when she staged an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in 2012 for her company Fraught Outfit (restaged for Belvoir in August 2013) with The Monthly describing it as “stylishly austere, confronting and deeply intelligent.” Jacobs makes her music-lead theatre debut by staging Exil, creating a performance that is at once intimate and cosmic.

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Adena Jacobs

Set & Costume Design
Eugyeene Teh

Lighting Design
Katie Sfetkidis

Soprano
Jane Sheldon

Instruments
Lucy Warren
Emma Jardine
James Wannan
Thomas Rann
Steven Adler
Jane Bishop

These performances of Exil by Giya Kancheli are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Schott Music Ltd of Mainz

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Track 8, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

60 minutes

Press Reviews

Limelight
“Once again Sydney Chamber Opera bring something important and rare to the stage, proving there’s plenty of life in the artform yet.”
Bachtrack
★★★★★
“Undeniable power and poignancy”
The Sydney Morning Herald
“Punches above its weight”
Categories
Past Productions

Owen Wingrave

Owen Wingrave, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage
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Owen Wingrave

Australian Stage Premiere

Opera in two acts, Op. 85 by Benjamin Britten
Libretto by Myfanwy Piper

Benjamin Britten is the most important British composer of the twentieth century, and is the greatest composer of opera in English. Based on a Henry James ghost story, Owen Wingrave is a statement of Britten’s lifelong pacifism. Composed during the Vietnam War, it is the story of a young soldier from an eminent military family whose anti-war instincts lead him to rebel against his upbringing. Desperate to keep his would-be bride and prove he isn’t a coward, he is forced to confront the ghosts of his ancestry.

The music is Britten at his refined, luminous best, with influences ranging from Gamelan to twelve-tone techniques. Imara Savage returns to Sydney Chamber Opera to direct the work’s Australian stage premiere.

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Imara Savage

Set & Costume Design
Katren Wood

Lighting Design
Ross Graham

With
Morgan Pearse
Georgia Bassingthwaighte
Rowena Cowley
Emily Edmonds
Paul Ferris
Pascal Herington
Simon Lobelson
Kornelia Perchy

Boys’ choir
Boys from Trinity Preparatory School Choir

Mark Agyagasi
Nathan Fok
Massimo Ianni
Alan Kurien
Richard Lee
Shraven Suriyanarayanan
Peter Taurian

Movement ensemble
Tom Christophersen
Luke Holmes
Brenden Hooke
Heath Ivey-Law
Tim Kemp
Ryan Knight
Liam Nunan
Cody Ross
Guy Simon
Edward Skaines

Instruments
Rebecca Gill
Emma Jardine
James Wannan
Mathisha Panagoda
Steven Adler
Jane Bishop
Alex Fontaine
Peter Smith
Long Nguyen
Michael Wray
Emma Bolton
Milo Dodd
Joshua Hill
William Jackson
Stephen Whale

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

100 minutes

Press Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
“A compelling and tautly structured dramatic statement”
The Australian
“There was no weak link anywhere”
Limelight
“Potent, intimate music drama”
TimeOut
“A perfect marriage of form and content, and about as good as a night at the opera gets. ”
Categories
Past Productions

Climbing Toward Midnight

Climbing Towards Midnight, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage
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CLIMBING TOWARD MIDNIGHT

By Jack Symonds

2013 is the bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth, and opera companies around the world are performing his towering music dramas to mark the occasion. Sydney Chamber Opera has developed a more searching tribute: a living composer’s response to his controversial final work Parsifal.

Jack Symonds’ Climbing Toward Midnight is based on Act II of the Wagner, and it explores the aborted romance between the two ill-matched main characters, Parsifal and Kundry. It uses Wagner’s text, however, Symonds’ intimate chamber score is a totally new composition.

Climbing Toward Midnight is a modern parable of obsession and desperation and does not require prior knowledge of Parsifal. Staged by colourful Israeli-Australian director Netta Yashchin, it is a 21st-century reflection on Wagner’s complex legacy.

Conductor-Piano
Jack Symonds

Director
Netta Yashchin

Associate Director
Pierce Wilcox

Set & Costume Design
Jessica O’Neill

Lighting Design
Ross Graham

With
Mitchell Riley
Lucinda-Mirikata Deacon
Maya Gavish

Ensemble
James Wannan
Mee Na Lojewski
Peter Smith

Climbing Toward Midnight is co-commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Wagner Society in NSW.

