Bringing back a sense of spectacle
Tenor Kanen Breen was busy last week. On Wednesday he played three distinctly different comic roles in Opera Australia's Tales of Hoffmann. And on Friday night he sang the role of Nadir, the hero of The Pearlfishers, an exhausting lyric tenor role that includes the duet In the depths of the temple, with his friend and mentor Zurga (Lucas de Jong).
This was a free performance, enthusiastically received by more than 12,000 people. Breen has a steely but sure sound and sang with intense poetic feeling.
The opera was voted last year by ABC listeners as their most operatic work. It is performed more often in Australia than in any other country and it is easy to see why.
While Nadir and Zurga harbour a secret passion for the Brahmin priestess Leila (Hye Seoung Kwon), they are also blood brothers and Zurga's feelings for Nadir - even in betrayal - are clearly more than platonic. This is an opera about betrayed mateship.
I initially thought that Hye Seoung Kwon's Leila was sweet but reedy. But I was wrong. She was mastering being miked. Her performance revealed an exquisite and fragile artistry, underlining beautiful articulation and intelligent phrasing.
There are anomalies in staging a full production in the Music Bowl. Ann-Margret Pettersson's original production reworks the traditional libretto. In her interpretation, Zurga becomes a French administrator in India and notions of colonial power are introduced into the fairytale. But outdoors, such complexities are largely lost because of the distance from the stage. Matters are further complicated by subtitled screens on either end of the Bowl.
The effect is screen versus stage, image versus music, drama versus spectacle. You can't do subtle stage effects or explore complex interpretations.
Nevertheless, it was the perfect Melbourne celebration of the cosmopolitan and the popular. Orchestra Victoria played with lyrical passion under Emmanuel Joel-Hornak and the full moon drifted above, right on cue.
