Category: Past Productions

His Music Burns

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.

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Sarah Giles

Set & Costume Design
Katren Wood

Lighting Design
Matt Cox

Performers

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

Acknowledgements

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

"Outstanding performances by Sydney Chamber Opera at Sydney Festival"

“A masterclass in dramatic economy and cohesion”

“Again, Sydney Chamber Opera has presented important modern works with brilliant economy, clarity and utterly engaging directness”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

Exil

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.

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Adena Jacobs

Set & Costume Design
Eugyeene Teh

Lighting Design
Katie Sfetkidis

Performers

Soprano
Jane Sheldon

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

Acknowledgements

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

“Once again Sydney Chamber Opera bring something important and rare to the stage, proving there’s plenty of life in the artform yet.”

“Undeniable power and poignancy”

“Punches above its weight”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

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.

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Imara Savage

Set & Costume Design
Katren Wood

Lighting Design
Ross Graham

Performers

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

Acknowledgements

Gallery

VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

100 minutes

Press Reviews

“A compelling and tautly structured dramatic statement”

“There was no weak link anywhere”

“Potent, intimate music drama”

“A perfect marriage of form and content, and about as good as a night at the opera gets. ”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

Climbing Toward Midnight

Climbing Towards Midnight, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

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.

Creative Team

Conductor-Piano
Jack Symonds

Director
Netta Yashchin

Associate Director
Pierce Wilcox

Set & Costume Design
Jessica O’Neill

Lighting Design
Ross Graham

Performers

With
Mitchell Riley
Lucinda-Mirikata Deacon
Maya Gavish

Ensemble
James Wannan
Mee Na Lojewski
Peter Smith

Acknowledgements

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

Play

Climbing Towards Midnight, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

Gallery

VENUE

NIDA Parade Theatres
215 Anzac Parade, Kensington

duration

75 minutes

Press Reviews

“A company sparkling with ideas”

“Simmers with emotional intensity”

“Another fascinating production”

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General Information

We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

The Lighthouse

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

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Kip Williams

Set & Costume Design
Michael Hankin

Lighting Design
Nicholas Rayment

Performers

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

Acknowledgements

Watch showreel

Play

The Lighthouse, Photo by Louis Dillon-Savage

Gallery

VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

75 minutes

Press Reviews

“A vital, self-questioning theatrical experience that goes to the heart of what opera ought to be”

“A force to be reckoned with”

“The company seems to have hit a winning formula”

“Exceptionally well directed…You will not be able to look away for an instant”

“A virtually unparalleled feat of theatre, faultlessly realised by this potent company”

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General Information

We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

Through The Gates

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.

Creative Team

Conductor-Piano
Jack Symonds

Director
Kip Williams

Production Design
Michael Hankin

Lighting Design
Nicholas Rayment

Performers

With
Anna Dowsley
Emily Edmonds
Mitchell Riley
Madeleine Slaughter
Matt McGuigan

Acknowledgements

Gallery

VENUE

Biennale Bar
Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay

duration

60 minutes

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General Information

We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

In the Penal Colony

IN THE PENAL COLONY

An opera by Philip Glass
Libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer
Based on the original story by Franz Kafka

A distinguished visitor arrives in an unnamed place to witness an execution. The procedure is expected to be efficient, quiet and anonymous, administered by an elaborate machine. But torture is a messy business, and not everything goes according to plan. At what point does the silence of the visitor become immoral? When does non-intervention become a crime?

With the Australian premiere of In the Penal Colony, Sydney Chamber Opera presents the first Philip Glass opera ever to be performed in Sydney. Glass, the pioneering American minimalist and cult figure who celebrates his 75th birthday this year, set this powerful and confronting short story by Franz Kafka to music in 2000. The highly charged claustrophobia of Glass’s hypnotic repetition resonates powerfully with Kafka’s nightmarish vision of imprisonment and execution. Featuring just two singers, one actor and a string quintet, In the Penal Colony is as intimate and intense as opera gets.

Creative Team

Conductor
Huw Belling

Director
Imara Savage

Set & Costume Design
Michael Hankin

Lighting Design
Verity Hampson

Performers & Ensemble

With
Paul Goodwin-Groen
Pascal Herington
Anthony Hunt

Chamber ensemble

Acknowledgements

Gallery

VENUE

The Parade Playhouse, Parade Theatres
Anzac Pde, Kensington

duration

75 minutes

Press Reviews

“It is a tribute to the Sydney Chamber Opera… that in Philip Glass’s 75th year one of this true innovator’s operas has finally been performed in Sydney”

“Yet another phenomenal success for the relatively new, edgy and vibrant Sydney Chamber Opera. Long may they flourish…”

“As gripping as it is haunting”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

I Have Had Enough

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH

A staged double bill

J. S. Bach: Cantata No. 82 “Ich Habe Genug”
Jack Symonds: Nunc Dimittis (world premiere)

“I Have Had Enough” is a daring new chamber opera that combines a J S Bach classic with a contemporary Australian composition to create an entirely original work based on the biblical Canticle of Simeon. It is a staging of two versions of the Canticle: one from the eighteenth century, Bach’s Cantata No. 82, “Ich Habe Genug,” and one from today, Jack Symonds’s “Nunc Dimittis.” In each half, a nameless character is about to die, and “I Have Had Enough” probes this mysterious process.

