Drama clouds opera 2015 season launch
The unceremonious departure of artistic director Joseph Colaneri from WA Opera has overshadowed the company's launch of its 2015 subscription season.
Details of the season were posted by the company on its Facebook page last week as Colaneri was wrapping up his final performances of Il Trovatore before flying back home to New York on Sunday.
Colaneri would not comment and directed enquiries through his agent in New York, saying only that he was too busy conducting the WA Symphony Orchestra in the pit for Verdi's tragic opera.
His three-year term, which began in mid-2012, included planning and casting the 2015 season.
But he is understood to have been frustrated that he could not fully implement his artistic vision.
His associate conductor and chorus master Joseph Nolan, an acclaimed organist who runs the choir at St George's Cathedral, also concluded a one-year term with WA Opera after the final performances of Il Trovatore at the weekend.
Announcing Colaneri's appointment in 2012, former WA Opera chairman Warwick Hemsley said the regular Metropolitan Opera conductor brought new ideas, international networks and a new perspective on developing singers and audiences. Former Anglican Dean of Perth John Shepherd, a music scholar and big supporter of Colaneri and Nolan, said the New Yorker had been "certainly by far the most astute and capable conductor of opera in Australia" and it was very disappointing that he had left.
"I'm assuming there may have been dissatisfaction with some aspect of their position but if you make someone an artistic director, what they bring to the table in terms of that artistic direction should be valued and implemented in so far as finances will permit," Dr Shepherd said.
WA Opera chairman Terry Bowen said recently the departure of the two key artistic staff had nothing to do with last month's Healthway- Carmen smoking controversy, which sparked headlines around the world.
It had been mutually agreed and planned for many months in line with the long-term direction of the company, Mr Bowen said.
The WA Opera board was meeting last night to determine the best structures for the company to select new artistic staff. A new head of music and artistic director will be announced early next year.
The 2015 season, which goes on sale today, has two productions at His Majesty's Theatre, starting in July with Mozart's comic opera The Marriage of Figaro from director Neil Armfield. It will star multi-Helpmann Award winner Emma Matthews and be conducted by Antony Walker.
The year ends in October- November with David McVicar's Royal Opera House Covent Garden production of Gounod's Faust, conducted by Brad Cohen and starring Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Patrick O'Halloran and Natalie Aroyan.
Matthews also features in Rossini's comic opera The Barber of Seville, the free City of Perth Opera in the Park performance on March 6, conducted by former WA Opera artistic director Richard Mills.
WA Opera also will provide the chorus for the PIAF season of Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly, co-produced by the English National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera. It also is associated with the Barking Gecko/Australian Opera production of Kate Miller-Heidke's The Rabbits.
The company this week revealed it was collaborating with the Victorian Opera and New Zealand Opera on a new opera by Kiwi musician and former Split Enz frontman Tim Finn.
The Star Navigator, an opera for orchestra, traditional Tahitian instruments, seven principals and a chorus, is based on the true story of Tupaia, a Polynesian navigator who sailed from Tahiti to Batavia with Capt. James Cook on the first voyage of the Endeavour in 1770.
"The idea of writing a large-scale work contrasting ancient Polynesian star navigation with the more scientific method used by Cook has been with me for some time," Finn said. "I had realised that in the extreme confines of life aboard a sailing ship, competing realities could play out intensely as theatrical drama."
After a workshop in Auckland in March, it is hoped The Star Navigator will figure in WA
Opera's 50th anniversary season of 2017.
'The idea of
writing a large-scale work contrasting ancient Polynesian star navigation with the more scientific method used by Cook has been with me for some
time.' Tim Finn
