Platée – Pinchgut Opera (2021)

Alexandra Oomens and Max Riebl in The Loves of Apollo & Dafne (photo by Brett Boardman)

PLATÉE

MUSIC

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)

LIBRETTO Jacques Autreau (1657–1745)

revised for Rameau by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville (1715–1780) and Sylvain Ballot de Sauvot (1703–1760)

CAST

Kanen Breen Platée

Cathy-Di Zhang

Nicholas Jones

David Greco

L’Amour, La Folie

Thespis, Mercury

Momus

Adrian Tamburini A Satyr, Cithéron

Peter Coleman-Wright Jupiter

Cheryl Barker

Chloe Lankshear

Amy Moore

Juno

Clarine

Thalie

Cantillation Chorus Orchestra of the Antipodes

CONDUCTOR Erin Helyard DIRECTOR

Neil Armfield

DESIGNER Stephen Curtis

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR Shannon Burns

LIGHTING DESIGNER Alexander Berlage

VIDEO DESIGNER Sean Bacon

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Eugene Lynch

There will be one interval of 20 minutes following Act I. Sung in French with English surtitles. The performance will finish at approximately 9.45pm on Wednesday and Thursday, at 4.45pm on Saturday and 7.45pm on Sunday.

Platée was first performed at the wedding of the Dauphin Louis with Maria Theresia of Spain on 31 March 1745 at the Grande Écurie, Versailles, and received its Paris premiere in 1749. These are the Australian premiere performances. This production uses M. Elizabeth C. Bartlett’s performing edition of Platée RCT53 (Jean-Philippe Rameau Opera Omnia, Series IV, 10) published by Bärenreiter/Alkor Kassel and supplied by Clear Music Australia Pty Ltd, as their exclusive hire agents in Australia and New Zealand.

Platée is being recorded by ABC Classic for future broadcast. Any microphones you observe are for recording not amplification. Platée is being filmed in partnership with Australian Theatre Live for cinematic and digital release in 2022.

We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land: the Gadigal people of the Eora nation – the first storytellers and singers of songs. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present and emerging.

PLATÉE

WELCOME FROM PINCHGUT OPERA

After the enormous challenges of 2021, it seems somewhat miraculous to be writing this letter, welcoming you to our production of Rameau’s Platée. This production represents the jewel in the crown of the glittering array of events we had planned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pinchgut Opera this year. Due to the pandemic, some of our concerts had to be regretfully cancelled, but we are thrilled to be able to present for you one of Rameau’s greatest operas with an all-Australian cast and crew in a production directed by Neil Armfield, making his Pinchgut debut.

French society in 1745 was a perilous place where an ill-timed word or action might cause one to be “cancelled” at any moment and condescension, lies and humiliation were common tactics as people scurried for positions of power. Mockery and marginalisation were rife as society structured itself around a power system that threatened to fall apart under ever-widening inequalities. Sound familiar?

Platée is the Enlightenment opera for our time. In their biting satire, Rameau and Autreau hold up a mirror to the audience as we witness (and seemingly take part in) the cruel and utter humiliation of the gauche outsider, Platée, who – when all is said and done – is the only character who remains true and honest to herself and to others. It is Rameau at the height of his powers. Platée has polish, wit and sublime elegance in abundance. Rameau’s colourful score is full of the French Baroque’s greatest stylistic and decorative attributes.

Next year sees Pinchgut increasingly travel further afield from our opera and concert season in Sydney and Melbourne. From tours to Armidale and Newcastle, festivals in regional NSW and more concerts in Melbourne, to sojourns at UKARIA for the Adelaide Festival, in its 21st year Pinchgut continues to spread its wings.

Our 2022 season showcases two contrasting operas from the opposite ends of the 17th century. In Orontea we have yet another masterful libretto by the writer of Giasone, set by the great Italian composer Antonio Cesti. In summer 2022 we present the only opera the great Charpentier wrote for the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris: his tragic masterpiece Médée

Following on from our successful tour of Monteverdi’s Vespers, we present highlights from Monteverdi’s sacred collection Selva morale e spirituale (The Spiritual Forest) in addition to a superb selection of Vivaldi’s sacred music from his tenure at the all-female music school in Venice, the Ospedale della Pietà. For this concert we welcome back dear friend and Pinchgut alumna, Miriam Allan, one of the world’s greatest sopranos and Baroque specialists.

It is a great delight to share City Recital Hall with you today, and especially so after so many months when live performance was impossible. Many of you have supported Pinchgut with messages, donations, and words of encouragement. On behalf of the creative team and all the artists that we work with, I want to thank you for your enduring support as we continue to present for you the very best performances, in both live performance and digital recordings, of the finest operas and vocal music from the Baroque.

Erin Helyard Artistic Director

It is wonderful to welcome you back to the theatre after many months of lockdown when live performance ceased. At times there were moments when we didn’t know if we would be able to stage this ambitious and extraordinary work by Rameau with this iconic Australian cast and creative team. In true Pinchgut spirit, we carefully considered all the options and risks and made the bold decision to proceed. And as it turns out, Platée is the perfect production to rejoice in seeing each other again and celebrate Baroque opera and the magic of live performance.

Throughout this tumultuous period, we have been grateful to be able to rely on our wonderful donor family – whose generous and abiding support has enabled us to emerge from yet another lockdown to create this magnificent production for our audiences. Many of you have been with us since the very first productions and, as we celebrate our 20th year, our donor family remains a crucial part of ensuring our future.

The excitement at Pinchgut is at an all-time high after many months apart, coupled with the chance to finally bring together this brilliant creative and artistic team for the pinnacle of our 20th year celebrations.

During the lockdown period, we lost more than 11 weeks of vital ticket sales, so we have had a mountain to climb to make up lost ground. Thank you for supporting us by coming to see Platée

and we ask you to help us spread the word by telling your family, friends and work colleagues that Pinchgut is back with what will surely be the most exhilarating and entertaining night at the opera this year.

We would also like to thank the Arts Minister the Hon. Don Harwin MLC and the NSW Government, through Create NSW, who have provided crucial support to Pinchgut Opera and the arts industry throughout the lockdown period and as we emerge.

Throughout 2021 our digital platform Pinchgut At Home has been growing in both content and engagement with hundreds of viewers. We are pleased to partner again with Australian Theatre Live to film Platée, which will be released via Pinchgut At Home in 2022 and in cinemas around Australia. From all of us, thank you for your ongoing support and love for Pinchgut. We look forward to welcoming you back for our 2022 Season.

Cressida Griffith General Manager

Kanen Breen as Platée (photo: Marnya Rothe)

PLATÉE

Pinchgut Opera celebrates the beauty and breadth of emotions through music and the human voice.

Other companies do the more familiar operas and early music repertoire excellently; Pinchgut helps audiences discover something new.

Early opera is like wine: it comes in a fascinating variety of different styles, genres, tastes and colours. Before steamships, railroads and mass production, music thrived in widespread but localised centres of experimentation and refinement. As cities became more connected, operas became less varied and more standardised. Pinchgut Opera scours this period from opera’s birth to its flowering in the Baroque to bring you the very best masterworks from this dazzling and fertile time in music history. No one in Australia is better placed than the award-winning Pinchgut Opera to bring you these works – offering an experience true to the glory and spirit of the Baroque.

Pinchgut’s Opera Productions

2002 Handel Semele

2003 Purcell The Fairy Queen

2004 Monteverdi Orfeo

2005 Rameau Dardanus

2006 Mozart Idomeneo

2007 Vivaldi Juditha Triumphans

2008 Charpentier David et Jonathas

2009 Cavalli Ormindo

2010 Haydn L’anima del filosofo

2011 Vivaldi Griselda

2012 Rameau Castor et Pollux

2013 Cavalli Giasone

2014 Salieri The Chimney Sweep

2014 Gluck Iphigénie en Tauride

2015 Vivaldi Bajazet

2015 Grétry L’Amant jaloux

2016 Haydn Armida

2016 Handel Theodora

2017 Triple Bill: Rameau Anacréon Rameau Pigmalion

Vinci Erighetta & Don Chilone

2017 Monteverdi The Coronation of Poppea

2018 Handel Athalia

2018 Hasse Artaserse

2019 Monteverdi The Return of Ulysses

2019 Vivaldi Farnace

2021 Cavalli The Loves of Apollo & Dafne

2021 Rameau Platée

In 2021 we celebrate our 20th year and with Platée our 26th stage production. Since those first performances of Semele in 2002 we have grown in reach and number of performances. In 2014 we began producing two operas a year and this season the wickedly funny Platée has been paired with Cavalli’s Loves of Apollo & Dafne. More recently we have journeyed into concert repertoire, including acclaimed performances earlier this year of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Our creative response to the practical challenges of the pandemic saw the creation of A Delicate Fire, a groundbreaking opera-film featuring music by Barbara Strozzi.

We are forever grateful to you, our audience, who buy tickets and place your trust in us to lead you on a journey of musical discovery. And we especially thank our donors, whose support allows us to continue to present music that inspires, and the NSW Government through Create NSW that supports Pinchgut Opera through the Annual Organisation and Rescue & Restart Funding.

SUPPORTERS

THANKS TO

Pinchgut Opera is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Cathy-Di Zhang as L’Amour (photo: Marnya Rothe)

PLATÉE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Erin Helyard Conductor,

Harpsichord

Erin Helyard has been acclaimed as an inspiring conductor, a virtuosic and expressive performer on the harpsichord and fortepiano, and a lucid scholar who is passionate about promoting discourse between musicology and performance.

He graduated in harpsichord performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with first-class honours and the University Medal. He completed his Master’s degree in fortepiano performance and a PhD in musicology with Tom Beghin at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal.

As Artistic Director and co-founder of Pinchgut Opera and the Orchestra of the Antipodes, he has forged new standards of excellence in historically informed performance in Australia. Under his direction, Pinchgut won Best Rediscovered Opera (2019) for Hasse’s Artaserse at the International Opera Awards in London, as well as the Best Opera category at the Helpmann Awards for three consecutive years (2015–2017).

He has received two Helpmann awards for Best Musical Direction: one for a feted revival of Saul for the Adelaide Festival (2017), the other for Artaserse (2019). And together with Richard Tognetti, he won an ARIA Award for Best Classical Album in 2020.

Erin Helyard regularly appears as a collaborator with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and as a conductor he has distinguished himself in dynamic performances with the Sydney, Adelaide, Tasmanian and Queensland symphony orchestras, the Australian Haydn Ensemble, and as a duo partner on historical pianos with baritone David Greco and pianist Stephanie McCallum. In 2018 he was recognised with a Music and Opera Singers Trust Achievement Award (MAA) for contribution to the arts in Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. 22nd Pinchgut opera production

Neil Armfield Director

Neil Armfield AO is joint artistic director of Adelaide Festival and cofounder of Belvoir Theatre, where he was the inaugural artistic director for 17 years, directing more than 50 productions with particular focus on Australian Indigenous theatre and plays by Patrick White, David Hare, Ibsen, Gogol and Shakespeare. His work in theatre includes Cloudstreet (Belvoir, UK’s National Theatre and a world tour); The Book of Everything (Australia, New York); The Judas Kiss (in Australia and with Rupert Everett in the UK and US); Things I Know To Be True (Belvoir); I’m Not Running (National Theatre); and The Secret River (Australian tour and National Theatre); and with Geoffrey Rush: Diary of a Madman (Russia, Australia, New York), Exit the King (Australia and on Broadway) and King Lear (Sydney).

In opera, he has directed the premieres of Alan John’s Frankie and The Eighth Wonder, Graeme Koehne’s Love Burns, and Brett Dean’s Bliss and Hamlet (Glyndebourne and Adelaide Festival). He has also directed Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Ariadne auf Naxos, Jenůfa, Katya Kabanova, The Makropulos Secret, The Cunning Little Vixen, Sweeney Todd, The Turn of the Screw, Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Grimes and Der Ring des Nibelungen, for companies including English National Opera, Royal Opera House, Chicago Lyric Opera, Zurich Opera, Bregenz Festival, Opera Australia, Canadian Opera, Welsh National Opera, Washington National Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

His television credits include Edens Lost (AFI Award for Best Director), The Fisherman’s Wake (ATOM Award for Best Original Production) and Coral Island. Films include Candy (AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, AWGIE Award for Best Screenplay) and Holding the Man

Neil Armfield has won 12 Helpmann Awards and many Sydney Theatre, Victorian Green Room and Sydney Theatre Critics’ Circle awards. He holds honorary doctorates from Sydney, Adelaide and NSW universities and was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007.

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PLATÉE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kanen Breen Platée

Kanen Breen is one of Australia’s most sought-after operatic tenors and a renowned concert and cabaret artist.

He has long been established as a contracted artist at Opera Australia singing such roles as Camille in The Merry Widow, Nanki-Poo in The Mikado, Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore, Marco Palmieri in The Gondoliers, Caius in Falstaff, Monostatos in The Magic Flute, Sellem in The Rake’s Progress, Pong in Turandot, Andres/Cochenille/Frantz, Pittichinaccio and Nathanael in The Tales of Hoffmann, Pirelli in Sweeney Todd, the title role in Albert Herring, Johnny in Bliss at the Edinburgh Festival and the Scientist in The Rabbits by Kate Miller-Heidke at the Perth, Melbourne and Sydney festivals.

Appearances for Victorian Opera include the roles of Tweedledee, The White King and Violet in Through the Looking Glass, The Beadle in Sweeney Todd, the premiere seasons of Banquet of Secrets and ’Tis Pity; and for Opera Queensland, Nanki-Poo, Nadir in The Pearlfishers, Ramiro in La Cenerentola and Andy Warhol in The Perfect American.

Other roles include Rodolfo in Baz Luhrmann’s La Bohème on Broadway, appearing as Willy Wonka in the Gordon Frost Organisation production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and critically acclaimed performances as Wilhelm in The Black Rider for The Malthouse and as the Witch of Endor in the Glyndebourne Festival Opera production of Handel’s Saul (2017), for which he won a Helpmann Award for Best Male Performer in a Supporting Role in an Opera.

His past appearances for Pinchgut Opera include Erice in L’Ormindo, and Arnalta in L’incoronazione di Poppea, for which he again won a Helpmann Award.

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Cathy-Di Zhang

L’ Amour, La Folie

Award-winning Australian soprano Cathy-Di Zhang is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London. Since returning to Australia last year, she has appeared in two solo concerts for the Castlemaine State Festival as well as making her company and role debut as Micaëla in Opera Australia’s national tour of Carmen

Appearing as L’Amour/La Folie in Platée marks her surprise Pinchgut Opera debut and she will return in the company’s 2022 season to sing Créuse in Charpentier’s Médée. Also in 2022, she will make her company debut with State Opera South Australia as Mimì in their Bohème on the Beach Puccini spectacular. She is also looking forward to making her Victorian Opera debut in the main role of Zhu Yingtai in Richard Mills’ new work The Butterfly Lovers, in collaboration with Wild Rice Theatre in Singapore. And she will again tour for Opera Australia, appearing as Rosina in Priscilla Jackman’s new production of The Barber of Seville

Before the pandemic, she sang the role of Mädchen in Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in a new production by Tony Award-winning director Ivo van Hove for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence under Esa-Pekka Salonen and subsequently for Dutch National Opera under Markus Stenz. Other opera credits include Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), the title role in Massenet’s Cendrillon, Lauretta and Nella (Gianni Schicchi), Gretel (Hansel and Gretel) and Lisa (La sonnambula).

