There’s a reason why Biographica has eluded the curse of new opera

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This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes the return of a work by one of Australia’s greatest living composers, a far-from-ordinary string quartet concert, and a show that probes the psychology of celebrity culture from the inside out.

OPERA
Biographica ★★★★
Theatre Works St Kilda, September 23 to October 1

A manic Renaissance scientist’s life might seem like an atypical choice as subject matter for a contemporary Australian opera. Biographica centres on flawed genius Gerolamo Cardano, an inventor and mathematician whose brilliance and blemishes are explored through the utterly captivating music of Mary Finsterer.

Dion Mills in a scene from Mary Finsterer’s Biographica.Credit: Jodie Hutchinson

Most Australian operas are trumpeted in with a premiere season, only to drift off into musical obscurity, never to be seen again. First performed at Sydney Festival in 2017, Biographica has its much deserved return to the stage with Lyric Opera of Melbourne.

The production cleverly uses light, projections and mirrors and is composed for 11 musicians, five singers and one actor. Finsterer’s score is a marriage of renaissance and modern musical styles. There’s everything from 16th century vocalising to lush orchestration akin to a film score, to electronics – and it all works. Finsterer is one of Australia’s greatest living composers. Actor Dion Mills guides the 12 scenes from Cardano’s life with fervour, his energy more frenetic as Cardano’s mind unravels.

The production cleverly uses light, projections and mirrors. Pictured: Rachael Joyce, Belinda Dalton, Juel Riggall and Douglas Kelly. Credit: Jodie Hutchinson

All five singers are excellent. Rachael Joyce’s turn as Cardano’s dying daughter is particularly poignant, her pure soprano strong yet sweet. Douglas Kelly has the task of producing some serious tenor heft but does so admirably. The audience would have been none the wiser that impressive baritone Raphael Wong was stepping in for an ill colleague at the last moment, save for holding the score in a couple of scenes.

One issue, perhaps the result of the orchestra and conductor Patrick Burns’ placement at the back of the theatre, mixed with some amplification and up-close seating at Theatre Works, was the chorus’ tendency towards overwhelming volume.

As an art form, opera often grapples with how to make something old new again. Though we’ll always have Tosca and La Boheme, Biographica is high art that successfully reflects on the past while offering a glimpse of opera’s future.
Reviewed by Bridget Davies

MUSIC
Vision String Quartet ★★★★½
Music Viva Australia, Melbourne Recital Centre, September 23

A solitary seat onstage signalled that this was to be no ordinary string quartet concert. The four young men from Berlin who form Vision Quartet play entirely from memory, with only the cellist seated. Freed from music stands and seats, their physical flexibility is mirrored by their extraordinarily intense focus on the music.

Vision String Quartet play entirely from memory.Credit: Charlie Hardy

Such focus was immediately apparent in Bloch’s Prelude, B. 63, where violist Sander Stuart unfurled a soft-grained, modally infused melody that was to grow into an increasingly ardent outpouring that lay somewhere between romanticism and early 20th-century expressionism.

Contrasting explorations of folk music’s creative wellspring formed the rest of the program.

Bartok’s masterly modernist String Quartet No. 4 had a freshness born of striking rhythmic incisiveness and impressive dynamic control, especially in the muted Prestissimo second movement, where every detail could be heard in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.

An extended cello soliloquy in the central night music movement was exquisitely realised by cellist Leonard Disselhorst, neatly contrasted by the rustic humour of the fourth movement Allegretto pizzicato, which was unexpectedly reinforced when a broken string caused leader Florian Willeitner to retire briefly. Vibrant energy and astonishing unanimity in the finale balanced the equally striking opening.

Vision String Quartet put on a performance that was splendid and captivating. Credit: Charlie Hardy

Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 13 benefitted from the quartet’s strong grasp of its musical architecture, the first movement’s rhetorical flourishes and shifting tonalities empowered with shape and purpose. The plaintive slow movement focused on the empathetic playing of Willeitner and second violinist Daniel Stoll. Gypsy elements in the final movements came to life amid softer, lyrical diversions, all delivered with enormous verve and infectious good humour.

Encouraged by the quartet, these splendid, captivating performances were punctuated by audience applause after each movement. In a world of soundbites, hopefully there is still room in the concert hall for the power of appreciative silence.
Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Celebrity ★★
By Suzie J. Jarmain, La Mama, until Oct 1

Our obsession with celebrity has transformed – some would say degraded – the way cultural news is produced and consumed. This week alone I’ve read countless column-inches devoted to the endless catalogue of eccentricity that is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, the latest allegations of sexual assault against comedian Russell Brand, and the extreme forms of digital fandom known as stan culture.

Suzie J. Jarmain takes on various alter egos in Celebrity.Credit: Darren Gill

Academics are in on the action too. When Don DeLillo dreamt up a professor of Elvis studies in his 1985 dystopian novel White Noise, the joke soon became prophecy, and celebrity studies has been a reality since at least 2010. There’s even a peer-reviewed journal, publishing everything from essays on the marketing strategies of social media influencers to a Marxist analysis of Pippa Middleton’s buttocks.

The field is so vast, comrades, that academic and actor Suzie J. Jarmain struggles to make a performance lecture focused or coherent enough to delve with much depth into the multifaceted discourse around celebrity.

The lecture sections let this show down. Jarmain’s academic persona skitters around superficially, without developing sophisticated argument or analysis. Some pop culture references sound dated, and more contemporary developments and terminology – the parasocial relationship, for instance – don’t get much of a look in.

What does work better are Jarmain’s comedic alter egos – among them an aspiring theatre actor and a narcissistic influencer – which she uses to probe the psychology of celebrity culture from the inside out.

In Celebrity Suzie J. Jarmain probes the psychology of celebrity culture from the inside out.Credit: Darren Gill

Jarmain is at her sharpest when skewering the industry, showing how performers contort themselves to fit the celebrity mould. And there are moments of outlandish satire and histrionic wit, from a mockumentary 60 Minutes-style interview (co-starring Jim Daly) after a red-carpet assassination attempt, to the spotlight going out on a hopeful auditioning (“Out, damned spot!”) for the role of Lady Macbeth.

Still, Celebrity does feel pretty basic compared with other theatrical works invoking the subject – the gladiatorial pursuit of fame across theatre, film and digital media in Calpurnia Descending, or the trolling of a celeb as a springboard for social critique in Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner. The intellectual side of the show needs more rigour and refinement.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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