Win an exclusive opening night experience at The Fairy Queen*
To celebrate Pinchgut's Opera's debut at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, you have the chance to experience Purcell's The Fairy Queen in true VIP style.
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The Age
4 days ago
- The Age
‘Radical creator' takes a ‘kaleidoscopic look at love' in Shakespeare-adjacent opera
'The scenarios that are presented in The Fairy Queen are a kind of kaleidoscopic look at love in every aspect,' she says. 'It's all about love and marriage, loss, sorrow, unrequited love – every possible angle. The universal experience of love.' Indeed, one of the opera's most affecting numbers begins with the line, 'If love's a sweet passion/why does it torment?' The libretto, thought to be by Thomas Betterton, is best described as Shakespeare-adjacent. No named characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream appear in it. Instead, we have personifications of the seasons, night and sleep, and fairies and green men. There's a comic scene for a rustic couple, Corydon and Mopsa, traditionally sung by bass and countertenor. 'What felt more interesting for me, for this production, was to allow The Fairy Queen to stand very much by itself,' Jones says. 'It's got a fantastic structure, it really works as a theatrical piece. Although it's a series of vignettes, they are structured together in a very clever way. Purcell was brilliant – he died when he was 36 – but he was such an interesting, curious, people-loving person. He was amazing.' British director Jones is known as an innovative theatre-maker who often incorporates video in her shows. Her recent production of Peter Grimes for Gothenburg Opera in Sweden was praised in The Observer for its devastating impact, and noted Jones as a 'radical creator who uses video to original effect'. She works with a team of designers and technicians at her creative studio, Lightmap. This is her first project with an Australian company, although in 2017 she brought her production of The Dark Mirror – a version of Schubert's Winterreise – with Ian Bostridge, to the Perth Festival. Pinchgut was lucky to secure Jones' services; last December she took up the newly created role of associate director of the Royal Opera. Jones has set this production of The Fairy Queen in a modern city that could be Sydney, with the action taking place across a 24-hour period. A wide video screen will reach across the back of the stage. 'The production will be very visual – there are lots of changes, lots of colour,' she says. 'The first production of The Fairy Queen almost bankrupted the theatre because they put everything in it. We can't do that but we can use the technology at our disposal to do something that's very visual. We've included dance and other elements of baroque theatre but we've just made it very contemporary.' Loading At the Royal Opera, Jones is charged with bringing in new commissions, new artists and new ways of addressing opera as an art form, working out of the Linbury Theatre. '[Opera] has been with us 300 years, it's not going away,' she says. 'It's an art form, not a medium. Media do tend to come and go – we may have something different to television in our domestic lives in the future. Whereas opera and painting and poetry and play-making, they are not the same. 'Companies have felt the squeeze but the work will live on and shift into something that is much more central to our cultural life. Sometimes when something is under threat you become more active in protecting it.' Purcell's music for The Fairy Queen was all but lost until its rediscovery in 1901. Growing interest in early music led to its revival. In 2003 the barely year-old Pinchgut Opera chose The Fairy Queen for its second production, after making its debut the previous year with Handel's Semele. Helyard says he has chosen to return to The Fairy Queen to show how far this small but musically rigorous company has come. 'Back then we weren't quite as stylistically confident with playing and singing this kind of music,' he says. 'This seemed like the perfect piece to go to the Ros Packer Theatre, our premiere there, and to revisit Purcell.' Back in the rehearsal room at the Drill Hall, the wedding party is in full swing. Mezzosoprano Anna Fraser rises from her seat, mock-drunkenly staggers to centre stage and begins to sing: 'Hark! How all things in one sound rejoice …' Almost on cue, rain starts to fall, like a thousand fairies drumming on the iron roof.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Radical creator' takes a ‘kaleidoscopic look at love' in Shakespeare-adjacent opera
'The scenarios that are presented in The Fairy Queen are a kind of kaleidoscopic look at love in every aspect,' she says. 'It's all about love and marriage, loss, sorrow, unrequited love – every possible angle. The universal experience of love.' Indeed, one of the opera's most affecting numbers begins with the line, 'If love's a sweet passion/why does it torment?' The libretto, thought to be by Thomas Betterton, is best described as Shakespeare-adjacent. No named characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream appear in it. Instead, we have personifications of the seasons, night and sleep, and fairies and green men. There's a comic scene for a rustic couple, Corydon and Mopsa, traditionally sung by bass and countertenor. 'What felt more interesting for me, for this production, was to allow The Fairy Queen to stand very much by itself,' Jones says. 'It's got a fantastic structure, it really works as a theatrical piece. Although it's a series of vignettes, they are structured together in a very clever way. Purcell was brilliant – he died when he was 36 – but he was such an interesting, curious, people-loving person. He was amazing.' British director Jones is known as an innovative theatre-maker who often incorporates video in her shows. Her recent production of Peter Grimes for Gothenburg Opera in Sweden was praised in The Observer for its devastating impact, and noted Jones as a 'radical creator who uses video to original effect'. She works with a team of designers and technicians at her creative studio, Lightmap. This is her first project with an Australian company, although in 2017 she brought her production of The Dark Mirror – a version of Schubert's Winterreise – with Ian Bostridge, to the Perth Festival. Pinchgut was lucky to secure Jones' services; last December she took up the newly created role of associate director of the Royal Opera. Jones has set this production of The Fairy Queen in a modern city that could be Sydney, with the action taking place across a 24-hour period. A wide video screen will reach across the back of the stage. 