Cathy-Di Zhang has also appeared as a soloist with orchestras all over Europe and China and she performs regularly in chamber music throughout Italy in trio and quartet (with violin, cello and piano).

Cathy-Di Zhang is sponsored by Emily and Yvonne Chang for this production. First Pinchgut opera production

Nicholas Jones Thespis, Mercury

Brilliant young tenor Nicholas Jones won a Green Room Award for his portrayal of David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Opera Australia and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for this same role.

Other appearances for Opera Australia have included principal roles in Carmen, Il turco in Italia, The Nose by Shostakovich and Two Weddings, One Bride. He also sang Tamino and Almaviva in Opera Australia’s touring productions of The Magic Flute and The Barber of Seville.

In 2016 he created the role of Fish Lamb in the premiere of George Palmer’s Cloudstreet for State Opera South Australia. He has sung Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia (Victorian Opera); Britten’s Canticles and Stefan Cassomenos’ Art of Thought (Melbourne Recital Centre); Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings at ANAM and Haydn’s Creation for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. He was also an original cast member in Deborah Cheetham’s Indigenous opera Pecan Summer

Most recently, he sang Tom in Christina’s World for State Opera South Australia, and Michael Driscoll in the premiere of Whiteley and Tony in West Side Story, both for Opera Australia. And in 2020 he appeared in Pinchgut Opera’s film A Delicate Fire

Nicholas Jones is the current recipient of the Dame Heather Begg Memorial Award. First Pinchgut opera production

David Greco Momus

Internationally regarded for his interpretations of Schubert Lieder and the works of J.S. Bach, baritone David Greco has sung on some of the finest stages across Europe and has appeared as a principal in opera festivals such as Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne. In 2014 he was the first Australian appointed to a position with the Sistine Chapel Choir in the Vatican. He regularly appears with leading Australian ensembles such as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra and, most recently, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in their Helpmann Awardwinning concerts of Bach’s cantata, Ich habe genug. As a principal artist with Opera Australia, he appeared in The Eighth Wonder and The Love for Three Oranges, and his appearance as Seneca in Pinchgut’s Coronation of Poppea received critical acclaim. His impressive catalogue of solo recordings includes Poems of Love and War, featuring arias by New Zealand composer Jack Body (Naxos), and his first recital album, presenting music by Bach (Brilliant Classics).

David Greco is an active researcher into the historical performance practice of 19th-century vocal music and recently received his doctorate from Melbourne University. This led to the first Australian recordings of historically informed performances of Schubert’s song cycles Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin (ABC Classic), the latter receiving an ARIA nomination for Best Classical Album (2020). 11th Pinchgut opera production

Adrian Tamburini A Satyr, Cithéron

Adrian Tamburini has enjoyed a long and varied career as an opera singer, concert performer, music educator, director and producer. In 2017 he won Australia’s prestigious singing award, the Opera Awards (YMF Australia Award, Armstrong Martin Scholarship). His singing has featured on cinema releases of opera, CD and DVD recordings, motion picture soundtracks, radio and television. He is proud to have worked with companies such as Opera Australia, West Australian Opera, Melbourne Opera, Lost and Found Opera, National Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Zelman Symphony Orchestra, Sydney University Graduate Choir, Melbourne Bach Choir, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

Over the past few years he has focused on sharing his passion for music by teaching the next generation of musicians at Pure Harmony Music Studio in Melbourne.

Adrian Tamburini has worked with renowned conductors and directors such as Asher Fisch, Andrea Molino, Andrea Battistoni, Jonathan Darlington, Pietari Inkinen, Carlo Montanaro, Renato Palumbo, Guillaume Tourniaire, David McVicar, and Francesca Zambello, as well as Australians Jessica Cottis, Barrie Kosky, Bruce Beresford and John Bell. He is proud to be making his debut with Pinchgut Opera this year.

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PLATÉE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Peter Coleman-Wright

Jupiter

Peter Coleman-Wright AO is widely considered one of the most versatile singers in the world today. His extensive and varied repertoire has taken him to many of the world’s greatest opera companies and concert halls. He has sung throughout Europe, including appearances at La Scala Milan, La Fenice Venice, Netherlands Opera, Munich, Vienna, Geneva, Paris, Bordeaux, Flanders and at the Aix-en-Provence and Bregenz festivals.

In the UK he has been a frequent guest of the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, The Barbican, Bridgewater Hall Manchester and Wigmore Hall.

In North America he has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston, Santa Fe and Vancouver. He has sung extensively for Opera Australia and has worked with all the major symphony orchestras in all the principal concert halls in Australia.

He has sung more than 60 roles including Figaro, Forester, Scarpia, Sharpless, Don Giovanni, the Count, Onegin, Dandini, Billy Budd, Macbeth, Gunther, Germont, Wolfram, Beckmesser, Donner and Sweeney Todd. His numerous accolades include Helpmann Awards, Green Room Awards and Performer of the Year. Engagements include concerts in Madrid, Moscow and Amsterdam as well as for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Aldeburgh World Orchestra, where he received a Grammy nomination for The Rape of Lucretia.

He has recorded extensively for EMI, Telarc, Hyperion, ABC Classic and the LSO and SSO “Live” labels. Most recently, he has become Artistic Director of Pacific Opera’s Young Artist Program and, in 2019, National Opera.

Peter Coleman-Wright holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Melbourne and was made an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2015.

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Cheryl Barker Juno

Cheryl Barker AO has established a distinguished operatic career throughout the UK, Europe, USA and Australasia. She has performed for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Paris Opera, Netherlands Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg State Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opéra National du Rhin, De Vlaamse Opera, La Monnaie, Opera Holland Park, Reis Opera, Scottish Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Minnesota Opera, Vancouver Opera, Taipei Opera, Opera Queensland, Opera Australia, State Opera South Australia, New Zealand Opera, Victoria State Opera and West Australian Opera. Her repertoire includes the title roles in Jenůfa, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Rusalka, Arabella, Salome (for which she won Green Room and Helpmann awards), Adriana Lecouvreur and Katya Kabanova. Other roles include the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì (Baz Luhrmann’s production of La Bohème), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Marschellin (Der Rosenkavalier), Chrysothemis (Elektra), The Governess and Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw), Desdemona (Otello), Marie (Die tote Stadt) and Emilia Marty (The Makropoulos Secret).

She has appeared in concert at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Konzerthaus Wien and Koningin Elisabethzaal Belgium; for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and Brisbane, Melbourne and Spoletto festivals; and with the Sydney, Queensland, Melbourne and West Australian symphony orchestras.

Her recordings include Seduction & Persuasion and Beethoven 9 (ABC Classic); La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Der Rosenkavalier (CD and DVD for OA), Madama Butterfly, Great Operatic Arias with the LPO, Katya Kabanova, Rusalka and The Makropoulos Case (Chandos); and Madama Butterfly (Belgium and Netherlands Television).

Cheryl Barker was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Music conferred by the Victorian College of the Arts.

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Chloe Lankshear

Clarine, chorus

Chloe Lankshear is an accomplished Sydney-based soprano whose performance career ranges from operatic productions to classical contemporary recitals and commission premieres. She has performed with Pinchgut Opera and State Opera South Australia, and has been a featured soloist with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Bach Akademie Australia, and the Choir of St James’ King Street. She is also a principal artist with The Song Company.

In 2020 she appeared in Pinchgut Opera’s film A Delicate Fire, as well as their mini-series of recorded madrigals, and recorded a Behind Doors concert with classical guitarist Heathcliffe Auchinachie at Phoenix Central Park Studio. In 2021 she sang in the premiere of Paul Stanhope’s Requiem at City Recital Hall, toured with Pinchgut Opera and was a soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in their Baroque Revelry program. Next year she will be a featured artist at Bendigo Chamber Festival, and will sing with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

Chloe Lankshear is the inaugural Taryn Fiebig Scholar.

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Amy Moore

Thalie, chorus

British soprano Amy Moore moved to Australia in 2015. She has performed as a soloist with many prominent European orchestras, including the Gabrieli Consort, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Bochumer Symphoniker and Hanover Band.

With EXAUDI vocal ensemble she premiered countless new works, performing in Europe with Ensemble Modern, L’Instant Donné and Ensemble Intercontemporain. She sang with virtually all the leading UK vocal ensembles and was a member of Norway’s Edvard Grieg Kor, performing regularly with Bergen National Opera, as well as taking the role of Iseut in Frank Martin’s secular oratorio Le Vin herbé

She has performed as soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Bach Akademie Australia, Choir of St James’ King Street, Trinity College Choir Melbourne, Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and Sydney University Graduate Choir. She received warm reviews for her performances at the 2019 Canberra International Music Festival, singing Bach’s St John Passion and the role of Vikki in Andrew Schultz’s opera The Children’s Bach

She is a Principal Artist with The Song Company, recently performing and recording Messiaen’s song cycle Harawi with Artistic Director Antony Pitts.

Amy has performed in concert with Pinchgut Opera and makes her operatic debut with Platée

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PLATÉE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Stephen Curtis Designer

Stephen Curtis has worked extensively as a costume and set designer for drama, film, opera, physical theatre and dance. Major credits include La bohème (West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland and Opera Australia); Lulu, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Turn of the Screw (Opera Australia, Houston Grand Opera); Der Ring des Nibelungen (State Opera South Australia); The Secret River (Edinburgh Festival, Adelaide Festival, Sydney Theatre Company); A Man with Five Children, The Government Inspector, Heartbreak House (Sydney Theatre Company); Black Diggers (Queensland Theatre Company, Sydney Festival); I Am Eora (Sydney Festival); All About My Mother, Life x 3, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tribes, Rock ’n’ Roll and The Blue Room (Melbourne Theatre Company); The Winter’s Tale, Henry IV, The Wars of the Roses, The Government Inspector and The Servant of Two Masters (Bell Shakespeare); and Cursed!, Things I Know To Be True, Barbara and the Camp Dogs, The Drover’s Wife, Gwen in Purgatory and Scorched (Belvoir).

His credits as a production designer for film include Looking For Alibrandi, Bedevil and Night Cries

He has also published Staging Ideas: Set and Costume Design for Theatre as a guide to the art of theatre design, and The Designer: Decorator or Dramaturg? as a Platform Paper interrogating the contemporary role of the performance designer.

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Shannon Burns Movement Director

Shannon Burns grew up in the central Queensland town of Gladstone. At 15 she moved away from home to pursue a career on stage, studying ballet full-time at the Queensland Dance School of Excellence before continuing her training at ED5 International in Sydney.

She first worked with Pinchgut Opera in 2020 on the film A Delicate Fire, directed by Constantine Costi. This year she choreographed Opera Australia’s La Traviata on Sydney Harbour, also directed by Costi.

Other OA projects include assisting Kelley Abbey on Salome (2019), choreographing the company’s New Year’s Eve Gala and Opera for the People, and the Sydney Harbour production of Carmen. She was on the choreographic team for the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup Opening Ceremony (2020), working with the Michael Cassel Group and New Ground Collective, and her choreography has featured in other large-scale events, including the 2016 Netball World Cup Opening Ceremony. Most recently she was Resident Movement Director for Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s return season of Once

Other stage credits include Fame – The Musical (Australian tour), Grease (Australian tour) and Le Grand Cirque. She has made regular television appearances and worked with many Australian and international music artists, including Ricky Martin, Jessica Mauboy, Ricki-Lee, Red Foo and Sneaky Sound System. She has also performed in large-scale events, held international contracts and appeared in feature films, TV commercials and music videos.

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Alexander Berlage

Lighting Designer

Alexander Berlage is an award-winning director and lighting designer, and co-artistic director of the Old Fitz Theatre.

For Sydney Chamber Opera he designed the lighting for Future Remains, poem for a dried up river, Diary of One Who Disappeared, La Passion de Simone, Resonant Bodies and Victory Over the Sun. His lighting design credits also include Lord of the Flies, Cloud Nine and Lethal Indifference (Sydney Theatre Company); A Brief Nostalgia (Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells); Orpheus and Eurydice (Opera Queensland and Circa); Dance Nation (State Theatre Company South Australia, Belvoir); Dead Cat Bounce and Good Cook. Friendly. Clean (Griffin Theatre); New Breed and four Pre-Professional Year showcases (Sydney Dance Company); Young Frankenstein, American Psycho, Cry-Baby and Caroline, or Change (Hayes Theatre Co.); and Songs for the Fallen (Critical Stages). Other companies he has designed for include the Ensemble Theatre, Australian Theatre for Young People and Redline Productions.

Alexander Berlage has won four Sydney Theatre Awards including Best Direction of a Musical for both Cry-Baby and American Psycho, which won nine Sydney Theatre Awards. He is a NIDA graduate and has been awarded the Mike Walsh Fellowship.

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Sean Bacon Video Designer

Sean Bacon studied video and visual arts, graduating with honours. Nobody Nevermind, his collaboration with the dance company L’Expérience Harmaat, opened the performance section of the 2001 Venice Biennale and he was a Company Artist for the theatre company Version 1.0 from 2005 to 2015. He was the video designer for several Benedict Andrews productions: Measure for Measure for Company B (Sydney Theatre Award for Stage Design, 2011), Return of Ulysses for English National Opera and Young Vic, and The Maids for Sydney Theatre Company, which travelled to New York’s Lincoln Theatre Festival.

Other credits include Pygmalion (STC), The Glass Menagerie (Belvoir), Reflections of Gallipoli (Australian Chamber Orchestra), The Goldner Quartet (Musica Viva), Artwork and Food Fight (Branch Nebula), One Billion Beats (Campbelltown Arts Centre), Tribunal and Jump First, Ask Later (Powerhouse Youth Theatre) and Garden of the Mind (Trybal Productions).

Last year he worked on Black Ties for Ilbijerri in the Sydney Festival and The Sound of History for the Adelaide Festival. Most recently, he was the video designer for Dorr-e Dari (PYT) for the 2021 Sydney Festival, A Child of Our Time for the 2021 Adelaide Festival and A Roaring Silence, a video installation at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.

First Pinchgut opera production

Eugene Lynch Assistant Director

Eugene Lynch is an early-career director of theatre and opera. In March 2022 he will be assistant director on Adelaide Festival’s centrepiece opera, The Golden Cockerel, directed by Barrie Kosky.

