Opera

Pinchgut Opera’s contemporary production of Médée is musically glorious, if a little static in its staging.

Aided by the spectacular backdrop of Sydney Harbour, this production of The Phantom of the Opera is easy to love.

Opera, says Barrie Kosky, is all about bringing the dead back to life – as will be seen in his Adelaide Festival production of The Golden Cockerel.

The Sydney Chamber Opera discovers a new intimacy in its filmed performance of Leoš Janáček’s feverish song cycle.

With the Covid-19 lockdown forcing Sydney arts precinct Carriageworks into voluntary administration, the embattled cultural sector is bracing for worse to come.

Sydney Chamber Opera’s Breaking Glass comprises four exciting new works, in which Australian women composers reimagine the myth of Odysseus, the story of the night parrot, and works by Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood.

Barrie Kosky’s peripatetic career has led him to work throughout Australia and Europe, before finally establishing a true connection with Berlin. Still, for the Melbourne-born theatre and opera director, nothing says “home” like a rehearsal room. “It just happened that theatre discovered me, and performance and music discovered me, because the very same time that I started to think, ‘Who am I? How does this relate to me?’ and felt that disconnectedness, was the very same time I was experiencing music: Mahler symphonies or puppet shows or musicals or opera. And it was very linked.”

Elijah Moshinsky’s interpretation of Verdi’s tragic masterpiece La Traviata has been wowing Opera Australia audiences since the ’90s. The latest iteration – both visually rich and lovingly handled by its stars – doesn’t let down the canon.

Neil Armfield’s stark but powerful Ring delivers Wagner’s masterpiece as a triumph of the Australian stage, as good as could be imagined anywhere.

An inquiry into arts funding is waiting in the wings, but most of the major players are ducking the spotlight.