'The production will be very visual – there are lots of changes, lots of colour,' she says. 'The first production of The Fairy Queen almost bankrupted the theatre because they put everything in it. We can't do that but we can use the technology at our disposal to do something that's very visual. We've included dance and other elements of baroque theatre but we've just made it very contemporary.' Loading At the Royal Opera, Jones is charged with bringing in new commissions, new artists and new ways of addressing opera as an art form, working out of the Linbury Theatre. '[Opera] has been with us 300 years, it's not going away,' she says. 'It's an art form, not a medium. Media do tend to come and go – we may have something different to television in our domestic lives in the future. Whereas opera and painting and poetry and play-making, they are not the same. 'Companies have felt the squeeze but the work will live on and shift into something that is much more central to our cultural life. Sometimes when something is under threat you become more active in protecting it.' Purcell's music for The Fairy Queen was all but lost until its rediscovery in 1901. Growing interest in early music led to its revival. In 2003 the barely year-old Pinchgut Opera chose The Fairy Queen for its second production, after making its debut the previous year with Handel's Semele. Helyard says he has chosen to return to The Fairy Queen to show how far this small but musically rigorous company has come. 'Back then we weren't quite as stylistically confident with playing and singing this kind of music,' he says. 'This seemed like the perfect piece to go to the Ros Packer Theatre, our premiere there, and to revisit Purcell.' Back in the rehearsal room at the Drill Hall, the wedding party is in full swing. Mezzosoprano Anna Fraser rises from her seat, mock-drunkenly staggers to centre stage and begins to sing: 'Hark! How all things in one sound rejoice …' Almost on cue, rain starts to fall, like a thousand fairies drumming on the iron roof.
West Australian
23-05-2025
- West Australian
What to Watch: Our Medicine, And Just Like That, Pee-wee As Himself, Bono: Stories Of Surrender and Dept. Q
Leah Purcell narrates this fantastic doco series, which takes viewers behind the frontline of Australia's medical services — but from a very different perspective. The series focuses on the excellent work being done by First Nations healthcare professionals across Australia, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, as well as practitioners of traditional medicine, all working to improve healthcare outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The doco crew was granted unique access to various teams, embedded with the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS), Queensland Ambulance Service, Cairns Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital — they also spent time with the folks at Jalngangurru Healing in Western Australia. In episode one, we learn how patients are being treated using traditional practices by local healers in Fitzroy Crossing. Then it's over to a busy ER on the other side of the country to check in with the many and varied cases coming through Cairns Hospital's doors. As the documentary points out, life expectancy for First Nations peoples in Australia is approximately eight years lower than that of non-Indigenous Australians, and it's great to see trials like the one being done in the Kimberley approaching issues in healthcare through a new lens. As Purcell says in the first episode, 'From maintaining and reviving cultural practices, to making their mark in our overburdened health services, these are the medical practitioners blazing a trail to better outcomes.' This is a brilliant insight into the work being done to make healthcare better — hats off to everyone involved. Matthew Goode stars as DCI Carl Morck, a once-brilliant detective battling some serious inner demons. He's been put in charge of a cold case department, set up as a PR stunt to distract from the failures of the Edinburgh police force he was once an integral part of. Along with his unusual basement-dwelling colleagues, he's reopening a case most would rather be kept forgotten. This is generating lots of early buzz — don't miss it. Pee-wee Herman was a huge part of our lives in the 80s and 90s — if you know anything about the comedian, real name Paul Reubens, you'll be aware of the reasons why he retreated from the spotlight. This doco, made with Reubens' approval before his death in 2023, attempts to paint a picture of who he was away from his cartoon persona, using interviews with the star and archival footage. But by the end, are we any closer to learning where Reubens ends and Pee-wee begins? Maybe not. And just like that, we're back again with Carrie and the gang for season three as they navigate this next chapter of their post-menopausal life in New York City. Thankfully, this time the ever-annoying Che Diaz isn't along for the ride. But Aidan is — whether you'll be pleased about this very much depends on where you sit in the Aidan-Carrie debate. Still enjoying this show and won't hear a bad word against it — anything that celebrates women-of-a-certain-age living their best lives, I can very much get onboard with. 'These are the tall tales of a short rock star,' says Bono in this doco, which made its debut at this year's Cannes Film Festival. It sees the Irish rocker solo on a stage, riffing about his family, his life and his astonishingly successful career. It's a very different setting to the mega-arenas Bono is used to, and between his anecdotes, the star performs 'unplugged' renditions of some of his biggest songs accompanied by harp and cello. One for fans, of which there are plenty.