As the artistic director of The Other Theatre, he has directed Graeme Koehne and Louis Nowra’s Love Burns, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Shakespeare’s Richard II, Mike Barlett’s Cock (Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival x Brand X) and the Australian premiere of Marius von Mayneburg’s The Dog, the Night and the Knife. He was the 2019 Young Director with Pacific Opera, where he directed Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Kurt Weill’s Down in the Valley and various scenes concerts.

Eugene Lynch recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts / Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Sydney, where he was two-time recipient of the USU Bright Ideas Grant.

Eugene Lynch is supported in this role by a grant from Create NSW.

First Pinchgut opera production

For Platée

STAGE MANAGER

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER

COSTUME SUPERVISOR

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

HEAD ELECTRICIANS

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ASSISTANT

COVID SAFETY COORDINATOR

LIGHTING PROGRAMMER

SET CONSTRUCTION

VIDEO & PROJECTION EQUIPMENT

SUPPLIED BY

VIDEO SYSTEMS TECHNICIAN

HEAD OF WIGS, HAIR & MAKEUP

COSTUMES

COSTUME ASSISTANT

CAKE MADE BY

SURTITLES

SURTITLE OPERATOR

PROGRAM EDITOR

LANGUAGE COACHING

RÉPÉTITEURS

HARPSICHORD SUPPLIED, PREPARED AND TUNED BY

Tanya Leach

Amy Robertson

Renata Beslik

Byron Cleasby

Ian Garrard, Padraigh Ó Súilleabháin

Jacob Lawler

Madelaine Osborn

Philip Paterson

Thomas Creative

TDC

Harrison Dow (TDC)

Fiona Cooper-Sutherland

Margaret Gill, Melanie Liertz, Courtney New

Madelaine Osborn

Jemima Snars

Natalie Shea

Jacob Lawler

Yvonne Frindle

Nicole Dorigo

Catherine Davis, Andrei Hadap, Claire Race

Carey Beebe

PLATÉE

ABOUT THE CHORUS

Cantillation

Cantillation is a chorus of professional singers – an ensemble of fine voices with the speed, agility and flexibility of a chamber orchestra. Formed in 2001 by Antony Walker and Alison Johnston, it has since been busy in the concert hall, opera theatre and recording studio.

Highlights have included Liszt’s Dante Symphony, Westlake’s Missa Solis, John Adams’ Harmonium, Brahms’s Requiem, Edwards’ Star Chant, Haydn’s Creation, Vaughan Williams’ Flos Campi (also recorded for CD) and Jonathan Mills’ Sandakan Threnody (all with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra); The Crowd (Australian Chamber Orchestra), a sound installation recording for MONA Tasmania, regional tours and concerts with Emma Kirkby (Musica Viva); singing for the Dalai Lama, the Rugby World Cup, and recording soundtracks for several movies, as well as recording and filming Jonathan Mills’ opera The Eternity Man. In 2022 Cantillation will perform with the SSO in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in the newly reopened Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.

Cantillation has made more than 30 recordings for ABC Classic, including Renaissance choral masterpieces, Prayer for Peace, Fauré’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, Silent Night, Ye Banks and Braes, Magnificat with Emma Kirkby, Hallelujah! and Mozart’s Requiem. For Pinchgut LIVE, Cantillation appears on L’Anima del filosofo, Castor and Pollux, Iphigénie en Tauride and Theodora

Cantillation is the official chorus for Pinchgut Opera, having performed in every opera with chorus since the beginning.

SOPRANOS

Roberta Diamond 3rd Pinchgut opera production

Anna Fraser 11th Pinchgut opera production

Chloe Lankshear 1st Pinchgut opera production

Amy Moore 1st Pinchgut opera production

Anna Sandstrom 5th Pinchgut opera production

MEZZO-SOPRANOS

Jo Burton 7th Pinchgut opera production

Natalie Shea 23rd Pinchgut opera production

HAUTE-CONTRES

Louis Hurley 1st Pinchgut opera production

Dan Walker 11th Pinchgut opera production

TENORS

Tom Hallworth 2nd Pinchgut opera production

Benjamin Namdarian 1st Pinchgut opera production

John Pitman 9th Pinchgut opera production

Ethan Taylor 2nd Pinchgut opera production

Brett Weymark 6th Pinchgut opera production

BASSES

Christopher Allan 3rd Pinchgut opera production

Philip Barton 3rd Pinchgut opera production

Mark Donnelly 4th Pinchgut opera production

David Hidden 8th Pinchgut opera production

Andrew O’Connor 3rd Pinchgut opera production

Pinchgut Opera thanks all those who have been with us over the past 20 years.

You are our inspiration and our reason for being.

Mark Donnelly Bass

Tom Hallworth Tenor

Anna Fraser Soprano

David Hidden Bass

Louis Hurley Haute-contre

Amy Moore Soprano

Chloe Lankshear Soprano

Benjamin Namdarian Tenor

Andrew O’Connor Bass

Anna Sandstrom Soprano

John Pitman Tenor

Natalie Shea Mezzo-soprano

Ethan Taylor Tenor

Brett Weymark Tenor

Dan Walker Haute-contre

Christopher Allan Bass

Jo Burton Mezzo-soprano

Philip Barton Bass

Roberta Diamond Soprano

PLATÉE ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA

Orchestra of the Antipodes

The Orchestra of the Antipodes is Pinchgut Opera’s official orchestra and has played in every production since Orfeo (2004).

Founded by Antony Walker and Alison Johnston, the Orchestra is renowned for its virtuosity, precision, sensitivity and attention to lyrical beauty. Erin Helyard conducts from the keyboard and its members, committed to historically informed performance practice, play period instruments.

The Orchestra’s debut CD and DVD, Handel’s Messiah (ABC Classic), drew critical acclaim; a subsequent disc, Bach Arias and Duets, with Sara Macliver and Sally-Anne Russell became a best seller and was nominated for an ARIA Award in 2004. The Orchestra’s most recent ABC Classic releases include the ARIA-nominated Brandenburg Concertos, Magnificat with Emma Kirkby, and Hallelujah! with Cantillation. In addition, the Orchestra appears on Pinchgut LIVE recordings, most recently Hasse’s Artaserse

Performance highlights have included Haydn’s Isola disabitata (Royal Opera House), Handel’s Orlando (Hobart Baroque), Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea (Opera Australia), and a recital with Andrew Lawrence-King (World Harp Congress). The Orchestra featured in the programming of the Brisbane Baroque festival (2015, 2016), with their performances of Handel’s operas Faramondo and Agrippina each winning a Helpmann Award for Best Opera. Other engagements include Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin (St Mary’s Cathedral Choir and The Song Company), Handel’s Dixit Dominus (Sydney Chamber Choir) and Christmas concerts at St Mary’s Cathedral.

The Orchestra of the Antipodes now performs exclusively for Pinchgut’s mainstage opera and concert series. This year we celebrate its 18th year and, with Platée, its 24th Pinchgut production.

Myee Clohessy Violin

James Eccles Viola

Anthea Cottee Cello

Melissa Farrow Flute, Piccolo

Rafael Font Viera Violin

Matthew Greco Violin (Leader)

Stephen Freeman Viola

Erin Helyard Harpsichord

James Armstrong Violin

Kirsten Barry Oboe

Anton Baba Cello

Matthew Bruce Violin

Anna McMichael Violin

Mikaela Oberg Flute, Piccolo

Brian Nixon Percussion

Simon Rickard Bassoon, Musette

Karina Schmitz Viola

James Tarbotton Violin

Simone Slattery Violin

Laura Vaughan Viola da gamba

Timothy Willis Violin

Marianne Yeomans Viola

Caroline Hopson Violin

Adam Masters Oboe

Brock Imison Bassoon

Kirsty McCahon Bass

PLATÉE ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA

VIOLINS Matthew Greco (Leader)

David Christian Hopf, Quittenbach, Germany, 1760

22nd Pinchgut opera production

Rafael Font Viera

Steffen Nowak, Bristol, UK, 2012 after Nicola Amati, Cremona, Italy, 1666

11th Pinchgut opera production

James Armstrong

Ekkard Seidl, Markneukirchen, Germany, 2002, after Andrea Amati, 1566

(On loan courtesy of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra)

1st Pinchgut opera production

Matthew Bruce

Valentina Montanucci, Piancenza, Italy, 2013, after Stradivari

(Appears courtesy of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra)

15th Pinchgut opera production

Myee Clohessy

Anonymous, Mittenwald, Germany, c.1770

9th Pinchgut opera production

Caroline Hopson

Anonymous, Saxony, 1744

4th Pinchgut opera production

Anna McMichael

Camilli Camillus, Mantua, 1742

(Appears courtesy of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance, Monash University)

10th Pinchgut opera production

Simone Slattery

Claude Pierray, Paris, France, 1726

8th Pinchgut opera production

James Tarbotton

Jan Pawlikowski, Poland 2021, modelled after Stradivari, 1715

1st Pinchgut opera production

Timothy Willis

Hendrik Willems, Ghent, ca.1680

2nd Pinchgut opera production

FIRST VIOLAS

Karina Schmitz

Francis Beaulieu, Montreal, 2011, after Pietro Giovanni

Mantegazza, 1793

3rd Pinchgut opera production

Marianne Yeomans

Australia, 1992, after Techler, Austria, 18th century

7th Pinchgut opera production

SECOND VIOLAS

Stephen Freeman

Matthieu Besseling, Amsterdam, 2013

16th Pinchgut opera production

James Eccles

Hiroshi Iizuka, Philadelphia, USA, 1992 (original model based on a viola d’amore design)

10th Pinchgut opera production

CELLOS

Anton Baba

Peter Elias, Aigle, Switzerland, 2000, after Stradivari

11th Pinchgut opera production

Anthea Cottee

Peter Walmsley, London, England, 1735

14th Pinchgut opera production

VIOLA DA GAMBA, LIRA DA GAMBA

Laura Vaughan

Viola da gamba: Henner Harders, Mansfeld, Germany, 2007, after Michel Colichon, Paris, France, 1691

Lira da gamba: Ian Watchorn, Melbourne, Australia, 2009, after Giovanni Maria da Brescia, Italy, 16th century

12th Pinchgut opera production

BASS

Kirsty McCahon

Giuseppe Abbati, Modena, Italy, c.1750 22nd Pinchgut opera production

FLUTES / PICCOLOS

Melissa Farrow

Flute: Rudolf Tutz, Innsbruck, copy of I.H. Rottenburgh, Brussels c.1740

Piccolo: Rudolf Tutz, Innsbruck, Austria 2005, copy of J. Hotteterre † (Appears courtesy of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra) 15th Pinchgut opera production

Mikaela Oberg

Flute: Fridtjof Aurin, Düsseldorf Germany, copy of J. Denner, Nuremberg, c.1720

Piccolo: Rudolf Tutz, Innsbruck, Austria 2005, copy of J. Hotteterre †

9th Pinchgut opera production

OBOES

Adam Masters

Bernhard Schermer, Stäfa, Switzerland, 2001, after Hotteterre, c.1710

3rd Pinchgut opera production

Kirsten Barry

Mary Kirkpatrick, Ithaca, NY, 2005, after Naust, late-17th-century French

8th Pinchgut opera production

BASSOONS

Simon Rickard

Olivier Cottet, France, 2012, after Charles Bizey, c.1720 † 20th Pinchgut opera production

Brock Imison

Olivier Cottet, France, 2012, after Charles Bizey, c.1720 † 4th Pinchgut opera production

MUSETTE

Simon Rickard

Bart van Troyen, Bornem, Belgium, 2020, after anonymous 18th-century 20th Pinchgut opera production

PERCUSSION

Brian Nixon

11th Pinchgut opera production

HARPSICHORD

Erin Helyard

French double harpsichord by Carey Beebe, élève de D. Jacques Way, 1991, after originals by Blanchet, mid-18th century 22nd Pinchgut opera production

Harpsichord prepared by Carey Beebe

Pitch: A = 392Hz

Temperament: Lambert

† Instrument commissioned by Pinchgut Opera

PLATÉE

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

ORPHEUS RAMEAU

As an old man, Jean-Philippe Rameau sat for the “sculptor to the king”, Jean-Jacques Caffieri. The resulting terracotta bust (right) survives in the city of his birth, Dijon – a portrait of a composer and thinker in his late 70s, successful but modest.

Rameau had emerged from relative obscurity as a provincial organist to become the greatest French composer and theorist of the 18th century.

Around the time when a modern man might splash out on a sports car, Rameau had written his first opera. He’d just turned 50 when Hippolyte et Aricie took Paris by storm in 1733, and he was immediately embroiled in controversy that would surround him for the rest of his life.

Those supporting the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully –by this time long dead and entrenched in the canon –ranged against Rameau’s faction (whom they dubbed the “Ramoneurs” or chimney sweeps). Some Lullistes objected to the complexity of Rameau’s style, some feared the extinction of the traditional repertoire, while composer André Campra worried the newcomer would “eclipse us all”. And not without reason.

Rameau’s transforming approach to opera was powerful and intensely dramatic, characterised by extreme contrasts and a vast emotional range. Every aspect of the dance and music had to serve the plot. In Platée, for example, he makes the traditional chaconne integral to the action – its extraordinary length functioning as a stalling tactic. And he gave the orchestra an equal role in the music-making with soloists and chorus. (It feels right that Neil Armfield has placed the orchestra on the stage.)

What the Lullistes failed to acknowledge was that, for all its revolutionary qualities, Rameau’s music honoured French operatic tradition. His achievement was to continue and revitalise Lully’s legacy. And despite the controversy, Rameau won support: from the public, from patrons, from the king. In 1745, the year of Platée, he was awarded a royal pension and named a court composer. By 1749 he was so popular that the comte d’Argenson, who oversaw the Paris Opéra, rationed productions of Rameau’s operas to just one or two a year.

Rameau became the “grand old man” of French music – “Orpheus Rameau” as Voltaire called him – which may have played against him when his name was dragged into yet another controversy, the Querelle des bouffons, a pamphlet war pitting the Italian comic style (think Pergolesi) against the “serious opera” of the French. The irony here is that Rameau remained open to new musical fashion throughout his career, incorporating elements of the Italian and German styles to suit his dramatic and musical goals.

As an artist and as a theorist, Rameau was not a man to stand still. And at his death, the sometime “distiller of bizarre harmonies” was now celebrated by the Mercure de France as the “god of Harmony”.

Yvonne Frindle © 2021

baptism

25 September 1683 in Dijon musical background

Taught by his organist father, he learns his notes before he can read. Sees his first opera at the age of 12. early obscurity Wanders the French provinces working as an organist and violinist; briefly visits Milan. He is already developing his theories on music.

Paris arrival

Settles in Paris, aged 39. Comes to public attention with the publication of his 450-page Harmony Treatise (1722) as well as several important collections of keyboard pieces.

marriage

In 1726 marries the accomplished young singer Marie-Louise Mangot.

opera

Shortly after his 50th birthday, his first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, is premiered, inviting strong reactions. From the 1730s until his death he writes almost exclusively for the stage, producing 30 powerful and imaginative works.

librettos

Many critics – like Voltaire – think Rameau is somewhat indifferent to the quality of his texts.

theorist or artist?

