Dianne dumped a deluge, now this diva will storm the outback
Considered by many to be the world's best coloratura (or quick and virtuosic) soprano, Sumi Jo made her operatic debut as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1986 and would go on to be famous for her Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute and the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.
She has appeared at La Scala, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, and even once sang in the arrivals hall of Washington Dulles International Airport for an audience of dubious customs officers.
'I was very young, and I'm a tiny little Asian girl, and they simply couldn't believe that I was able to sing opera,' she recalls with a laugh.
For the Festival of Outback Opera, Sumi Jo will perform under the stars at a cattle station near Longreach, and on a prehistoric plateau called the Jump-Up at the Age of Dinosaurs Museum outside of Winton.
The dinosaur museum was cut off for days in the floods and spectacular waterfalls formed, but the location, with its fossils and life-size creature models, is ready to host its signature concert on May 15.
'What they're doing is really, really special, so I was very happy that they invited me,' Sumi Jo says.
'Sumi Jo is a phenomenal artist,' says Nolan. 'She's renowned for her technique and her capacity to sing extraordinarily complex melodies.
'Despite being one of the great divas of our time, she is remarkably down to earth, with a sense of fun and a commitment to ensuring the audience are having a good time. I think she will fit right into the festival.'
The festival is in its fifth year and firmly established as a leading event in outback Queensland, drawing visitors from far and wide as well as enthusiastic locals.
In addition to the two major concerts, there is a lavish lunch, an Opera Ball, a trivia night, a community singalong, and a celebration of opera and country music titled Are You Lonesome Tonight?
As an added attraction this year, the recent flooding means the region's usually arid landscapes will be lush and green.
'You will never see this region look as beautiful as it will be in the next couple of weeks,' White says.
'It'll be full of wild flowers, the birdlife has come back … The outback is open for business.'
While she has not sung in the outback before, Sumi Jo is no stranger to Australia, having performed at the Sydney Opera House many times.
Loading
Late Australian soprano Joan Sutherland was an enormous inspiration to her, and she recorded her 1994 album Carnaval under the baton of Sutherland's husband Richard Bonynge.
'As soon as we finished the recording, [Sutherland] invited me to her home in Switzerland,' Sumi Jo recalls.
'She cooked dinner and said she was quite jealous – 'oh my God, Richard never gave these songs!' – obviously she was making a joke.
'I became a coloratura because of her, because of her recordings.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
15 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
These are the best and worst moments from the 2025 Tony Awards
Best placement: Cynthia Erivo's balcony bit It's become an awards-show staple: The host schleps up to the balcony seats to mingle with us regular folks and maybe tell a joke or two. Erivo's ascent at Radio City was worth the climb. In a night of a thousand costume changes, her pink candy wrapper of a dress was a zany delight. And the atmosphere up there lent itself to deft comedy – about her height, about Abraham Lincoln and, best of all, about why sitting far away was the best place to watch Jonathan (He Spits When He Sings) Groff perform: 'So please welcome the man who makes everyone wet …' – SH Best nightclub act: Groff as Bobby Darin Showmanship is distinct from acting. It's an elusive, unfairly distributed quality: You have it, or you don't. Groff's dynamite medley – Mack the Knife, That's All and Once in a Lifetime – proved he has it. In this context, merely delivering a song well isn't enough — you have to sell it. It's something that Darin, the subject of Groff's current vehicle, Just in Time, had. At Radio City on Sunday, Groff moved like a man possessed by the need to entertain, straddling a seated Keanu Reeves' head and driven by the rhythm of mad bongos. Please, let him host the Tonys next year. – EV Loading Worst eyeful: Too many pixels This season, virtual scenery reached critical mass on Broadway, in Sunset Boulevard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Redwood and Maybe Happy Ending. The Tony Awards telecast followed suit, ditching traditional flats, drops and clunky wagons in favour of digital backgrounds that ultimately looked cheesy. Literally cheesy-looking in the case of the excerpt from Operation Mincemeat, a totally old-tech musical performed during the ceremony in front of yellow-washed screens that made the actors look as if they'd fallen into a vat of fondue. Why would the producers of a theatre awards show make such an anti-theatrical choice? For the same reason some of the less artful shows do: It's faster, cheaper and, for audiences who have to be pried away from their own screens, perhaps more enticing. – JG Best homecoming: Asian and Asian American artists win big It was a historic evening for a troupe of Asian and Asian American theatre artists, including Nicole Scherzinger, Francis Jue and Darren Criss, who all won performance Tonys. Marco Paguia also received a Tony for his Buena Vista Social Club orchestrations, and Hue Park won for writing the lyrics and co-writing the book for Maybe Happy Ending, the evening's breakout success. In their speeches, several of the artists made reference to feeling left out or ignored before finding a home in the theatre. Scherzinger, who noted her Filipina, Native Hawaiian and Ukrainian ancestry, said, 'I always felt like I didn't belong, but you