OPERAMANIA

An invention of Valery Raku and Moscow’s respected Novaya Opera, Operamania is a manic if artful rush through the highlights of the world’s best operas, ballets and symphonies. Ten exceptional singers and four ballet dancers leap through tragedy, comedy and lyricism, backed by an onstage orchestra of 44 musicians. And it’s all squeezed onto the City Recital Hall stage. 

Never mind the boring bits. Never mind all those absurd plots. This kaleidoscopic experience mashes together extracts which last barely minutes, knitted together with an engaging theatricality and some showy costumes.  Projected images from Russian artists add more colour and another slim thread of continuity.

Operamania simultaneously bills itself as a tailor-made introduction for the first time opera-goer and an irresistible feast for those who know their music.  Given the virtuosic abilities on quick display, both are true. Purists can always test themselves by identifying the works – but naming the four squeezed into the Mozart Melody segment of three minutes was beyond me. Highlights of the highlights included Puccini’s Nessun dorma (Oleg Dolgov); The Dying Swan (melancholically danced by Yaroslava Araptanova); Gounod’s stirring Romeo (Yaroslav Abaimov); Bellini’s Norma (Elizaveta Soina) and heaps of Russian pride in some mesmerising Tchaikovsky. There’s a preference though for the “funny” bits of Mozart, Rossini and Verdi and, while even odder without context, these Russians prove adept at light-hearted carry on. Sure, the dancers don’t have room to fly and the whole experience feels like a sugar overload, but you can’t beat the quality.

Martin Portus

Images: Elena Terentieva in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann and Mozart's The Magic Flute.