He is prolific as a theorist, leaving an important legacy of thought that remains influential today. Personally, he would like to be recognised as a theorist first, but his supporters prefer to think of him as a composer.

death

12 September 1764 in Paris. He dies shabby but comparatively well off: threadbare clothes and just one harpsichord but a drawerful of cash.

© Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

/ François Jay

A NEW SPECTACLE

FROM THE DIRECTOR

When asked by Erin to direct Platée some years ago – well before the words “global pandemic” became the most oft-repeated phrase across the international airwaves – I agreed partly because I love Pinchgut, partly because it was such a long way off, but mostly because I knew the work would take me so far out of my comfort zone that it must be good for me.

A work that begins post-orgy, with the characters hungover, picking themselves up and dusting themselves off in order to create a new kind of theatre, is a pretty challenging and thrilling premise!

As always, in the beginning of the process it’s the designer who does the heavy lifting, and Stephen Curtis (2021 marking the 40th year of our collaboration) suggested our world: a wedding celebration that has, if you like, gone feral.

Placing our story on the stage of the City Recital Hall means we are thrown back onto our own invention to supply the visual spectacle that Rameau was assuming would come with the theatres, in Paris and Versailles, for which he was writing. It’s been a pleasure, across the weeks of rehearsal, testing the limits of that invention.

Most of all, we knew we wanted to place Erin and the orchestra at the heart of the production, so they assume the central position on our stage: the focus of the glorious acoustic of this wonderful hall.

Just as Kanen Breen is “the reason we are doing Platée”, so the celebrated Pierre Jélyotte was central to the first production. An haute-contre (a high and agile voice type with remarkable dramatic and lyrical presence), he created the role of Platée, one of the few travesty parts in French opera at the time. Charles Antoine Coypel’s portrait of Jélyotte in costume shows a heavily made-up operatic heroine with coquettish expression.

But more than anything else, and the reason the work has endured as Rameau’s masterpiece, is the extraordinary creation at its centre – part pantomime dame, part deluded Cleopatra – the Queen of the Swamp, Platée. You do not attempt this work unless you have a performer who can meet her challenge: Kanen Breen is the reason we are doing Platée

Like Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, she resides in what I call ‘the comedy gap’ – the space between self-image and the image the world sees. Like Malvolio, there is delight in every entrance, every nuance of self-delusion. And, like Malvolio, there is a cruelty ultimately in a device that goes too far. Unlike Twelfth Night, however, in Platée Rameau manages, in one single, brilliant stroke, to turn the opera on its head and reverse its hilarity – in this world whose ruling deity is Madness (or Chaos – “Folly” is too polite a translation of La Folie) we choke on our own laughter.

Neil Armfield ao © 2021

Erin Helyard (left) with Neil Armfield (photo: Marnya Rothe)

FROM THE CONDUCTOR

“Formons un spectacle nouveau” (Let us create a new entertainment) sings the chorus in the prologue to Rameau’s Platée. Ostensibly they are referring to the allegorical birth of comedy itself. Thespis (the inventor of comedy) plans with L’Amour (Cupid), Momus (the god of ridicule) and Thalie (the muse of comedy) to expose and satirise the frailties and faults of both the mortals and the gods. But this “spectacle nouveau” was also something else completely: the birth of a comic opera every bit as sophisticated and sublime as the epic tragedies that dominated the French stage at the time. A contemporary observed that “Platée will remain without a rival as it is without a model”. Platée was unique and original. And as such it utterly divided audiences.

Platée and the philosophers…

“it is the height of indecency, boredom, and impertinence”

VOLTAIRE

“the best musical play ever to be heard in our theatres”

ROUSSEAU

Platée was first presented at Versailles in 1745 as part of the court’s wedding festivities for the dauphin. Many in the audience were completely shocked by Autreau and Rameau’s extreme departure from tradition. Here was a tragédie en musique in drag. It had all the characteristics of a serious French opera (a prologue, three acts with the traditional divertissements or dance sequences, and a plot taken from ancient mythology), but everything was subverted. The heroic tenor was playing a female nymph, the leading soprano was playing Madness (La Folie), and the Graces – usually depicted as quite literally graceful and elegant – “cavorted lewdly”, noted an aristocrat in the audience.

Voltaire – who was nursing the hangover of a fractious relationship with Rameau – was in the audience at that Versailles performance. He hated it. “You didn’t miss much except a large crowd and a very bad work,” he wrote to his niece, “it is the height of indecency, boredom, and impertinence.”

But the large crowds of courtiers were the first evidence of its enormous popular appeal.

After its controversial premiere at Versailles, Platée moved to that veritable temple of French music, the Académie royale de musique in Paris or, as it was more simply known, the Opéra. Here again it divided the opinions of the connoisseurs but took in enormous box office receipts. If its humour did not meet the approval of its sniffy and snobbish critics, who thought it beneath the dignity of the court and the Opéra, it did match the tastes of the audience, as the Baron d’Holbach observed. Some thought the words were indecent and unworthy of the sublime traditions of French opera, but that Rameau’s music was very fine. The dramatist Charles Collé wrote: “I admit that the music is very pretty, but it is dishonourable for our nation that works as execrable [as this one] are performed in public.” Rameau’s supporters claimed that Platée was “the most original, the most beautiful, and the strongest piece of music that he has written”. Even Rousseau, who was generally critical of Rameau, thought that Platée was the “best musical play ever to be heard in our theatres”.

Platée is full of 18th-century in-jokes. It was produced at the height of the debates about the relative attributes of Italian and French opera. Rameau satirises the debate by theatricalising what were considered to be the worst excesses of both forms. On the Italian side he has La Folie and Platée sing tuneful arias with long cadenzas in which the words are poorly (and hilariously) set or exaggerated, and there are all the Italianate special effects that many French critiqued: the sound of storms, winds, rain, frogs, owls, cuckoos, the braying of donkeys, slides, cries, and hoots. On the French side Rameau parodies the ridiculousness of the long divertissements that were completely extraneous to the plot: the chaconne is in the wrong spot (in the middle of an act and not at the end), and Platée is constantly sighing of boredom in the long-drawn-out marriage ceremony, as many a French operagoer must have in those long ballets. When La Folie steals Apollo’s lyre we might expect to hear a heavenly evocation in the orchestra of the god’s instrument. Instead, we hear the droning sound of a poor man’s instrument: the hurdy-gurdy. In Platée, Rameau’s sophisticated approach to musical parody takes on many forms.

You don’t need to know all the in-jokes to find Platée hilarious and wildly entertaining. Platée’s enduring brilliance comes from the fact that it is burlesque adorned in the finest trappings of tragédie en lyrique. The mounting horror of Platée’s cruel humiliation is the final twist of the knife and a stroke of operatic genius. The audience cannot help but fall in love with Platée’s vocal brilliance and vividness as the opera unfolds. So, as we witness her final moments, in which she is so horribly demeaned and mocked, we somehow feel partly responsible for witnessing the lead-up to such a cruel conclusion.

When considered along with all the other disguises and subversions in the piece, this extraordinary about-face makes Platée one of the greatest works of the Enlightenment. We are forced to critique ourselves and our emotions and rationality, and as such Platée was considered to be one of Rameau’s greatest operatic achievements. The philosopher D’Alembert, who co-edited the Encyclopédie with Diderot, certainly thought so: “at first torn to bits with passion [by snobs], but later [in revival] almost all applauded with enthusiasm, Rameau gave us his opéra bouffon, Platée, his masterpiece and that of French music.”

Erin Helyard ©

2021

PLATÉE LIBRETTO

Unlike in Rameau’s day, it is now the custom for house lights to be turned down during dramatic performances. This libretto is provided for later reference.

PROLOGUE

SCENE 1

UN SATYRE A SATYR

Le ciel répand ici sa plus douce influence, Heaven pours out its sweetest powers here, Bacchus a comblé nos désirs. Bacchus has satisfied all our desires.

Coulez, jus précieux, Flow, precious juice of the vine, coulez en abondance, flow in abundance; Vous êtes l’âme des plaisirs. you are the soul of pleasure.

CHŒUR CHORUS

Coulez, jus précieux, coulez en abondance, Flow, precious juice, flow in abundance; Vous êtes l’âme des plaisirs. you are the soul of pleasure.

LE SATYRE THE SATYR

En vain l’affreux hiver s’avance, Hideous winter advances in vain.

L’Amour, par vos présents, augmentant sa puissance, By your gifts, Love’s powers increase Rend à nos cœurs la saison des Zéphyrs, and spring returns to our hearts. Vous ranimez nos feux You rekindle our passions et nos tendres désirs. and our tender desires.

CHŒURS CHORUS

Coulez, jus précieux... Flow, precious juice...

LE SATYRE THE SATYR

Que vois-je? Est-ce Thespis?

What do I see here? Is this Thespis?

Yes, here he is asleep: the wine, Ce doux jus sur ses yeux fait l’effet des pavots: potent as poppies, has closed his eyes.

Oui, c’est lui qui sommeille,

Doit-il en ce beau jour se livrer

Why is he taking his ease au repos, on this beautiful day?

Lui qui chante si bien le grand dieu His lovely voice should be ringing out de la treille? in praise of the great god of the vine.

Ranimez vos sens assoupis, Rouse yourself, sleepy-head, Réveillez-vous, chantez, agréable Thespis. Wake up and sing, Thespis, there’s a good chap.

LE CHŒUR CHORUS

Ranimez vos sens assoupis... Rouse yourself...

THESPIS THESPIS

Rendons grâce à Bacchus

Let us give thanks to Bacchus du sommeil qu’il nous donne, for the slumber he gives us. Qu’il est tranquille! qu’il est doux! How peaceful it is! How sweet it is! (Il se rendort.) (He goes back to sleep.)

LE SATYRE et le CHŒUR

THE SATYR and CHORUS

Thespis, chantez, réveillez-vous. Thespis, sing, wake up.

THESPIS THESPIS

Chantons, vous m’y forcez;

I’ll sing, since you’re forcing me to; mais songez qu’en Automne, but remember that in Autumn, Dans mes chansons, je n’épargne personne. I spare no one in my songs.

DEUX VENDANGEUSES

TWO GRAPE HARVESTERS

Joyeux Thespis, point de courroux. Don’t be angry, joyous Thespis.

THESPIS THESPIS

Je sens qu’un doux transport me saisit I feel a sweet ecstasy taking hold et m’inspire. and inspiring me.

Charmant Bacchus, dieu de la liberté, Delightful Bacchus, god of freedom, Père de la sincérité, father of honesty, Au dépens des Mortels, you allow us to laugh tu nous permets de rire. at the expense of mortals. Mon coeur plein de la vérité, My heart, full of truth, Va se soulager à la dire: will find relief in letting that truth out, Dussé-je être mal écouté. even though I may be misunderstood. Ménades et jeunes et belles, You Maenads, young and beautiful, A vos amants êtes-vous bien fidèles? are you really faithful to your lovers?

On ne le crois pas parmi nous. No one here believes that.

CHŒUR DE MÉNADES

CHORUS OF MAENADS Thespis, rendormez-vous. Thespis, go back to sleep.

THESPIS aux Satyres

THESPIS (to the Satyrs)

Dignes amants de ces jeunes coquettes, Worthy lovers of these young coquettes, Invincibles buveurs, invincible drinkers:

tous trompés que vous êtes, cuckolds, every one of you!

Vous n’aimez pas assez pour en être jaloux. You don’t love enough to feel jealous.

CHŒUR DE SATYRES

CHORUS OF SATYRS

Thespis, rendormez-vous. Thespis, go back to sleep.

THESPIS

THESPIS

Au milieu d’une orgie où règne la licence, In the midst of an orgy where anything goes, Ménades, vos secrets sont mal en assurance, your secrets are far from safe, Maenads. On me les a dit presque tous. I’ve pretty much heard them all.

CHŒUR DE SATYRES ET DE MÉNADES CHORUS OF SATYRS AND MAENADS

Thespis, rendormez-vous. Thespis, go back to sleep!

SCENE 2

THALIE

THALIA

Poursuivez, Thespis, Don’t stop there, Thespis, livrez-vous à Thalie; put yourself in my hands. Pour exercer votre aimable folie, So that you can carry out your delightful Je remets mon masque entre vos mains. comedy, here is my mask for you to use.

A vos chants, à vos jeux, Nothing can stand in the way rien ne peut faire obstacle. of your songs and your games.

Je viens avec Momus en former un spectacle, I’ve come with Momus to turn them into a show Pour corriger les défauts des humains. to teach humans the error of their ways.

MOMUS MOMUS

Aux seuls humains bornez-vous la satire? Why limit your satire just to humans?

Vous pouvez jusqu’aux dieux, étendre son empire; You can extend its sway to the gods themselves. Je vous prêterai mon appui. I’ll give you my support.

La raison dans l’Olympe est souvent hors d’usage. Reason is often in short supply on Olympus. Hé, qui pourrait résister à l’ennui

Hey, who could resist the boredom

D’être immortel et toujours sage? of being immortal and always well behaved?

MOMUS, THALIE, THESPIS

MOMUS, THALIA, THESPIS

Cherchons à railler en tous lieux, Let’s spread our mockery everywhere: heaven Soumettons à nos ris et le ciel et la terre: and earth shall both be subject to our laughter.

Livrons au ridicule une éternelle guerre, Let’s wage war forever against absurdity, N’épargnons ni mortels ni dieux. sparing neither mortals nor gods.

MOMUS MOMUS

Dans ces lieux, Jupiter lui-même

In this very place, Jupiter himself Descendu de sa gravité, once left his gravitas behind:

Par un risible stratagème by means of a completely ridiculous

Guérit jadis d’une épouse qu’il aime, stratagem, he cured his beloved spouse

La jalousie et la fierté. of her jealousy and pride.

Je veux avec Thespis en retracer l’histoire, I want to revisit that tale with Thespis.

La Grèce en garde encore la célèbre mémoire. All Greece remembers it to this day.

SCENE 3

L’AMOUR LOVE

Que veut-on sans l’Amour entreprendre ici-bas? How dare you try to achieve anything

Quittez un projet téméraire. down here without Love? Stop it at once.

Quels sont les jeux qui pourraient plaire There’s nothing that can give pleasure

Que l’Amour n’animerait pas? without Love in command.

THALIE THALIA

Venez, Amour, soyez notre dieu tutélaire. Love! Come and be our guiding spirit. Les plaisirs naissent sous vos pas. Pleasures spring to life wherever you walk.

L’AMOUR LOVE Confondons nos jeux et nos ris.

Let’s band together with our merry schemes. Voulez-vous critiquer les feux que je fais naître? My arrows land where I choose.

Je vous en offrirai des plus mal assortis, I’ll give you some utterly mismatched lovers, Je me réserve après, d’en ordonner en maître: and then later, I’ll sort everything out again. Vous verrez qu’à la fin, chacun aura son prix You’ll see that in the end, everyone will be Quand l’Amour se fera connaître. a winner when Love reveals herself.