all have made me feel like I belong and I have come home at last.' – ALEXIS SOLOSKI Best sell: Making the plays pop For all their glamour, and their genuine recognition of talent, the Tonys are an industry advertisement — meant not only to sell tickets in New York, but also to give the nominated shows a life beyond Broadway. Musicals, with their colourful numbers, have always had an advantage in making their case for that. Plays, by comparison, have tended not to translate. But there was real charm to the way this year's best play nominees were introduced. With a framed screen of video clips playing upstage, a Tony-nominated star from each show spoke with an insider's affection while giving a synopsis of it: Marjan Neshat for English, Sadie Sink for John Proctor Is the Villain, Cole Escola for Oh, Mary!, Harry Lennix for Purpose, Laura Donnelly for The Hills of California. It was easy to imagine would-be producers and audience members out there, their interest suddenly piqued. – LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES Best 'sing-off': Cynthia Erivo's My Way It's always a delicate matter: how to usher off winners whose speeches go too long. A clever step up from canned elevator music: Erivo singing a passage from the standard My Way, popularised by Frank Sinatra. When Kara Young, accepting her award for Purpose, was still in the thick of her extensive list of thank-yous to those who had made her back-to-back featured actress in a play wins possible, it was a gentle balm to hear 'And now, the end is near / And so I face the final curtain …' – SARAH BAHR Loading Worst placement: Preshow spot for book and score awards Not every scene deserves a spotlight, but relegating the book and score awards to the Tonys preshow felt at least a little rude. What is a musical without its songs? Or its occasionally effortful patter between songs? (And is dance really an also-ran, too?) At the 2025 Tonys, a win for Maybe Happy Ending was practically assured after its wins for book and score, though viewers watching only the main broadcast would never have known this. Couldn't we swap out a drug ad or a few host jokes to show these prizes on the main stage? – AS Best farewell to cynicism: Hester's open heart In the World War II caper Operation Mincemeat, Jak Malone's big song, Dear Bill, is nearly six minutes long. It's a major reason he won a featured-actor Tony, because that is the moment when his character — a middle-aged British intelligence secretary named Hester — opens her wounded heart to the audience. 'They weep for her,' Malone said in his speech, 'they invest in her, they love her for her old romantic heart. And if you watched our show and found yourself believing in Hester, well, then I am so glad to tell you that, intentionally or otherwise, you might have just bid farewell to cynicism, to outdated ideas, to that rotten old binary, and opened yourself up to a world that is already out there in glorious Technicolor and isn't going away anytime soon.' – LCH
The Age
15 hours ago
- The Age
These are the best and worst moments from the 2025 Tony Awards
Best placement: Cynthia Erivo's balcony bit It's become an awards-show staple: The host schleps up to the balcony seats to mingle with us regular folks and maybe tell a joke or two. Erivo's ascent at Radio City was worth the climb. In a night of a thousand costume changes, her pink candy wrapper of a dress was a zany delight. And the atmosphere up there lent itself to deft comedy – about her height, about Abraham Lincoln and, best of all, about why sitting far away was the best place to watch Jonathan (He Spits When He Sings) Groff perform: 'So please welcome the man who makes everyone wet …' – SH Best nightclub act: Groff as Bobby Darin Showmanship is distinct from acting. It's an elusive, unfairly distributed quality: You have it, or you don't. Groff's dynamite medley – Mack the Knife, That's All and Once in a Lifetime – proved he has it. In this context, merely delivering a song well isn't enough — you have to sell it. It's something that Darin, the subject of Groff's current vehicle, Just in Time, had. At Radio City on Sunday, Groff moved like a man possessed by the need to entertain, straddling a seated Keanu Reeves' head and driven by the rhythm of mad bongos. Please, let him host the Tonys next year. – EV Loading Worst eyeful: Too many pixels This season, virtual scenery reached critical mass on Broadway, in Sunset Boulevard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Redwood and Maybe Happy Ending. The Tony Awards telecast followed suit, ditching traditional flats, drops and clunky wagons in favour of digital backgrounds that ultimately looked cheesy. Literally cheesy-looking in the case of the excerpt from Operation Mincemeat, a totally old-tech musical performed during the ceremony in front of yellow-washed screens that made the actors look as if they'd fallen into a vat of fondue. Why would the producers of a theatre awards show make such an anti-theatrical choice? For the same reason some of the less artful shows do: It's faster, cheaper and, for audiences who have to be pried away from their own screens, perhaps more enticing. – JG Best homecoming: Asian and Asian American artists win big It was a historic evening for a troupe of Asian and Asian American theatre artists, including Nicole Scherzinger, Francis Jue and Darren Criss, who all won performance Tonys. Marco Paguia also received a Tony for his Buena Vista Social Club orchestrations, and Hue Park won for writing the lyrics and co-writing the book for Maybe Happy Ending, the evening's breakout success. In their speeches, several of the artists made reference to feeling left out or ignored before finding a home in the theatre. Scherzinger, who noted her Filipina, Native Hawaiian and Ukrainian ancestry, said, 'I always felt like I didn't belong, but