The Nose

Opera buffs have the opportunity to see the most extraordinary production of a contemporary work staged at a level of extravagance and wit utterly incongruous with the small number of performances in the season. Ex-pat Director Barrie Kosky, now resident artist leader of the Komische Oper Berlin, has managed to pull off a production that meshes  jokes about the Rooty Hill RSL with surreal scenes of dancing noses.

The opera, first staged in 1930, commences with a pompous bureaucrat Platon Kovalov complaining about how much the hands of his barber Ivan Iakovlevitch smell.  He wriggles deliciously in the barber’s chair as his face and head is shaved.

The next morning the barber’s wife is baking bread when she discovers a nose embedded in the dough. Meanwhile Kovalov wakes up - recovering from a hangover - worried about a pimple on his face but is shocked to discover that his nose missing.

So you get the picture - that this is a very silly story which is sublimely suited to Barrie Kosky’s passion for shocking audiences. It is hard to pick which nose I liked best (pardon the pun); the one which was flung into the audience, the ugly snouts which were attached to the motley of characters, the tap dancing nostrils, or the giant sniffer which was hoisted on a giant hook?

Incongruous images swirl around the stage.  Heavily bearded men with steep curly hair run around in tight red underpants showing off their legs and high heels. In another scene they don fur coats and suspenders. The women’s costumes are more modest but equally extravagant.

The Nosewas composed by Shostakovich when he was 20. There are no tunes which stick in your head as you leave the opera, but the swirling joyous opera tingles with delightful motifs under the baton of Andrea Molino.

Two of the male leads, Platon (Martin Winkler) and Ivan (Sir John Tomlinson), are from the original production staged last year at Covent Garden and they bring great wit to their roles. The rest of the cast and excellent ensemble are locals. Antoinette Halloran shines as Praskovia and Kaneen Breen has a hilarious combination of roles - District Police Inspector and Eunich.

When I scanned the lavish production it was hard to understand how Opera Australia could stage it and only program five performances.  The program notes reveal that the costs are also being shared by companies in London, Berlin and Madrid. This international team has provided the ultimate antidote for those jaded from yet another production of La Boheme/Carmen/La Traviata.

David Spicer

Photographer: Prudence Upton