THESPIS

THESPIS

Momus, Amour, Dieu des raisins, Momus, Cupid, God of the Vines, Divinités charmantes, delightful spirits, Par des leçons réjouissantes we’ll use laughter Nous corrigerons les humains. to teach these humans a lesson. Et vous, heureux témoins d’une union si belle, And all you happy witnesses of such a fair union, Montrez, pour la servir, ce que peut votre zèle. let’s see what you can offer to help it along.

PLATÉE ABOUT THE OPERA

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

In order of appearance…

A Satyr Follower of Bacchus

Thespis According to Autreau, the inventor of comedy

Thalie Muse of comedy

Momus God of mockery and scorn

L’Amour God of love

Cithéron King of Greece

Mercury Messenger of the gods, son and confidant of Jupiter

Platée A naiad, or water nymph, queen of the swamp

Clarine Follower of Platée

Jupiter King of the gods, husband of Juno

La Folie Madness

Juno Queen of the gods, wife of Jupiter

SYNOPSIS

Prologue: The Birth of Comedy

It is the aftermath of a big wedding celebration. The sleeping Thespis is woken by a Satyr. Although nursing a hangover, he agrees to entertain everyone but warns: “I spare no one in my songs.” Thalie and Momus arrive and remind Thespis that the infidelities of the gods are even more worthy of mockery. “Who could resist the boredom of being immortal and always well behaved?”

Together with L’Amour, they plan to mock and expose the faults of both mortals and gods. Their vehicle: a re-enactment of the incident in which Jupiter cured his wife Juno of jealousy. The chorus sings of a new entertainment: “Let’s put on a show like nothing ever seen before!”

Act I

After a storm, vividly depicted by the orchestra, Mercury descends to Platée’s swamp and explains to Cithéron that the terrible weather is caused by Jupiter and Juno’s jealous quarrelling. He has been sent by Jupiter to find a way to teach Juno a lesson. Cithéron suggests a prank: Jupiter will pretend to marry the vain swamp queen Platée; Juno will look foolish when she realises her jealousy is unfounded. (The plan should also solve Cithéron’s own problem, since Platée is convinced he is in love with her.)

Platée enters. She attributes Cithéron’s indifference at first to shyness and then to cruelty. Mercury arrives to announce that Jupiter is infatuated by Platée’s beauty and will soon come to lay his heart at her feet. The returning storm is a sure sign of Juno’s fury. Platée is undaunted: she is a marsh nymph, after all.

INTERVAL

Act II

Mercury has sent Juno to Athens to keep her out of the way and Jupiter arrives surrounded by clouds. As Cithéron and Mercury watch from hiding, Jupiter manifests himself to Platée first as a donkey, then as an owl, and finally as himself. He declares his love; Platée is overwhelmed. Jupiter commands Momus to present an entertainment while the wedding ceremony is prepared. Accompanying herself on a lyre stolen from Apollo, La Folie sings a brilliant aria recounting the story of Apollo and Daphne. The act ends with a call to crown the “new Juno”.

Act III

Juno is consumed with rage. She hasn’t found her cheating husband and is sure she’s been sent on a wild goose chase. But Mercury persuades her to be patient: “Wait for the right time to reveal yourself, and put your jealous feelings on hold.”

A veiled Platée arrives with Jupiter and Mercury. She notices that L’Amour is not present and the prolonged pageantry makes her impatient. Stalling for time in anticipation of Juno’s arrival, Mercury and Jupiter make a long dance longer. Momus arrives, standing in for L’Amour who is “otherwise engaged”, and paints a very sorry picture of marriage, much to Platée’s disappointment. Finally, Jupiter begins his wedding vow, delaying until…

Juno bursts in, tears the veil from the bride’s face and is… astounded. The joke is over. Jupiter and Juno make up and depart. Platée is furious. She blames Cithéron as the architect of her humiliation and swears revenge.

LES ACTEURS et les CHŒURS

Formons un spectacle nouveau.

Les filles de mémoire

ACTORS and CHORUS

Let’s put on a show like nothing ever seen before!

The muses will forever proclaim

Publieront à jamais la gloire the genius of those who dream up

Des auteurs d’un projet si beau. such a beautiful plan.

Formons un spectacle nouveau. Let’s put on a show like nothing ever seen before!

Bacchus, c’est ta victoire, Bacchus, this is your victory!

Livrons-nous au plaisir de boire, Let’s abandon ourselves to the pleasure L’Hippocrêne est sur ce côteau. of drinking; this is the fountain of inspiration.

THESPIS et CHŒUR

THESPIS and CHORUS

Let’s sing the praises of Bacchus, Chantons Momus, of Momus, god of ridicule, Chantons l’Amour et ses flammes, of Love and her darts!

Chantons Bacchus,

Que tour à tour

As we take our ease here, Dans ce séjour, let these gods, one by one, Ces dieux remplissent nos âmes. fill our souls.

Sans le vin, Without wine, Sans son ivresse, without its intoxicating power, La tendresse tenderness

N’est que chagrin. is nothing but grief. Veut-on rire? If you’re looking for laughter, C’est à Bacchus qu’on a recours, Bacchus is the one you need! Momus lui dût toujours He’s the one Momus has always turned to Son plus charmant délire. for his most delightful raptures.

ACT ONE

SCENE 1

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Dieux, qui tenez l’Univers en vos mains, O gods, who hold the universe Voyez les éléments nous déclarer in your hands, see how the elements la guerre: have declared war against us:

S’il est de coupables humains, If humans are the guilty ones, Punissez-les par le tonnerre, then punish them with your thunder, Et rendez à la terre and let the earth return to the gentle calm

Le calme et la douceur de ses premiers destins. which has always been its destiny. Mais je vois Mercure descendre! But I see Mercury descending! Mes cris se sont-ils fait entendre? Have my cries been heard?

SCENE 2

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Mercure, apprenez-nous Mercury, tell us: par quels malheurs nouveaux what is this new calamity that heaven

Le ciel nous fait sentir sa vengeance is sending to wreak its vengeance ou sa haine? or its hatred on us?

Des Aquilons fougueux la dévorante haleine The north wind’s all-consuming blast Menace à chaque instant threatens to destroy nos champs et nos côteaux. our fields and vines.

MERCURE MERCURY

D’une cruelle jalousie Cruel jealousy has provoked the goddess La Déesse des airs suit l’aveugle transport; of the skies into a blind passion. Pour calmer la fureur dont son âme est saisie, Her soul is seized with fury, and all On fait un inutile effort; efforts to calm it are in vain. Jupiter s’en impatiente, Jupiter has had enough of it; Et je lui cherche un doux amusement. I’m looking for something to cheer him up.

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Par quelque feinte ardeur,

Surely with a bit of faked passion, quelque ruse innocente, some innocent little trick, Ne peut-on guérir son Epouse aisément? his wife would be easily cured?

Si Junon paraît implacable, If Juno’s rage won’t be calmed, Que d’un nouvel hymen let him pretend to be about to marry il feigne les apprêts, someone else. It will soon become clear Bientôt il cessera de paraître coupable: that he has done nothing wrong Et bientôt leur amour reprendra ses attraits. and soon their love will be back on course.

MERCURE

MERCURY

Mais si l’objet But it couldn’t be someone lui paraissait aimable... he would really fall for...

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

Ne craignez rien du pouvoir de ses traits. Have no fear – this one’s no beauty. Dans un Marais profond, monument du déluge, In a deep swamp, a remnant of the flood Que vit jadis Deucalion, from Deucalion’s day, Une Nymphe a fait son refuge there’s a nymph who has made her home Au pied de ce sombre vallon. at the bottom of a dark valley. Cette Naïade ridicule, This ridiculous water spirit,

Et que de tous les temps a proscrite l’Amour, who has been banished by Love forever, Sur ses comiques traits aveuglément crédule, has no idea how stupid she looks, Espère chaque jour and waits every day for thousands of lovers

Que mille amants viendront l’adorer tour à tour. to come and adore her, one by one.

Que Jupiter, feignant de ce rendre à ses charmes, Let Jupiter, pretending to succumb to her Vienne lui proposer un tendre engagement: charms, offer to marry her; Informez-en Junon, excitez ses alarmes, Let Juno know, get her up in arms about it, Nous l’attendrons à l’éclaircissement. and we’ll wait for all to be revealed. Voulez-vous voir l’objet Do you want to see de cette amour nouvelle? the object of this new love?

MERCURE

MERCURY

I’m going up to the heavens; où Jupiter m’appelle. Jupiter is calling me. C’est à lui de juger He can be the judge d’un objet si charmant. of the charms of such a creature.

Je monte aux Cieux

SCENE 3

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Que ce séjour est agréable! What a lovely place this is! Qu’il est aimable! How pleasant it is!

Ah, qu’il est favorable, Ah, what a perfect spot Pour qui veut perdre sa liberté! for someone to give up their freedom!

Dis-moi, mon coeur, t’es-tu bien consulté? Tell me, my heart, have you

Ah, mon coeur, tu t’agites! considered well? Ah, you’re all in a state!

Ah, mon coeur, tu me quittes! Ah, my heart, you’re leaving me! Est-ce pour Cithéron? T’as-t-il bien mérité? Is it for Citheron? Is he worthy of you?

CLARINE CLARINE

Sur quoi fondez-vous l’espérance

What gives you cause to hope Que Cithéron se soumette à vos lois? that Citheron would yield to you?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Sur ce que je le vois,

The fact that I see him, De plus loin quelque fois, sometimes far off in the distance, Comme un amant timide, éviter ma présence. avoiding my presence, like a shy lover.

CLARINE CLARINE

Quoi! Devenir sensible...

What! You think he would develop feelings...

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Hélas! Oui, je le crois. Alas, yes, I do believe it.

CLARINE CLARINE

Pour un simple mortel! ...for a mere mortal?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Il faut bien faire un choix: It’s time to make my choice: Dans l’ardeur qui me presse, in this urgent passion I feel, Où porter ma tendresse? where should I direct my affections?

Nos Dieux des fleuves sont si froids. Our river gods are so cold.

L’Amour avec moi s’intéresse. Love is taking an interest in me. Mon amant vient, je l’aperçois. My lover is coming, I can see him.

Habitants fortunés, voisins de ces bocages, Fortunate denizens, neighbours in these Quittez vos sombres marécages, groves, leave your dark marshes, Hâtez-vous, venez promptement make haste, come quickly Vous rassembler sous l’herbe tendre; and assemble beneath the tender grass. Si l’on ne vous voit pas, qu’on puisse vous entendre Though we may not see you, we will hear you Célébrer cet heureux moment. celebrating this happy moment.

Que vos voix m’applaudissent, Let your voices acclaim me, Que les airs retentissent; let the air resound, Chantez et criez tous, sing and shout, all of you!

Que vos accents s’unissent Raise your voices in unison

A ces charmants oiseaux with those charming birds dont les chants sont si doux. whose songs are so sweet.

CHŒUR qu’on ne voit pas.

CHORUS (unseen)

Que nos voix applaudissent, Let our voices acclaim her, Que les airs retentissent; let the air resound, Chantons et crions tous, let us all sing and shout!

Que nos accents s’unissent Let us raise our voices in unison

A ces charmants oiseaux with those charming birds dont les chants sont si doux. whose songs are so sweet.

SCENE 4

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Quelque douce inquiétude

Is it some sweet heartache Vous conduit en ces lieux? that brings you here?

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Non. Je cherche la solitude.

No. I want to be alone.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

On y peut trouver mieux. We can do better than that here!

Il s’y rencontre des Dryades Here you will find dryads

Qui viennent volontiers dans ces lieux écartés, who come willingly to these private groves, Et jusqu’aux humides Naïades, and even watery naiads: they are all ready Tout doit sentir ce que vous méritez. to give you the rewards you deserve.

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

Oserais-je aspirer à des Divinités? Should I dare to dream of loving divine spirits? C’est au respect à m’en défendre. Out of respect I should turn away.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

On aimerait autant un sentiment It would be nicer to hear something plus tendre: more tender!

Les discours obligeants sont toujours écoutés. Flattering words always find an audience. Pour un amant qui sait plaire, For a lover who knows how to please, Il n’est point de rang trop haut: no rank is out of reach, Dût-il avoir le défaut even if he should sin D’en devenir téméraire. in becoming too bold.

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

L’amour audacieux... Such daring love...

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Le vôtre est circonspect. Your love is discreet.

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

Il est vrai, je le vois, tout le monde vous adore, It’s true, I see that all the world adores you, Et mon profond respect... and I respect you profoundly...

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Quoi! du respect encore: What! again, this talk of respect: Je m’attendris! My heart had melted!

Cruel, tu ris! You are cruel, you are laughing! Je vois à tes mines I can tell from your face Que tu me devines, that you can see me; Ah! Charmant vainqueur, Ah, charming conqueror of Tu n’aimes point? my heart, do you feel no love?

Non, non, tu dédaignes mon coeur. No, no, you scorn my heart. Serais-tu timide? Did I say you were shy?

Non. Tu n’es qu’un perfide, No, you’re just devious, Un perfide envers moi. faithless towards me. Dis donc, dis donc pourquoi? Tell me, tell me, why?

Quoi? Quoi? Why? Why? Dis donc pourquoi? Why? I repeat...

CHŒUR qu’on ne voit pas.

Quoi? Quoi?

CHORUS (unseen)

Ribbit! Ribbit!

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Naïade, apaisez-vous

Water-spirit, calm yourself, à l’aspect de Mercure: you are in the presence of Mercury: Il descend des cieux, je le vois. I see him descending from the heavens.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Mercure! Ah! Se peut-il?

Mercury! Ah, could it be?

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Sans doute, et j’en augure

Yes indeed, and I foresee Que quelque Dieu rempli d’amour... that some god, overcome with love...

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Quoi? Quoi?

LE CHŒUR caché.

Quoi? Quoi?

SCENE 5

What? What? I repeat...

CHORUS (unseen)

Ribbit! Ribbit!

MERCURE MERCURY

Déesse qui régnez dans ces Marais superbes, O goddess, ruler of these magnificent marshes, Sur des Sujets sans nombre whose subjects multitudinous errant parmi les herbes, roam among the reeds:

Ne trouverez-vous point indigne de vos fers, surely you would not judge the God of Thunder

Le Dieu qui lance le tonnerre? to be unworthy to serve as your slave?

Ce Dieu, par vos attraits attiré sur la terre, That God, drawn down to earth by your beauty, Veut soumettre à vos pieds son coeur comes to lay his heart at your feet, et l’univers. and with it, the whole universe.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Le croirai-je, beau Mercure, Handsome Mercury, shall I believe Que d’une flamme bien pure that one so exalted

On brûle pour mes appas? is aflame with passion for my beauty?

Puis-je en être assez sure

Can I trust what you say enough

Pour soupirer tout bas? to sigh with longing, just quietly to myself?

