Love triangle rocks Maleny

Biggest Morning Tea in Beerwah

THE Local Beerwah hosted their second annual Biggest Morning Tea fundraiser on June 14, raising over $1000 to go towards the Cancer Council.

30 people attended the event, enjoying a range of refreshments and light snacks, tea themed games,

IT HAPPENS regularly at pop concerts, but it isn’t often that you hear audiences cheering and stamping their feet for 19th century Opera! That is exactly what happened at Maleny Community Centre last Sunday afternoon.

The performers were Maleny Singers and the Inspiration Project Choir, under Kim Kirkman’s expert baton.

The show was Pietro Mascagni’s short Italian Opera “Cavalliera Rusticana”, in which a love triangle in a small Sicilian village comes to a blistering denouement one Easter Sunday morning.

The Maleny Performing Arts Orchestra delivered on the demanding score, providing an atmospheric interpretation of the glorious melodies.

The chorus was strong and confident, never more than in the stirring “Easter Hymn”, and the principals carried the dramatic themes of the plot magnificently.

Guest soprano Vanessa West was a standout in the key role of Santuzza, and you could feel the audience holding their collective breath in her dramatic duets with Alfio (Ian Rix) and Turiddu (Colin Dunn).

Two more performances of the show, on June 17 and 18, received the same level of well-deserved enthusiasm.

It is truly exciting to see local amateur companies putting on shows of this quality, and says much for the state of musical endeavour on the Sunshine Coast.