Mad Scenes with Jessica Pratt

Why was I asked to cover this one-night-only event? Australia’s Jessica Pratt, one of the world’s great sopranos, singing a selection of operatic Mad Scenes in the original languages and backed by the 50-strong Opera Australia Orchestra? It’s not really Stage Whispers territory.

Well, it’s a great opportunity for me to see the noted Ms Pratt, and to bask in the glory/horror of these staples of Opera: the scenes where our heroine goes completely over-the-top mad.

The Concert Hall is full, nearly 2000 people packed in, and the OA Orchestra is looking good, all dolled up in their matching black and white outfits. Conductor Johannes Fritzsch arrives and away we go with a great Verdi overture.

Jessica Pratt enters in white garb, gloriously festooned in gold bits, and delivers a Bellini piece in Italian to hushed approval. She uses the limited space between the orchestra and audience well, before exiting right for a fast change to a blue Princess Dress and a Donizetti piece. 

Now she exits stage left while the huge band strikes up a Cavalleria Rusticana intermezzo... and now she enters as a bride with a large-size see-through veil, a knife and a bleeding wound under her breast. 

This is Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, her number one leading role. Sometimes the veil becomes a baby in her arms. The vocal seems amazingly complicated, but it’s in another language. 

After Interval she returns, now with jet-black hair and, dressed in a combination of black and dark grey, she delivers Bellini’s I Puritani.

The orchestra plays some of Verdi’s excellent Macbeth ballet music, and she returns in a striking red costume with black scrolls to sing Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix. Now she’s obviously mad, striding about. 

After wild applause, Jessica returns for a final time. Off goes the last Mad Scene costume, revealing a smart modern outfit. 

Time for a treat: the orchestra starts... oh, God... it's only Glitter and Be Gay from Candide by Leonard Bernstein, and it’s going to be sung in English! She swings into it and the orchestra is with her. She is amazing.

By the end of the song the entire Concert Hall is pumping and Jessica Pratt is their queen.

Frank Hatherley

Photogtrapher: Marco Borrelli