MERCURE et CITHÉRON

MERCURY and CITHERON

Platée a mérité cette gloire éclatante. Platée is worthy of this dazzling glory.

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

Vous ne blâmerez plus une âme indifférente Never again will you reprimand an indifferent Pour un bonheur qui n’eût pû s’achever. heart for not having been able to attain bliss.

MERCURE et CITHÉRON

MERCURY and CITHERON

Tout annonçait en vous Everything about you proclaims la fortune brillante the shining destiny

Où l’amour d’un grand Dieu to which you should be exalted devait vous élever. by the love of a great God.

Platée a mérité cette gloire éclatante. Platée is worthy of this dazzling glory.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Mais ce Dieu plein d’ardeur, But this God, full of passion, Pour attaquer mon coeur, ready for the conquest of my heart, Se fait longtemps attendre. is taking his time to get here!

MERCURE

MERCURY

Il va se rendre, He is about to arrive, Et bientôt, près de vous. he will soon be here with you.

Le ciel qui s’obscurcit m’en donne le présage: The darkening sky foretells it: La Déesse des airs y signale sa rage, it shows the fury of the goddess of the skies, Mais rien n’arrête son Epoux. but nothing can stop her husband.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Je crains peu son courroux, I have little fear of her anger. Dans mon humide Empire on crie après l’orage. In my watery empire, we love storms. Annonçons ce beau jour, Let’s proclaim this fair day

Aux Nymphes de ma Cour. to the nymphs of my court.

Quittez, Nymphes, vos demeures profondes; Nymphs, leave your deep abodes: Un torrent de célestes ondes a torrent of water from heaven

Est prêt d’inonder ces climats. is about to flood these climes.

Et vous, Junon, pleurez, arrosez mes Etats. Weep away, Juno! Water my realm.

SCENE 6

CHŒUR de Nymphes

CHORUS OF NYMPHS

Epais nuages, Thick clouds, Rassemblez-vous; gather yourselves together, Tombez sur nous; rain down on us, Enflez nos rivages: flood our shores: Jusqu’à vos ravages, whatever you bring, even devastation, Tout nous sera doux. will be a pleasure for us.

CLARINE CLARINE

Soleil, fuis de ces lieux, O sun, flee this place, Cesse de tourmenter les humides Naïades: torment the watery naiads no longer! Venez, favorables Hyades, Come, kindly rain spirits, Étaignez pour jamais son éclat et ses feux. extinguish for ever the sun’s fiery glory.

MERCURE MERCURY

Nymphes, les Aquilons

Nymphs, the north wind is coming viennent troubler la fête. to throw all into disarray. Je vois Iris qui s’avance à leur tête. I see Iris leading the charge. Un vent impétueux agite les roseaux, Gusts of wind are shaking the reeds. Retirez-vous au fond des eaux. Take shelter in the watery depths.

ACT TWO

SCENE 1

MERCURE MERCURY

Je viens de soulager Junon dans sa colère, I have just managed to calm Juno’s anger. Par un aveu qu’elle croyait sincère, I swore an oath, which she believed, Athènes deviendra l’objet de son courroux: that she should turn her fury on Athens. Et déjà l’espoir la console She is already taking comfort at the prospect D’y surprendre à la fois la Nymphe et son Epoux. of catching the nymph there with her husband. Vous voyez qu’elle y vole. You can see her rushing away there now. En toute liberté, Jupiter va paraître. The way is clear for Jupiter to appear.

Il vient... Here he comes...

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Retirons-nous dans ce bois écarté. Let’s hide over here in this grove.

MERCURE MERCURY

Nous verrons tout sans nous faire connaître. We’ll see everything but no one will see us.

Simon Rickard and the musette he plays in this production (photo: Lando Rossi)

The Frog chorus in rehearsal (photo: Jasmin Simmons)

SCENE 2

JUPITER JUPITER

Aquilons trop audacieux, North wind, you are too bold.

Craignez ma colère; Fear my rage, Fuyez de ces lieux. flee this place!

Pour voir de près la beauté qui m’est chère, I want to see up close my beautiful beloved, Pour lui rendre un hommage aussi vif que sincère, I want to pay her deep and sincere homage Je quitte le séjour des Cieux. and so I have left my heavenly realm.

Aquilons trop audacieux, North wind, you are too bold.

Craignez ma colère; Fear my rage, Fuyez de ces lieux. flee this place!

SCENE 3

PLATÉE PLATÉE

A l’aspect de ce nuage; The sight of that cloud Je ne saurais m’abuser! leaves me in no doubt! Jupiter sait tout oser: Jupiter can dare all, Mais aurai-je le courage but will I have the courage De recevoir son hommage, to receive his homage –Ou de le refuser? or to refuse it?

Le nuage s’entrouvre The clouds part, Je vois du mouvement: I see something moving: Je crois qu’il me découvre I think he has seen me, Mon adorable amant. my adorable lover!

Quelle métamorphoses! So many different forms he is taking!

Dois-je approcher? Je n’ose. Should I draw near? I don’t dare.

C’est une épreuve assurément This must be a test that Jupiter

Que Jupiter prépare à ma flamme nouvelle. has prepared to prove that my love is true.

Venez, venez, j’y suis fidèle, Come on then, I am faithful

Quelque soit ce déguisement. however you disguise yourself!

Apprenez-moi ce qu’Amour vous inspire; Teach me whatever Love inspires in you, Et ce que votre coeur prétend. whatever your heart demands.

Vous soupirez, et je soupire; We are both languishing for love;

Il suffit d’un si doux accent, such sweet sighs are enough; without Vous dites tout sans rien me dire. uttering a single word you have told me

Ah! Que l’amour est éloquent! everything. Ah, how eloquent is love!

Quoi! vous disparaissez!.. What! You have disappeared!

Sous quel nouveau plumage In what new plumage

Me représentez-vous do you appear before me

Le plus beau des Hiboux? as the most handsome of owls?

Oiseaux de ce bocage, Let all the birds of this grove

Venez tous, chantez! come forth and sing!

Quels cris! Quel ramage! What twittering! What warbling!

Oiseaux, vous en êtes jaloux, Why, birds, you are jealous! Changez de langage, Change your song

Rendez hommage and pay homage

Au plus beau des Hiboux. to the most handsome of owls.

Hélas! Il s’envole?

Je ne le vois plus.

Alas! he has taken flight!

I see him no more.

Jupiter... Jupiter... mes cris sont superflus. Jupiter... Jupiter... my cries are in vain. Il faudra donc que mon cœur s’en désole. Then my heart must despair.

Hélas! Il s’envole!

Je ne le vois plus.

Ciel! Quelle terrible rosée!

Alas! He has taken flight!

I see him no more.

Heaven! What is this terrible rain of fire?

JUPITER JUPITER

Charmant objet de mes dignes amours, Delightful object of my most worthy passions, Ne soyez plus longtemps abusée. I will play no more tricks on you. Comptez sur mon secours. You can place your trust in me.

J’éloigne de mes mains la foudre redoutable; I have set aside my fearsome thunderbolts; Je ne viens point vous alarmer. I have not come to alarm you!

Jupiter avec vous devenu Jupiter will do your bidding, plus traitable, and henceforth concern himself

Ne s’occupera plus que du plaisir d’aimer. only with the pleasures of love.

Seriez-vous infidèle à mes tendres vœux? Would you turn your back on my avowals of love?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Ouffe. Wow!

JUPITER JUPITER

Je vous offre des vœux constants: The promises I offer are true. Vous ne répondez rien... Do you have no reply for me?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Pardonnez-moi, j’étouffe,

Forgive me: I’m choking Et je soupire en même temps. and sighing, all at the same time.

JUPITER JUPITER

En attendant qu’un doux hymen

While we await the delightful wedding s’apprête, that is being prepared, let all rejoice

Qu’on réjouisse ici ma nouvelle conquête: that I have conquered a new heart!

Momus, rassemblez tous vos jeux; Momus, gather together all your arts: Que l’allégresse de la fête

Let the festivities be as joyful Egale l’excès de mes feux. and wild as my passion.

MOMUS MOMUS

Sujets divers que le délire

All you who are bound forever Enchaîne à jamais dans ma cour, to my service in rapturous frenzy: Venez, du Dieu qui vous inspire come now and affirm the glory Soutenez la gloire en ce jour. of the god who inspires you.

SCENE 4

LE CHŒUR CHORUS

Qu’elle est aimable!

Qu’elle est belle!

How delightful she is!

How beautiful she is!

Who would not yield Qui ne se rendrait pas? to such charms?

A tant d’appas

Qu’elle est aimable! Qu’elle est belle! How delightful! How beautiful! Jupiter soupire pour elle. Jupiter languishes for her.

Le charmant objet que voilà! Behold the delightful object of his passion!

MOMUS MOMUS

Mais une nouvelle harmonie

But the music has changed: Annonce apparemment Terpsichore, ou Thalie. this must be Terpsichore arriving, or Thalia.

SCENE 5

LA FOLIE MADNESS

Vous vous trompez, Momus, non, non.

No, no, Momus, you’re wrong!

MOMUS MOMUS

Que vois-je? Ô ciel!

What’s this I see? Oh heaven!

LA FOLIE MADNESS

C’est moi, c’est La Folie It’s me, Madness, Qui vient de dérober la Lire d’Apollon. with Apollo’s lyre, which I have just stolen.

MOMUS et LE CHŒUR

MOMUS and CHORUS

Honneur, honneur à la Folie, All honour to Madness

Qui tient la Lyre d’Apollon. who holds Apollo’s lyre in her hand.

LA FOLIE MADNESS

Formons les plus brillants concerts; Let our music outshine all other concerts!

Quand Jupiter porte les fers Once Jupiter is enslaved

De l’incomparable Platée, to Platée, who is beyond compare, Je veux que les transports I will translate the ecstasy de son âme enchantée, of his enchanted soul

S’expriment par mes chants divers. into songs of every kind.

Admirez tous mon art célèbre. Let all admire the art for which I am famed!

Je fais d’une image funèbre My songs can turn scenes of mourning

Une allégresse par mes chants. into joy.

Aux langueurs d’Apollon, Daphné se refusa: Daphne rejected the desperate passions

L’Amour sur son tombeau, of Apollo: Love stubbed out her torch

Eteignit son flambeau, on her tomb, La métamorphosa. and transformed her.

C’est ainsi que l’Amour de tout temps s’est vengé: So you see that Love is always avenged: Que l’Amour est cruel, quand il est outragé! how cruel she is, when she is offended!

LE CHŒUR CHORUS

Honneur, honneur à la Folie,

All honour to Madness: Elle surpasse Polymnie; she is greater than the Muses!

Honneur à ses divins accents. Give honour to her divine songs!

LA FOLIE MADNESS

Jugez par du beau simple

Hear its simple beauty, hear et des sons plus touchants, how moving are its tones, and then tell me Si je connais la mélodie. if I know how to write a melody!

Ecoutez bien... Listen carefully –surtout ma symphonie. especially to the music of my instruments.

Aimables Jeux, suivez mes pas, Let pleasant pastimes follow my steps.

Plaisirs badins, c’est dans vos bras

Playful pleasures, in your arms

Que notre ardeur se renouvelle. is our passion renewed.

Si Zéphyr ne badinait pas, If Zephyr did not tease, Flore lui serait moins fidèle. Flora would be less faithful to him.

Vous admirez mon art suprême, You admire the surpassing power of my art: J’attriste l’allégresse même, I can turn joy itself to sadness Par mes sons plaintifs et dolents. with my plaintive, mournful tones.

Je veux finir

To finish, Par un coup de génie. I have a stroke of genius. Secondez-moi, je sens que je puis parvenir Help me, I feel that I shall attain Au chef-d’oeuvre de l’harmonie. the summit of musical excellence. Hymen, hymen, l’Amour t’appelle Hymen, Hymen, Love summons you: Prépare à Jupiter une chaîne nouvelle, Prepare a new wedding bond for Jupiter, Viens couronner la nouvelle Junon. come and crown the new Juno.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Hé, bon, bon, bon. Ah, yes, yes!

TOUS ALL

Dans son ame Come and unite your passion Viens joindre ta flamme with Cupid’s fires Aux feux de Cupidon. in her heart.

Hé, bon, bon, bon. Ah, yes, yes!

ACT THREE

SCENE 1

JUNON JUNO

Haine, dépit, jalouse rage, Hatred, spite, jealous rage, Je vous livre mon coeur. I give my heart over to you. Etouffez mon amour pour un époux volage, Smother the love I had for my fickle husband, Inspirez-moi votre fureur. inspire me with your fury.

SCENE 2

JUNON JUNO

Arrêtez: Mercury, stop right there! Jupiter n’était point dans Athènes: Jupiter was not in Athens. Vous m’abusiez: You were lying to me; vous trompiez mes désirs. you were trying to foil my plans. Quel charme trouvez-vous Do you take pleasure à redoubler mes peines. in making my suffering worse?

MERCURE MERCURY

Non. Je verrai bientôt renaître vos plaisirs. No. I will soon see your pleasures reborn. Si je sers Jupiter, Though I serve Jupiter, applaudissez mon zèle, praise me for my diligence: Qui tend à vous servir bien plus I shall serve you much better que votre Epoux. than I serve your husband.

JUNON JUNO

Ne croyez pas apaiser mon courroux: Don’t think you can calm my rage: Je veux confondre l’Infidèle. I will bring the faithless wretch down.

MERCURE

MERCURY

Hélas! Il ne tiendra qu’à vous. Alas! He will be true to none but you. En ce lieu même il va paraître, He will soon appear in this very place. Attendez le moment de vous faire connaître, Wait for the right time to reveal yourself, Et suspendez vos mouvements jaloux. and put your jealous feelings on hold.

SCENE 3

LE CHŒUR CHORUS

Chantons, célébrons en ce jour

Let us sing, let us celebrate this day

Le pouvoir de l’Amour. the power of Love.

Par lui, la Nymphe peut prétendre Through Love, the nymph can aspire A s’unir au plus grand des Dieux; to be united with the greatest of the gods, Et le roi le plus glorieux, and the most glorious of kings

A la Bergère peut se rendre. can yield himself up to the shepherdess. Chantons, célébrons en ce jour

Let us sing, let us celebrate this day

Le pouvoir de l’Amour. the power of Love.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Dans cette fête, During these festivities Mon coeur s’apprête my heart makes ready

A recevoir ardemment to receive with passion

Les voeux de mon amant. the vows of my lover.

Mais il nous manque en ce moment But what we are missing right now, Pour mon bonheur et pour le vôtre, to make my happiness and yours complete, L’Hymen, l’Amour; are the gods of Marriage and Love; ou du moins, l’un ou l’autre. or at least one of the two.

JUPITER JUPITER

Mercure, dites-moi pourquoi ces petits Dieux Mercury, tell me why these little gods

Ne me suivent pas dans ces lieux? have not followed me here?