you all have made me feel like I belong and I have come home at last.' – ALEXIS SOLOSKI Best sell: Making the plays pop For all their glamour, and their genuine recognition of talent, the Tonys are an industry advertisement — meant not only to sell tickets in New York, but also to give the nominated shows a life beyond Broadway. Musicals, with their colourful numbers, have always had an advantage in making their case for that. Plays, by comparison, have tended not to translate. But there was real charm to the way this year's best play nominees were introduced. With a framed screen of video clips playing upstage, a Tony-nominated star from each show spoke with an insider's affection while giving a synopsis of it: Marjan Neshat for English, Sadie Sink for John Proctor Is the Villain, Cole Escola for Oh, Mary!, Harry Lennix for Purpose, Laura Donnelly for The Hills of California. It was easy to imagine would-be producers and audience members out there, their interest suddenly piqued. – LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES Best 'sing-off': Cynthia Erivo's My Way It's always a delicate matter: how to usher off winners whose speeches go too long. A clever step up from canned elevator music: Erivo singing a passage from the standard My Way, popularised by Frank Sinatra. When Kara Young, accepting her award for Purpose, was still in the thick of her extensive list of thank-yous to those who had made her back-to-back featured actress in a play wins possible, it was a gentle balm to hear 'And now, the end is near / And so I face the final curtain …' – SARAH BAHR Loading Worst placement: Preshow spot for book and score awards Not every scene deserves a spotlight, but relegating the book and score awards to the Tonys preshow felt at least a little rude. What is a musical without its songs? Or its occasionally effortful patter between songs? (And is dance really an also-ran, too?) At the 2025 Tonys, a win for Maybe Happy Ending was practically assured after its wins for book and score, though viewers watching only the main broadcast would never have known this. Couldn't we swap out a drug ad or a few host jokes to show these prizes on the main stage? – AS Best farewell to cynicism: Hester's open heart In the World War II caper Operation Mincemeat, Jak Malone's big song, Dear Bill, is nearly six minutes long. It's a major reason he won a featured-actor Tony, because that is the moment when his character — a middle-aged British intelligence secretary named Hester — opens her wounded heart to the audience. 'They weep for her,' Malone said in his speech, 'they invest in her, they love her for her old romantic heart. And if you watched our show and found yourself believing in Hester, well, then I am so glad to tell you that, intentionally or otherwise, you might have just bid farewell to cynicism, to outdated ideas, to that rotten old binary, and opened yourself up to a world that is already out there in glorious Technicolor and isn't going away anytime soon.' – LCH
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Sky News AU
Queen Elizabeth II's first cousin Lady Marina Windsor announces surprise engagement to boyfriend of two years Nico Macauley
Lady Marina Windsor has announced her engagement to her boyfriend of two years, Nico Macauley. The first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, 32, took to Instagram on Sunday to share the happy news through a series of snaps with her now-fiancé. Lady Marina beamed beside Nico, 32, who is the great-grandson of William Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose. She showed off her new silver engagement ring, which features a small, smooth square onyx gemstone at its centre, with detailing on either side. Lady Marina proudly displayed the band in another snap of her at a dimly lit restaurant where she looked elegant in a white dress. The philanthropic executive and her beau celebrated their engagement with a glass of champagne. Lady Marina cut a casual figure in a yellow dress and leaned into her fiancé, who wore a navy jumper, as the pair toasted to their wedding. "Very happy!" the third cousin of Prince William and Prince Harry wrote of becoming the future Mrs Macauley in the caption. While royal family members congratulated the soon-to-be husband and wife, others were taken aback by their seemingly sudden engagement. Lady Marina's younger sister, Lady Amelia Windsor, 29, expressed her joy, writing: "Yippeeee!" Her aunt, Lady Helen Taylor, who is the daughter of Prince Edward and Katharine, Duchess of Kent, said she was the "happiest auntie". "Happiest auntie in the whole world - love u so best best news," she wrote. Lady Marina is seldom seen in public with Nico and was recently spotted at a charity event for Elephant Family, a not-for-profit dedicated to protecting the Asian elephant from extinction, in London without him. The third cousin of Prince William and Prince Harry attended the star-studded charity bash alongside King Charles, Queen Camilla, Princess Beatrice, actor Ed Westwick and his wife, actress Amy Jackson, as well as Brazilian footballer Ronaldo Nazario and his wife, model Celina Locks. Nevertheless, Nico routinely makes an appearance in loved snaps of the couple on Lady Marina's Instagram. Last week, they were photographed embracing while sitting on a stone wall in Connemara, western Ireland, with two pints beside them. In 2008, Lady Marina was 25th in line to the British throne when she was removed from the line of succession. The news, which made headlines, came after the then 16-year-old was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Act of Settlement 1701, this disqualified her. In 2015, the succession to the Crown Act was changed to allow Catholics to marry into the royal family without losing their place in the line, though Lady Marina's position was not restored.
