Some would call me a Rugby tragic … others would call me an opera queen.
I really enjoy both forms of entertainment and have often travelled thousands of kilometres to watch a Wallabies Rugby Union match or a performance of Madama Butterfly. A couple of years ago I relocated from Chiang Mai in the far north of Thailand to Brisbane, Australia. I lost a great deal in the move but gained so much more in the sporting and cultural worlds that are now available to me.
After all – where in Asia can one see a superb performance of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte, one week … and then dip into the depths of degradation and the transsexual Transylvanian titillation of Rocky Horror Show the following week …?
The annual September Brisbane Festival offers scores of great (and not-so-great) productions, and other companies latch onto this wondrous vehicle to showcase their own goodies.
Queensland Opera: Così fan Tutte
QPAC, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, is a work in progress.
It already includes several theatres and concert halls but is currently being enlarged and will soon be quite a spectacular venue in its own right … instead of being the simple concrete box it is now. However, concrete box or not, it is where Così soared to great heights.
Zoe Zenodi was conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra for this production, a delightful re-imagining of the classic 1790 comic opera, now featuring the delicious Samantha Clarke (* featured image, LEFT) and Anna Dowsley as Fiordiligi and Dorabella.
Così is essentially a six-person opera – with two leading ladies, their two lovers, a handmaid and an elderly chappie whose relationship to the rest is never really quite clear. There are a few members of the chorus, but the action lies with the principals.
Most operas have the heroine dying at the end (La Bohème, Tosca, Romeo and Juliet, Madama Butterfly …) but Così is such great fun – no one dies!
Hearts may be broken … yes … men are fickle, but woman are (according to the title) even more fickle: my lover would never recognise me if I changed my style of moustache, and if I were to woo YOUR woman while you were to woo MY woman and if the winds were to blow softly from the west … who would ever know … ?
The QO production set the merry tale in a beach resort – possibly Portofino of the 1930s or perhaps Florida of the 1960s. The set was simple – a couple of bedrooms with gauzy curtains, a terrace with a fountain, and elegant and casual beach wear replacing collars and ruffs and petticoats and furbelows.
- One day I will actually find out what a “furbelow” really is … It actually sounds a little uncomfortable
For me, the most sublime moment of the opera is when Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso sing Soave sia il Vento (Gentle blows the breeze) as the duplicitous Gugliemo (Jeremy Kleeman) and Ferrando (Brenton Spiteri) ostensibly sail off to fight in some far-off battle … only to return a short time later disguised and ready to seduce each other’s woman …
- Well … it’s opera … ain’t it …?
The song is one of my favourites and may be seen and heard by clicking or dipping into Mr Google and asking him to play Soave sia il Vento or try clicking on the link below (ignore the advertisements) and then enjoy the music:
In Peter Shaffer’s brilliant play Amadeus, Mozart pleads with his sponsor to imagine a song where two, then three, then four, five and six voices unite to make musical magic. Soave sia il Vento has just three voices … but its texture and musicality and beauty is beyond beauty.
And then there’s Rocky
If Mary Shelley worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John … then Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show might have been the result.
Dr Frankenstein may – or may not – have created a monster brought to life by the striking of a massive lightning bolt. But it is so much more fun to ignore the quasi transgender dressing seen in Così and to watch Dr FranknFurter create a man – in just seven days.
Two hundred and thirty years after Così hit the stage in Europe, and fifty years after Rocky landed on Earth for the first time, Rocky and FranknFurter and Brad and Janet and all the others landed on Queensland’s Gold Coast following a hugely successful UK and Australian tour.
It might be argued that both Rocky and Così are love stories where the love has been misdirected – but that would be a bit silly … as Rocky is just a great excuse for some great dancing, a bit of nudity, a bit of Transylvanian transsexuality … and a hell of a good time.
David Bedella, a noted UK artist, played FnF, and was supported by local actors Ethan Jones (Brad) from Queensland’s Gold Coast and Deidre Kho (Janet), a Singaporean / Australian performer.
The setting was simple but effective and allowed easy transitions between scenes, with key musical numbers piling on top of each other:
- Science Fiction / Damn it, Janet / Sweet Transvestite / Going Home
And, of course, Time Warp.
Throughout the show, the five- or six-piece band was very good, and when it came to Time Warp the tempo jumped into warp speed.
Behind me, a crinkly old maid and her partner were standing up and jumping and pumping and singing along … and thumping me on my head:
- Get up! Get dancing! Let’s do The Time Warp again!
I have been told that my dancing skills resemble those of a pregnant pterodactyl trying to give birth to a new dinosaur… so I sat still, sipped my G&T and refrained from telling her to jump to the left … or to do whatever she wished to do with her pelvic thrust…
And other attractions …
I loved the QO production of Così just about as much as I enjoyed being pummelled on the head by the old wrinkly (and these days I guess I am one of them) at Rocky as I did not bound up and bring my hips in for a pelvic thrust.