MERCURE

MERCURY

Ces Dieux, vous le savez, You know yourself vont rarement ensemble, that those gods rarely travel together. C’est un hasard qui les rassemble It’s only by luck if they appear together, Sur la terre, sur l’onde, whether on land, on sea, et même dans les cieux. or even in the heavens.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Quoi, faut-il les attendre encore? What, must we wait for them still?

Mon coeur tout agité, My heart is in a whirl, Est impatienté impatient

De l’importante gravité for the weighty authority De ces beaux fils de Terpsichore. of those fair sons of Terpsichore.

SCENE 4

JUPITER

JUPITER

Que vois-je? Est-ce l’Amour? What’s this I see? Is this Love?

Vient-il avec ses armes, Is she coming armed, ready Pour lancer dans mon coeur to fire new darts encore de nouveaux traits? into my heart once more?

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Puisqu’il vient pour moi tout exprès; It’s for me alone that she has come, Qu’il avance; so let her come forward; il ne peut m’approcher de trop près. she can’t get too close to me.

JUPITER et MERCURE

C’est Momus!

JUPITER and MERCURY

It’s Momus!

De l’Amour n’a-t-il pas tous les charmes? Doesn’t he look just like Love?

MOMUS MOMUS

Le tout-puissant Amour, ayant affaire ailleurs, All-powerful Love, being otherwise Ne peut ici venir lui-même, engaged, cannot come in person, Il m’a chargé pour vous so she has given me de toutes ses faveurs. all the blessings she had for you.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Donnez, donnez, ce sera tout de même. Give them here, it will work out the same.

MOMUS MOMUS

Ce sont des pleurs. They are: tears.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Fi... Gah!

MOMUS MOMUS Des tendres douleurs. Tender pains.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Fi... Gah!

MOMUS MOMUS

Des cris, des langueurs. Cries and languishing.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Fi, fi, ce sont-là des malheurs; Gah, those are curses! Et s’il faut que j’aime, If I must be in love, Je veux des douceurs. I want to taste its sweetness.

MOMUS MOMUS

Ah! Du moins, recevez la timide Espérance. Ah! At least you can have shy Hope.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Eh, Fi, votre espérance Gah, your Hope N’est qu’une souffrance, is nothing but suffering, Un vrai signe d’ennui; a true sign of trouble.

LA FOLIE MADNESS

Amour, lance tes traits, épuise ton carquois, Fire your darts, Love, empty your quiver, Étends jusqu’à nous ta victoire. let us be part of your victory.

Ajoute à ta gloire Let new adventures

De nouveaux exploits. add to your renown.

SCENE 6

CITHÉRON CITHERON

Du plus grand des Immortels

My subjects, Platée has won the heart Platée a fait la conquête, of the greatest of the immortals: De son triomphe embellissez la fête, lend your graces to this celebration of her Et préparez-lui des autels. triumph, and prepare altars in her honour.

LA FOLIE MADNESS

Chantez Platée, égayez-vous, Sing the praises of Platée, be merry, Chantez le pouvoir de ses charmes. sing of the power of her charms.

LE CHŒUR

CHORUS

Chantons Platée, égayons-nous, Sing the praises of Platée, let’s be merry, Chantons le pouvoir de ses charmes. sing of the power of her charms.

TOUS ENSEMBLE. ALL

Le dieu qui lui rend les armes

The god who has yielded to her Va nous combler de ses biens les plus doux. will pour out on us his sweetest blessings.

LA FOLIE et LE CHŒUR MADNESS and CHORUS

Chantons, dansons, sautons tous. Let’s all sing and dance and leap about. Chantez Platée, égayez-vous. Sing the praises of Platée, be merry. Chantons le pouvoir de ses charmes. Sing of the power of her charms.

JUPITER, à Mercure, à part

JUPITER (to Mercury, aside)

Voici l’instant de terminer la feinte; This is the moment to put an end

Mais, Junon ne vient point. to this pretence; but Juno hasn’t arrived.

MERCURE

MERCURY

Elle est près de ces lieux. She is already here, close at hand.

JUPITER

JUPITER

Que de noeuds solennels... Let the solemn bonds...

Mais d’où naît cette crainte; But where does this fear come from? Vous qui ne doutez point Surely you do not doubt du pouvoir de vos yeux? the conquering power of your eyes?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Je songe à votre ancienne épouse. I’m thinking about your former wife.

JUPITER JUPITER

Hé quoi! Qu’en appréhendez-vous?

Ah, what! What do you know about her?

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Elle est, à ce qu’on dit, jalouse. I’ve heard that she is jealous.

JUPITER JUPITER

Nous laisserons agir Her anger is harmless, son impuissant courroux. we will let it run its course. Pour célébrer ce noeud si légitime; To solemnise this lawful bond Je jure... of marriage, I swear...

SCENE 7

JUNON JUNO

Arrête, ingrat,

Stop, you ungrateful wretch!

Tu n’achèveras pas cet horrible attentat. You shall not carry out this horrible crime. Heureuse en ma fureur, saisissons la victime. Exultant with fury, I shall seize the victim. Que vois-je! O ciel!

What’s this I see? O heavens!

JUPITER JUPITER

Vous voyez votre erreur. You see your error.

JUNON JUNO

Ma surprise est extrême, I am utterly astounded. My misery Quelle confusion succède à ma douleur! has given way to such embarrassment!

JUPITER JUPITER

Douterez-vous encore que je vous aime? Can you still doubt that I love you?

JUNON JUNO

Non. Vous rétablissez le calme dans mon coeur. No. You have set my heart at peace again.

JUPITER JUPITER

Let us go up to the home of thunder, Venez, quittons ces lieux come, let us leave this place. Il n’appartient point à la terre

Montons au séjour du tonnerre,

It is not fitting that the earth should detain D’arrêter plus longtemps le Souverain des Dieux. the King of the Gods any longer.

FINAL SCENE

LA FOLIE avec tous les CHŒURS MADNESS with CHORUS

Chantons Platée, égayons-nous, Sing the praises of Platée, let’s be merry, Chantons le pouvoir de ses charmes. sing of the power of her charms.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Taisez-vous. Be quiet, Ou, par la mort, or I swear by death itself, je vous punirai tous. I will punish you all.

LES CHŒURS CHORUS

Le Dieu qui lui rend les armes

The god who has yielded to her Va nous combler de ses biens les plus doux, will pour out on us his sweetest blessings. Chantons, dansons, sautons tous. Let us sing and dance and leap about.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

What! Is my rage so little to be feared? Je brouillerai, I will stir up the waters, je troublerai mon onde, I will whip them into a frenzy

Quoi! L’on craint si peu mon courroux?

Et c’est du sein de ma grotte profonde, and from the heart of my deep cave

Que je vous porterai, je lancerai mes coups. I will hurl blows at you.

LES CHŒURS

CHORUS

Chantons Platée, égayons-nous, Sing the praises of Platée, let’s be merry, Chantons le pouvoir de ses charmes. sing of the power of her charms.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Taisez-vous. Be quiet!

Ou, par la mort, Or I swear by death itself, je vous punirai tous. I will punish the lot of you.

Tu vois ma rage, Citheron, you see my fury: Frémis d’effroi: tremble with terror!

D’un tel outrage

You are the one I blame Je n’accuse que toi. for this insult.

CITHÉRON

CITHERON

Que moi! Who, me?

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

Oui, toi. Yes, you.

CITHÉRON CITHERON

N’accusez que l’ingrat

You should rather be accusing qui vous manque de foi. the ungrateful wretch who betrayed you.

PLATÉE PLATÉE

Je n’accuse que toi, je n’accuse que toi. I accuse no one but you.

LES CHŒURS CHORUS

Chantons Platée, égayons-nous, Sing the praises of Platée, let’s be merry, Chantons le pouvoir de ses charmes. sing of the power of her charms.

PLATÉE

PLATÉE

What! Do they think they can mes coups? stand up to my blows?

Quoi! L’on prétend braver

Courons, allons contre eux

I’ll chase them down

exhaler mon courroux. they shall feel my rage.

Kanen Breen and Erin Helyard in rehearsal (photo: Jasmin Simmons)

Translation by Natalie Shea © 2021

PINCHGUT BEGINNINGS

Pinchgut founders Ken and Liz Nielsen, artistic director Erin Helyard and the people who were there at the beginning spoke to Yvonne Frindle about what it’s like to build an opera company.

If the Pinchgut story were itself an opera it would be a work in progress – the turmoil of a plague and the festivities of a birthday celebration making a dramatic conclusion to Act I. The Prologue would begin with founder Ken Nielsen entering the office of Alison Johnston, an arts administrator.

“Do you think Sydney needs a chamber opera company?” he would sing.

Our prologue would break Aristotle’s unities by taking us to several locations – cafes at the Museum of Sydney and Sydney Dance Company among them – over the course of many months. It would introduce more of our principal characters: fellow founder Liz Nielsen, Anna Cerneaz, baroque violinist Anna McDonald, a young harpsichordist Erin Helyard – musicians and music tragics all. “Yes,” they would sing over lattes and espressos, “Sydney needs a chamber opera company.” We’d meet a conductor, Antony Walker, and Alison’s brother, Andrew Johnston, an actor and production manager.

Together they would plot and scheme in the best operatic tradition, setting the stage for a project of breathtaking vision and more than a little audacity and whimsy. Someone would suggest the name “Pinchgut”. They’d agree to create what would be, for Sydney, a new entertainment – to put on a show like nothing ever seen before.

For their first vehicle they would choose Handel’s Semele, telling the story of Jupiter, his mistress and a thoroughly jealous Juno. For the setting they would take us not to a gilded theatre but to a recital hall, a big white box that would focus attention on the sound – on the music. Curtain. Or rather, no curtain.

“If we’d known even ten per cent of what we now know about putting on an opera we would never have attempted it,” recalls Alison Johnston, Pinchgut’s artistic manager. But everything about the business of bringing Semele to the stage, she says, was exciting: the planning, the casting, even the costume fittings. According to Anna Cerneaz – the company’s marketing manager then general manager for the first 12 years – it was all hands on deck, with everyone doing everything they could to make it a success. It should have been chaotic, she says, but it wasn’t.

That first production, in December 2002, was conducted by Antony Walker. Erin Helyard played harpsichord continuo and Anna McDonald led the Sirius Ensemble, a period-instrument they’d founded. The cast included Anna Ryberg as Semele, with Sally-Anne Russell and Angus Wood as Juno and Jupiter, Tobias Cole as Athamus and Stephen Bennett as Cadmus/Somnus. Justin Way directed and Samantha Paxton was the first of many designers who would leap to the challenge of presenting theatre in a concert hall.

“We did well, artistically, with Semele,” says Alison, “And we did sort-of-well, on the box-office front, although we nowhere near covered our costs. Every year as we went on, there was this mix of excitement and absolutely not knowing if we’d be able to continue. That was totally in the lap of the patrons who were supporting it – whether they were prepared to go on. It was a wild ride and we learned so much from the first production to the second.”

Pinchgut founders, Liz and Ken Nielsen. “They made me Life Patron for my sins,” jokes Liz.

The second production was Purcell’s Fairy Queen, followed by Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 2004, and their first French opera, Dardanus, in 2005. And so the company settled into a pattern of one opera a year.

“It was all done on the smell of an oily rag,” says operations manager Andrew Johnston. “We’d beg and borrow spaces to build the sets. We’d store stuff in Ken and Liz’s garage. Any designers we brought on board were expected to have a paintbrush or a sewing machine in their hands the whole time. And while our budgets have increased and we’re better resourced now, we’re still really conscious of not wasting. Compared to the big companies, we still operate on a shoestring.”

During the early years everyone worked from home. When it came to October or November, explains Andrew, “we’d extricate ourselves from whatever other jobs we were doing and focus on Pinchgut for a good seven or eight weeks, then we’d go back to our lives. It was only in 2014, when we moved to two shows a year, that I felt I could focus on Pinchgut as my primary job. But we still had to supplement our income elsewhere, and it was really only about four years ago that we started to go, okay, I think we’re full-time now.”

The feeling of relative security is one of the key changes that Pinchgut stalwarts mention when they look back over the past 20 years: moving from extreme uncertainty to being in a position to plan and produce two operas and a small concert series each year, and now touring as well.

“For the first eight years,” says Alison, “we genuinely didn’t know whether we’d have a job next year. And while we absolutely could still go under – you know, in COVID-times – it would be for different

PINCHGUT 2002–2021

TWENTY YEARS OF BRINGING BAROQUE OPERA TO AUDIENCES

2000 2001

The first Pinchgut meeting takes place on 18 October 2000

Founding Artistic Directors: Antony Walker, Erin Helyard and violinist Anna McDonald

Pinchgut Opera incorporated as a company on 5 February 2001

“It’s a bit like looking at the back of a clock – you see all the moving parts.” Erin Helyard conducts the orchestra for Theodora (2016). (photo: Robert Catto)

reasons. But as a company, we seem to be relatively secure – as secure as anybody can be in this environment – we don’t look at each opera as potentially our last one. And a big reason for that is our wonderful family of loyal donors, which means we can plan for the long term.”

That security has led to more performances and interstate and regional touring as well as online projects – more activity, in other words. It has also led to a modest increase in the budget allocated to production – to what you see on the stage. And the core team that comes together for each production is now a little bigger. Although, as Anna astutely points out, this is not strictly speaking change so much as growth.

Liz describes it best: “What has changed is that it’s become a much bigger organisation in terms of what we do. And that means dealing with different issues, like the enormous amount of revenue that still has to come, mainly from donors, and having a bigger board, and employing over 200 people a year for our performances. But, it’s delightful that it’s still an organisation with six people running it – it’s never grown into a big, clumsy mechanism, where the money is absorbed by staff rather than the music.”

There is perhaps one true change from the earliest years: a change or clarification of artistic focus. “We weren’t even going to be a Baroque opera company,” says Erin, “but more like a chamber opera company – that was the niche that we identified at the time: that no one was doing chamber opera.” Now – and it happened fairly quickly – Pinchgut is quite definitely a specialist Baroque opera company (see “If it ain’t baroque…”). That said, a defining feature of Pinchgut, says Ken, is that it’s not afraid of change or taking risks and that, as an organisation, it never wants to become “boring and predictable”. So who knows what acts three or four or five might hold?

IF IT AIN’T BAROQUE…

Pinchgut specialises in Baroque opera but that wasn’t the original intention. “When we set up Pinchgut it was not set up as a Baroque opera company,” explains Alison Johnston, “it was set up as a chamber opera company.” A Baroque opera was chosen for the first production mainly because this was the area of expertise of Erin Helyard and violinist Anna McDonald, and for the first three-to-five years there was the idea that at some point Pinchgut would present a 20th-century or contemporary chamber opera.

“Early on we had a big discussion about The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky,” says Alison, “which would have suited us very well, because it uses a small orchestra with a harpsichord. But after a while we realised there’s more unexplored repertoire in the Baroque period than any other –vast swathes of stuff that nobody knows about. And that allows us to not only do Australian premieres, but sometimes ‘almost premieres’.”

