OPERAMANIA

OPERAMANIA
Moscow Novaya Opera. Conductor: Andrey Lebedev. Artistic Director: Valery Raku. Stage Director: Alexey Veiro. Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane. 28 April 2013

The last night of Operamania’s Australian tour proved what an outstanding success the visit of the Moscow Novaya Opera Company has been. It was the first time a Russian Opera Company had toured Australia and if last night’s reception, with its multitudinous curtain calls, proved one thing it will not be the last.

Operamania was basically a program of “Operas Greatest Hits”, popular ballet specialties, with symphonic music thrown in for good measure. It was performed by ten soloists, four guest ballet stars from the Imperial Russian Ballet, a 45-piece orchestra, and all done against a video-collage background of Russian paintings. The concept was not new. Sergei Diaghilev first conceived a program of music, ballet and opera a century ago when he presented his “Russian Seasons” in Paris which also brought together paintings by Russian artists.

The orchestra under the baton of Andrey Lebedev was excellent, playing with passion, skill and brio, while the soloists were exemplary. In an evening of highlights it was hard to pick the best, but there was no doubt tenor Oleg Dolgov’s  Nessun dorma (Turandot) overwhelmingly thrilled the audience, likewise his La donna e moblie from Verdi’s Rigoletto. Elizaveta Soina’s reading of Casta diva (Norma) was in the bravura class while Elena Terentieva splendidly negotiated Mozart’s showy but difficult Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen from The Magic Flute.

Singing as an ensemble, the ten soloists were impeccable and exacting in the musical demands of Va sossopra il mio cervello (The Italian Girl in Algiers). Equally as thrilling were the ballet sequences; Yaraslava Araptanova was an enchanting Dying Swan, and with Alexander Volkov danced a superb Grand Adage from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, and the composer’s most famous Piano Concerto No 1 (Op. 25 Movement), in the hands of young pianist Katerina Kolpakova was ‘pure magic’. It was a phrase that described the whole evening.

Peter Pinne

Images: Rossini - The Italian Girl in Algiers: “Va sossopra il mio cervello” (Elizaveta Soina, Anton Vinogradov, Yaroslav Abaimov,Andrey Fetisov, Tatiana Tabachuk, Alexander Popov and Galina Koroleva) and Verdi -  Sicilian Vespers: “Mercé dilette amiche” (Elena Terentieva, Galina Koroleva, Yaroslav Abaimov).

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