Then it was time for less energetic explorations …
HOTA
I called in again to HOTA – the striking brand new Home of the Arts on the Gold Coast. Opened just two years ago, HOTA has a permanent and a changing roster of exhibitions. Recently, Archie 100 was the major exhibition, featuring noted works that won or were Highly Commended in The Archibald Prize over the last century.
An annual prize for painting, the Archibald is generally considered to be the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. The winning artist is given a cash prize of AU$100,000 and gains considerable kudos. This year the winner was Julia Gutman, but the painting I found the most striking in the retrospective was the 2012 Prize Winner, Ben Quilty’s frightening and moving portrait of a nude Australian soldier – Captain S – who fought in Afghanistan.
Yatala Pie Shop
It seems a horrible segue from Afghanistan to meat pies … but when I was a lot younger, a trip to the Gold Coast was simply not complete without a stop at the Yatala Pie Shop – a place that argued it made the best meat pies in the State – or perhaps the Transylvanian Galaxy:
Let’s eat a meat pie again!
It’s just a cholesterol fix
And a blob of old stewed cow
Put your hands on your hips
And bring your choppers in tight
Let’s eat a meat pie again!
Heading North, after the HOTA visit, we are pestered by a visual cacophony of information telling us where to go for a meat pie: huge traffic signs along the motorway tell drivers which exit to take for a “famous Yatala Pie” … but poor old Syd’s Pies is located a bit further along the highway and is simply and ignominiously tucked away in a modest little strip mall with virtually no signage.
One day I will have to call in there to sample Syd’s wares … but on this journey I did duck off the motorway (ever obedient driver that I am) to Yatala for a chunky meat pied with peas and tomato sauce.
- It was very good – but I was spoiled for choice
I could have had (and with apologies to Monty Python) steak pies, steak and mushroom pies, steak and bacon pies, steak pies with bacon and cheese, steak and tomato and onion pies, pepper steak pies or a selection of tarts, turnovers, Pavlovas and vanilla slices … and Spam, Spam Spam and Spam …
One pie was enough for me, but there was a generously built customer at a nearby table, who polished off a large meat pie with peas, mashed potato and gravy and a huge bowl of French fries … and then started on a dinner-plate-sized caramel tart topped with about five centimetres of whipped cream …
- He was not completely ignorant of the need for sensible eating. He washed everything down with a litre-sized bottle of Diet Coca Cola …
Other Attractions Part Two …
The Brisbane Festival featured theatre, dance, cabaret, music, food and lighting installations – notably Lightscape at Brisbane’s City Botanic Gardens.
I also attended – briefly – a very disappointing dance performance by what is arguably Australia’s top indigenous performance group – the Bangarra Dance Theatre. I found the lighting and smoke levels in Yuldea impossible to accept. I simply could not see the dancers / performers – so I do not know if they were any good … of if the smoke and dark LX effects were designed to mask their mediocrity … which I am sure was not the case.
At the Princess Theatre in South Brisbane I endured A History of House – a performance by the brilliant Soweto Gospel Choir and by what I found to be an appalling DJ, apparently known as “Groove Terminator”.
The choir was excellent, but this pretentious DJ and his beat box dominated everything – everything, that is, except the appalling lighting. Some LX genius had decided that it would be a good idea to shine “blinders” into the auditorium for about 60% of the show. On the rare occasions when we could hear and see the Soweto singers the music was superb.
But for the most part we could not see them, and we could not hear them. The DOOF DOOF DOOF of the moronic DJ dominated everything and certainly terminated the evening for many audience members – some even deciding to leave the sinking ship earlier than I did.
Bite the Salamander
I have just come home from a brilliant performance of the stunning new performance piece Salamander … and in a couple of days I am off to Bite Club, which is going to be, apparently:
- A decadent extravaganza packed with awe-inspiring talent serving up acts blending circus, drag and burlesque
Perhaps a future travel tale will comment on these two shows, but I feel that Bite Club’s mixture of this and that will be a very appropriate finale for September’s few weeks of theatre … and where Cosi finally met Rocky.
……………………………………..
Journey September 2023
Text and photographs © Christopher Hall September 2023
Illustrations marked thus * from the Internet
…………………………………….
If you enjoyed this story please scroll down to see earlier stories and forward the blog address to your friends: www.hallomega.com
If you would like to receive automatic notification of future postings on this blog please click the FOLLOW button on your screen.
……………………………………..
If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight.
- Attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero – On Friendship
……………………………………..
hallomega 