WA Opera returns

Winds of change

The mainstage of His Majesty’s Theatre will be full of riotous colour and exuberance – just what we need after lockdown.

Jan Hallam reports.

Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Mike Hoban

Music lovers in WA have been trickled fed live music since the state moved into phase four of the pandemic restrictions. From October 24, WA Opera flings open the doors of His Majesty’s Theatre for the first time in eight months onto Mozart’s glorious soundscape of Cosi Fan Tutte. It is just a few set-ups into the first act when hearts will be lost to perhaps the most perfect opera trio ever written, Soave sia il vento – May the wind be gentle. If people were told to go home after that number, they would leave satisfied. But luckily there’s a lot more where that came from.

The winds have not be so unkind as to blow WA Opera’s 2020 season completely off course. The company has been incredibly creative in bringing opera and local talent to the community with such innovations as its digital opera, The Telephone, video casts with Ghost Light Opera, lunchtime concerts, Standing Room Only at Government House Ballroom, even singing classes for kids and adults. But it also had a stroke of luck having taken possession of the Cosi sets from the acclaimed Glyndebourne Opera production before the world shutdown. The original production was directed by UK theatre doyen Nicholas Hytner and had been revived by Bruno Ravella. While Bruno is confined to the UK, Margarete Helgeby Chaney will be his able assistant on the ground here at The Maj. Singers, too, needed to be shuffled but the singing talent pool is deep here in the West so the winds have been favourable there as well.

Medical Forum spoke to soprano Prudence Sanders, a WAAPAtrained WA singer who is the only original cast member to make it through to Cosi 2.0 and she is one singer very keen to get herself on stage. She plays Fiordiligi, one the two lasses caught up in a trick to test their fidelity to their fiances. “When everything shut down, I had a lot of work cancelled but it meant I could focus solely on Cosi. It's such a big role that preparation is more akin to marathon training. “I once ran a marathon in Edinburgh during my 10 years studying and working in the UK. That training was months and months of pacing yourself. “Fiordiligi is a massive role physically and mentally and I had the luxury of going upstairs every day while my mum looked after my children for three hours. It was really fantastic. “But after months and months, I’m very excited to finally join my cast members and work on the next level. It's very much an ensemble piece.” Joining her are Ashlyn Tymms in the role of Dorabella, Paul O’Neill as Ferrando, Sam Roberts-Smith as Guglielmo, James Clayton as Don Alfonso, and Penny Shaw as Despina. The synopsis of the opera, devised by one of Mozart’s favourite librettists Lorenzo Da Ponte, is one to make the blood boil in much the same way as Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing can – men playing games with women’s lives. But it is a comedy and it playfully stretches the bounds of credibility so far it is difficult to sit with fluffed up feathers for too long. And then there’s the music. It really is special. Welcome back WAO!