Reviews

So Ottorino Respighi wrote an opera? Who knew! Obviously the powers that be at Victorian Opera did, and what a delight it was.

As the work was originally written for a marionettist, VO employed puppeteers to create the various characters with singers in street clothes singing beside them. Sometimes they would mirror each others’ movements. With so many animals featured, this worked very well.

It's always refreshing to see contemporary Australian plays being produced in community theatre – and while David Williamson's work is reliably witty, satirical and thought provoking – this piece is possibly one of his darker efforts.

Calvin Berger, by Barry Wyner, makes its Western Australian premiere at Roleystone Theatre, with first-time directors Tyler Eldridge and Madeleine Shaw steering a very impressive production.

Loosely based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, it takes the original story, sets it in a high school and makes the most of teen insecurity, angst and first love. It features four extremely capable teenaged performers who work beautifully together. 

Lyric Opera continues to challenge the box office by performing little known operas, in this case an Australian premiere. Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson et Dalila is well known, but I had never heard of this delightful one-acter.

More of an operetta than an opera, with quite a bit of dialogue spoken in English, this was a light weight comedy with a flimsy plot. Written some fifteen years before Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado, it reflected the fascination at that time with everything Japanese.