Il Tabarro

You would be hard pressed to find a more exciting outdoor location for an opera set on a barge on the River Seine, than the one selected by the Sydney Festival.

This production is staged on board the Carpentaria – an historic light ship built in 1917 – the same year Puccini finished work on the music, on the outdoor deck of the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour.

The vessel swayed alarmingly in the lead up to the opening, giving concern as to whether the singers might be thrown overboard. The tide at Sydney’s Darling Harbour calmed, but the temperature rose when the six splendid singers entered the skinny vessel for the gritty opera.

There was not a lot of room for the cast to move around on board the ship, and the sightlines were also a little awkward for the audience, having to switch attention from the vessel to a neighbouring battleship which had the sub-titles projected onto it. It was a bit like being at a tennis match.

A stunning moment was when the opera moved to the top of a lighthouse.

Il Tabarro is set in the cut-throat world of Parisian sea-transport a century ago, which was moved artistically a few decades later to depression era Sydney.

The owner of the vessel,Michele (Simon Meadows), is struggling with his relationship with his wife Giorgetta (Olivia Cranwell), when one of his workers Luigi (James Egglestone) becomes entangled in a love triangle.

There are no blockbuster Puccini hit songs in the opera but there were enough splendid arias and duets to excite the audience. The three leads Meadows, Cranwell and Egglestone each had a moment to shine.

The orchestration is sumptuous and the atmospheric sounds of the Seine River worked wonderfully in the harbour setting. Hats off to the Victorian Opera chamber orchestra under the baton of Simon Bruckard, and the sound designer Tony David. The final dirty sound of the brass was most memorable.

Director Constantine Costi first staged the opera in a warehouse in 2016 and the transition to an outdoor setting was a musical triumph.

The two other unusual aspects of the production are also worth mentioning. Sixty minutes is a great length for an opera and the free admission a generous gift to festival goers.

David Spicer

Photographer: Jacquie Manning