Principal Sponsor: The Wagner Society in NSW
NIDA is a supporting partner of Sydney Chamber Opera

 

 

WATCH THE SHOWREEL

Climbing Towards Midnight, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

Gallery
VENUE

NIDA Parade Theatres
215 Anzac Parade, Kensington

duration

75 minutes

Press Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
“A company sparkling with ideas”
The Australian
“Simmers with emotional intensity”
Bachtrack
★★★★★
“Another fascinating production”
Categories
Past Productions

The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage
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THE LIGHTHOUSE

A chamber opera in a prologue and one act by Peter Maxwell Davies

Sydney Chamber Opera presents Peter Maxwell Davies’ 1979 opera The Lighthouse, a modern classic of the genre. Based on a true story, this haunting tale of three youthful lighthouse keepers’ isolated descent into madness and mysterious disappearance has all the psychological intensity and suspense to rival Britten’s The Turn of the Screw or Kubrick’s film The Shining.

With a charismatic all-male cast and virtuosic 12-piece chamber orchestra featuring honky-tonk and banjo, SCO tackles chilling music of “abundant atmosphere and menacing momentum” (The Guardian). In 75 electrifying minutes, the composer pushes the instruments and voices to their extremes, ratcheting up the tension in a terrifying climax.

Directed by young theatre sensation Kip Williams (Sydney Theatre Company’s Under Milk Wood  and the 2013 Romeo & Juliet), SCO’s atmospheric production focuses on psychological drama and the uneasy relationship between the three men, with a choreographed movement ensemble of interlocked bodies evoking the turmoil of the sea.

Photography by Louis Dillon-Savage

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
 Kip Williams

Set & Costume Design
Michael Hankin

Lighting Design
Nicholas Rayment

With
Daniel Macey
Mitchell Riley
Alexander Knight

Movement Ensemble
Hannah Barlow
Taryn Brine
Melissa Brownlow
Tom Christophersen
Celeste Furnell
Nick Gell
Courtney Gilbert
Joe Kernahan
Lana Kershaw
Joanna Keyte
Maeve MacGregor
Annabelle McMillan
Graeme McRae
Tim Reuben
Gareth Rickards
Guy Simon
Jasper Whincop

Instruments
Doretta Balkizas
James Wannan
Mee Na Lojewski
Mark Lipski
Jane Bishop
Peter Smith
Abbey Edlin
Simon Wolnizer
Matthew Harrison
Joseph Littlefield
Stephen Whale
Joshua Hill

Watch showreel

The Lighthouse, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

Gallery
VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

75 minutes

Press Reviews

The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★★
“A vital, self-questioning theatrical experience that goes to the heart of what opera ought to be”
The Australian
“A force to be reckoned with”
Bachtrack
★★★★★
“The company seems to have hit a winning formula”
Artshub
★★★★★
“Exceptionally well directed…You will not be able to look away for an instant”
Crikey
“A virtually unparalleled feat of theatre, faultlessly realised by this potent company”
Categories
Past Productions

Through The Gates

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THROUGH THE GATES

For one night only on Friday 31 August, Sydney Chamber Opera presents a collaboration with Australia’s most prestigious art festival, the Biennale of Sydney, in a new performance project that explores the art of songwriting in an immersive gallery setting, at the atmospheric Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay.

Created specially for the Biennale Bar, a pop-up bar in Pier 2/3 on Friday nights in August, ‘Through the Gates’ is a semi-staged song cycle that unfolds amid the dramatic installations of Belgian artist Honoré δ’O. Visitors can enjoy a drink and peruse the exhibition as they take in a selection of songs by some of history’s greatest songwriters, from Bach to Shostakovich. ‘Through the Gates’ is performed by three singers and three instrumentalists and is choreographed by Kip Williams, who returns to SCO fresh from directing Under Milk Wood for Sydney Theatre Company.

Conductor-Piano
 Jack Symonds

Director
 Kip Williams

Production Design
Michael Hankin

Lighting Design
 Nicholas Rayment

With
Anna Dowsley
Emily Edmonds
Mitchell Riley
Madeleine Slaughter
Matt McGuigan

Gallery
VENUE

Biennale Bar
Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay

duration

60 minutes