Director Kip Williams joins Sydney Chamber Opera to stage a bold and contemporary conversation between these two non-operas. Unfolding in the Parade Playhouse, NIDA, “I Have Had Enough” is a rumination on death, a collision between eighteenth-century Christianity in Bach’s anonymous libretto and twenty-first-century existentialism in Symonds’s adaptation of that libretto, and an examination of our history of cruelty and our unending battle for power.

Creative Team

Conductor
Huw Belling

Director
Kip Williams

Set & Costume Design
Emma Kingsbury

Lighting Design
Nicholas Rayment

Performers

With
Anna Dowsley
Mitchell Riley
Alexandra Aldrich
Michele Durman
Gabriel Fancourt
Amanda McGregor
James Wannan

Acknowledgements

“Nunc Dimittis” is co-commissioned by the Copyright Agency Ltd Cultural Fund and Rev Dr Arthur Bridge AM on behalf of Ars Musica Australis. This production is proudly supported by Professor Emerita Di Yerbury AO.

Watch the trailer

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I Have Had Enough, Photo by Kathy Lu

Gallery

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The Parade Playhouse, NIDA
Anzac Parade, Kensington

duration

70 minutes

Press Reviews

“An object lesson in the creation of arresting theatre”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Past Productions

The Cunning Little Vixen

THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN

By Leoš Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen is a classic modernist opera. A multi-layered parable of the inevitable cycles of nature, birth and death, it is striking yet poignant. Jonathan Dove’s adaptation for chamber forces exposes Janacek’s remarkably modern conception: tessellations of lithe and sinuous fragments of music drive the circle of life.

Julie Goodwin, acclaimed star of high-profile national tours of West Side Story (2010-11) and The Phantom of the Opera (2007-9), leads a cast of sexy foxes, bitchy hens and diva dogs in director Kate Gaul and conductor Jack Symonds’s lean, modernist production, performed in a new, tasteful, English translation. Vixen has been known to inspire romantic nostalgia and nature-worship but here Gaul and Symonds are bringing her into the twenty-first century.

“I can’t sit and watch all this conservatism… I’d rather bury myself alive”- Vixen

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Kate Gaul

Set & Costume Design
Hanna Sandgren

Lighting Design
Luiz Pampolha

Performers

With
Julie Goodwin
Bryony Dwyer
Alexander Knight
Simon Gilkes
Ashley Giles,
Anna Dowsley
Sylvie Humphries
Jared Lillehagen
Elli Green
Sarah Briety
Daniel Nicholson
Maria Hemphill
Elissa Tran
Marisa Panzarin
Agnes Sarkis
Amanda Stephens-Lee

Children’s Chorus
Orchestra

Gallery

VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh

duration

1 hour 40 minutes
plus interval

Press Reviews

“Lively minds, promising voices and a clear musical and theatrical vision”

“The Vixen is cunning and so is this production.”

“A big ol’ wintertime hug"

“Sydney Chamber Opera continues to give opera a makeover”

“The cast impresses across the board”

Past Productions

Notes From Underground

notes from underground

Opera in seven scenes by Jack Symonds
Libretto by Pierce Wilcox
(after the Dostoyevsky novella)

Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” is daring and wild. Set in colourful, torturous St Petersburg, it is a pessimistic indictment of the weaknesses of human will, containing one of the most extraordinary central characters in nineteenth century literature. Spiritually destitute, this man rages manically about himself, and then goes on to flesh out his soliloquy with anecdotes about the events ‘aboveground’ leading to his eventual retreat ‘underground’ as he rejects society and human relationships.

Acclaimed director Netta Yashchin stages a bold new operatic adaptation of “Notes from Underground” by Jack Symonds, to a libretto by Pierce Wilcox, for Sydney Chamber Opera. This adaptation finds the links between the underground tirade and the aboveground narrative and draws them simultaneously together. We can’t read the novel’s two halves at once, but music can fold time; it can fuse it, freeze it. Through music we can hear the two halves together, and so the opera is born: past and present in confrontation.

Creative Team

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Netta Yashchin

Lighting Design
Charles Coy

Choreography
Dymphna Carew

Performers & Ensemble

With
Mitchell Riley
Morgan Pearse
Anna Yun
Nicole Thomson
Anthony Hunt
Anthony Taufa
Matthew Hopkins
Daniel Nemes
David Hansen

Acknowledgements

Gallery

VENUE

Cell Block Theatre
Forbes St, Darlinghurst

duration

90 minutes

Press Reviews

“From every point of view – artistic, musical, theatrical and logistical – this was an ambitious undertaking, impressively realised…Gripping and earthy…it was an auspicious launch”

“A brave and triumphant debut for Sydney Chamber Opera.”

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

HIS MUSIC BURNS

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

EXIL

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Owen Wingrave

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

CLIMBING TOWARD MIDNIGHT

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

THROUGH THE GATES

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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and perform. We honour their elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

IN THE PENAL COLONY

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