It also became obvious that nobody else was presenting Baroque opera at that time, whereas other companies were presenting contemporary chamber opera. “The big factor for us in the end,” says Alison, “was the advent [in 2010] of Sydney Chamber Opera. So in the Australian opera ecology, and particularly the Sydney opera ecology, we work very well: Opera Australia does the mainstage operas, Sydney Chamber Opera is dealing with contemporary opera and commissions, and we’re doing Baroque opera, which neither of them is interested in doing, at least for the moment. We picked our area, we picked it well, and we weren’t in competition with anybody else.”

2002

Pinchgut Opera makes its debut on 4 Dec 2002 with Semele, conducted by Antony Walker and directed by Justin Way; Erin Helyard plays harpsichord

2003

Recording of Semele released (ABC Classic)

2004

Mark Gaal directs Orfeo First Pinchgut production to include the Orchestra of the Antipodes

2005

Pinchgut “invades” Fort Denison to promote Dardanus

Just two of the solutions to the City Recital Hall challenge: Adam Gardnir’s desert-paradise set for Ormindo (2009) and the glamorous ruin Brad Clark and Alexandra Sommer created for David et Jonathas (2008)

Pinchgut might not be afraid of change, but the list of things that haven’t changed over the past 20 years is long. Many are to do with the company’s personality and values: its agility, its freshness, the feeling of candour and whimsy, the family vibe, the importance of relationships, and the way in which music always comes first.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is Pinchgut’s home, City Recital Hall, which was new when the company was new and which has become fundamental to how Pinchgut presents opera to audiences.

“City Recital Hall has really shaped who we are as a company,” says Andrew. “For years we were the only people stupid enough to try to mount productions in there, and I think we still probably are. It’s a fantastic venue and we have a wonderful relationship with them, but it’s challenging. It’s not an opera theatre. There’s no wing space, there are no fly towers, there’s a tiny loading dock. Everything has to be able to go through doorways that are two metres high and two metres wide. And it’s a big white room.”

But the challenges have stimulated some marvellous creative responses. Andrew continues: “I love that every director and design team comes up with their own fantastic new way of solving it. Some of them don’t try to hide that it’s a big white room – they treat it more like a big installation – and others turn it into a black box. Some reference Baroque practice, others are completely contemporary.”

One key challenge is that lack of a proscenium arch and the machinery of theatre. “Whatever we put in there is the set,” says Andrew. “You don’t get to walk in after interval and see a totally different set on stage, and we’ve had some really creative ways of solving that.”

Andrew points to Griselda in 2011, where David Fleischer’s basic set transformed over three acts from an imposing granite archway, to a snowy trash-filled lane, to a wedding feast. And Ormindo (2009), which traded on the idea of Baroque artifice, with flat timber cut-outs for the desert dunes, receding into the background with palm trees. He recalls the beautiful set for David et Jonathas (2008), “which was like a Baroque room that had been bombed, with holes in the walls and rubble everywhere, and chandeliers”.

2008

2009

Erin Helyard conducts his first Pinchgut production

Taryn Fiebig makes her first Pinchgut appearance

First fundraiser at the Australian Museum

Lindy Hume directs Idomeneo

John Pitman joins the board

Chas Rader-Shieber directs David et Jonathas

“We’ve managed to create some fantastic designs,” he concludes. “Particularly in the early days on a very, very limited budget.”

The choice of City Recital Hall emerged from the philosophy of Music First (see “Prima la musica”). “We went to City Recital Hall because of the acoustic,” says Alison, “and we wanted everybody in the audience to have a very intimate participation in the production. We’ve talked about the possibility of going somewhere else, but we’ve never found a better space than the Recital Hall, acoustically.”

City Recital Hall has shaped Pinchgut and, says Liz, in some ways Pinchgut has shaped it. “We were not important to the Recital Hall in the beginning. They told us to go away, that opera couldn’t happen here at the Recital Hall. They put all sorts of obstacles in our way but we wore them down in the end. And then they could see how we brought an audience that they’d never had before. I mean, we are difficult for them: we take over for a fortnight and bring in lots of stuff. But they’ve got to be delighted to see the transformation. And it’s much more welcoming now.”

There’s an irony that the “white box” nature of City Recital Hall plays against the historical precedent of Baroque opera, which was, as Erin describes it, “an effects-driven industry”, spectacular and almost cinematic (think dragons, storms and literal deus ex machina events).

And at one point Erin muses: “If there were another space, another hall that had fly towers and a proscenium arch back in the 90s, I think we might be a different company today. Because we adapted to the space that we called our home. And that space has limitations and challenges, but those parameters have afforded us the opportunity to be really creative.”

“One thing I really like about the Recital Hall,” he continues, “is that we usually take out the front row of seats and put the orchestra on the level of the auditorium. Now that is 18th-century

PRIMA LA MUSICA

Pinchgut was founded with one guiding principle: that music would be at the heart of everything they did. The very first idea, writes founder Ken Nielsen, was “to build an opera company that put the music first, that treated opera as primarily a musical art form rather than a theatrical one. We talked of it being an intimate experience, rather than a spectator sport. So the aim was to make the music as good as we possibly could, with the other elements –staging, production, design, costumes –supporting the music but not getting in its way or distracting attention from it.”

A nice side effect of putting the “music first” is that it becomes less expensive. Most of the budget can be devoted to actually putting the music on – hiring an orchestra, hiring singers – with anything left going towards the staging. It also influenced Pinchgut’s choice of venue. “City Recital Hall had only recently opened,” says founder Liz Nielsen, “and it fit with our idea of putting the music first with a production that had to showcase the music. The excellent acoustic, and the audience’s closeness to the stage, with no curtain or proscenium arch to divide the audience from the performers – that was very important to us.”

But over time, says operations manager Andrew Johnston, there’s been a subtle shift. “We wrestled with it and kept returning to the fact that we’re an opera company: we can’t sound like a million dollars and look like a couple of hundred. Of course we keep the music first, but we resource the staging and production elements more.” Ultimately, though, the guiding principal remains. “Putting the music first,” says Liz, “that’s the one thing that really matters.”

2010

The Pinchgut LIVE recording label is launched with L’anima del filosofo; the label now has 11 releases, in addition to the 7 available on ABC Classic

2011

2012

2013

Ken Nielsen retires from Pinchgut and joins the audience family

Norman Gillespie joins the board

practice, which is great, but our audience also loves it. It’s like looking at the back of a clock – you see all the moving parts. And there are people who come to our shows who are as fascinated by the orchestra, which is on full display, as they are by the drama and spectacle we’ve created.”

The venue has been influential but, above all, Pinchgut has been shaped by its core values – which are deeply held and no mere lip service – and its artistic vision.

The first of these is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase: “the two legs on which Pinchgut stands.” As founders, Ken and Liz created a company that stood on two legs: the audience and the artists. “They are equally important,” says Ken, “and unless both are happy, we will fail.”

In practice, the two-legs philosophy led to a “sense of family” that has endured for 20 years. “We’ve always aimed to make sure this is the best gig anyone has all year,” says Liz. “To really look after artists and to look after the audience. They’re the two things that matter.”

Of course, for Pinchgut, “artists” is an embracing term that extends to everyone involved in bringing a performance to life. As Andrew explains, “It’s easy to look at a company like this and focus on the singers and the creative teams for the operas, but actually there’s an amazing bunch of people who are so integral to who we are. We have a fantastic core team: a stage manager, head of wardrobe, head of lighting, production coordinator… They’re part of the Pinchgut family and they’re all keen to come back and work on our shows.”

In addition to “family”, “nurturing” is another word that crops up repeatedly. “It was a nurturing atmosphere,” recalls Anna, “Not just young singers, young players, but also nurturing our audiences.” Looking after the people continues to be important, says Erin. “Some of the closest relationships in my life are with the people I perform with. The artists put themselves in vulnerable positions to be artistic and it’s a real honour to be amongst people who are not afraid to show the fragility and vulnerability, and for our audience to react to that. So I think I get very protective – and supportive.”

Regarding the audience as individuals and as part of the family has been an enduring aspect of the Pinchgut personality even as the audience has grown. This attitude extends to communications and Pinchgut’s early marketing was remarkable for its newsletters, which stood out from anything other Sydney arts organisations were circulating. (They still do.) Initially written mostly by Ken and Anna –and now by Ilona and Alex – Pinchgut newsletters are candid, illuminating and always enjoyable to read. “Those first newsletters took forever to write,” confides Anna, “but they were fun. And they came from the heart.” “We were writing as though we were learning and sharing what we learned with the readers,” says Ken, “which had the advantage of being true.”

The newsletters continue to represent the spirit of whimsy and good-humour that pervades everything that Pinchgut does. This is a company that takes things terribly seriously, but without ever coming across as if it takes itself too seriously.

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The thing that Pinchgut takes most seriously of all, and always will, is the music. And this means that artistic vision, and artistic planning, takes priority. “The choice of opera has always been entirely the artistic directors’ choice,” says Liz. “It’s always up to Erin now, and in the beginning up to Erin and Antony.” The board of directors has only once intervened in a choice of opera, she adds, and this

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Of all the performing arts companies in Sydney, Pinchgut wins the prize for the best name. “Identifiably Sydney” and with the right mix of quirkiness and whimsy, it was, as Ken and Liz like to say, “perfect for the company we wanted to build”.

Given that the company began on a very tight budget and uses gut strings, the name also plays into the popular belief that the Pinchgut name for Fort Denison (known to the Eora people as Ma-te-wan-ye) arose from convicts being abandoned on the rocky outcrop with bread and water – their guts pinched from hunger. That, says Anna Cerneaz – a former oceanographer and marine geologist – is rubbish. “Pinchgut” is a nautical term, she explains, referring to the island’s location at the narrowest point of Sydney Harbour, in other words at a pinch point in the channel or “gut”. But everyone concedes the popular legend has too much traction to ever be overturned and, Anna assures us, “starving artist jokes aside, we do feed them well!”

Of course, you can’t name yourself after a local island and not enlist it in a publicity stunt. In 2005, to promote Pinchgut’s first production of a French opera – Dardanus – the company staged an invasion of Fort Denison, postulating what might have happened if the French had settled Sydney first. Dan Walker made a setting of La Marseillaise for the occasion and the result was filmed by ABC television.

2017

Erin Helyard named sole Artistic Director

2016

Liz Nielsen retires from Pinchgut and is appointed Life Patron

Corin Bone, Brett Weymark, Matthew Ridley and Andrew Johnston led the Pinchgut “invasion” in 2005 (photo: Simon Hodgson)

was to recommend postponing one for a year in favour of another with a smaller cast. Otherwise, the artistic team, which includes Alison Johnston, has full control over artistic decisions. The board gives them a budget and leaves them to get on with it.

Significant to Pinchgut’s artistic development was the increase to a two-opera season in 2014. “Being able to do two operas a year brought Pinchgut to another level,” says Erin, “because we are really able to flex our muscles.”

More operas allows for programming that illuminates the variety represented by nearly two centuries of repertoire. “I look for contrasts in the seasons,” says Erin. “Comedy and tragedy, Italian and French, 18th-century and 17th-century.”

For now, Pinchgut is presenting at least one 17th-century opera each year. The company’s first 17th-century opera was Cavalli’s Ormindo, recommended by Antony Walker in 2009. This style of opera struck Alison as being “exactly like a play – a play with music”. Erin loves the wonderful mix of comedy and tragedy: “it’s like Shakespeare, whereas 18th-century opera is much more formal and more virtuosic.”

Seventeenth-century opera plays to Pinchgut’s strengths, explains Erin. “There’s more room for imagination, creativity and making it really special, and doing as they did in the past – adapting the score to suit local conditions and different artists.” Alison agrees: “You need amazing actors, as well as singers, and we’ve found that it’s stretched us in a really good way – the performers, the creatives, the audience – and we’ve really enjoyed coming to grips with what 17th-century opera is.”

Erin is especially drawn to early Venetian opera – the birth of opera: “There’s a freshness to it that appeals to me very strongly. It was like the cinema of its day – it was able to animate speech with music, and we can go even further and add spectacle and costume, and also there are very strong roles for women.”

In exploring 17th-century Venetian opera – its music and its economics – Erin has unearthed some fascinating and sometimes unexpected parallels between how Baroque opera was originally produced and Pinchgut’s own operations. He talks of funding models (dependent on box-office income and the patronage of donors), the relationships with audiences and the influence of audience taste, an entrepreneurial spirit married to tight budgets, and the literal sense of family in what were typically small operations. (You can hear him explore the topic in his Baroque Banters podcast on the Pinchgut website.)

In short, there’s a spirit of authenticity in Pinchgut productions that goes well beyond historically informed performance practices and period instruments. And it extends to the fierce loyalty of Pinchgut audiences.

That audience has been nurtured over 20 years. As Ken puts it, Pinchgut has aimed to develop the “best audience” – an audience that would trust the company, follow it into new areas, and allow it to take risks; an audience that would feel as if it were part of the company. “That degree of trust and loyalty,” he says, “is an asset of huge artistic, not just commercial, value.”

“We are incredibly fortunate in our audience,” says Alison. “Right from the beginning, we wanted to involve the audience in the journey. And it has really paid off in that we do have a very loyal audience who are willing to trust us: we do a whole bunch of works and composers they’ve never heard of and they’re willing to give it a go.”

2018

Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux sings Mandane in Artaserse and gives a recital with Erin Helyard at the Melbourne Recital Centre, marking our first concert event and first Melbourne tour Orchestra of the Antipodes officially becomes part of Pinchgut

2019

Artaserse is named Best Rediscovered Work in the 2019 International Opera Awards (the opera Oscars)

First concert series in Sydney and Melbourne

Most of the operas Pinchgut produces are unfamiliar – not just to the audience but frequently to the cast and creative team too. No warhorses here. Which means that both “legs” of Pinchgut are discovering their magic together. “For me, it’s just an endless journey of delight,” says Erin. “I love being a student, I love constantly learning things and discovering things. And I would ideally love my audience to do the same.”

Yvonne Frindle © 2021

We send our love and thanks to the artists, donors, crew, staff and audience members who have been part of the Pinchgut family since the very beginning and who share in this joyous 20th anniversary celebration.

We would like to make special mention of the following people who have been with us since the early days and are still with us…

ON STAGE AND BEHIND THE SCENES

Matthew Bruce (Semele)

Myee Clohessy (Fairy Queen)

Anthea Cottee (Orfeo)

Nicole Dorigo (Orfeo)

Melissa Farrow (Orfeo)

Anna Fraser (Orfeo)

Stephen Freeman (Semele)

Mark Gaal (Orfeo)

David Greco (Fairy Queen)

Erin Helyard (Semele)

Alison Johnston (Semele)

Andrew Johnston (Semele)

Kirsty McCahon (Fairy Queen)

Simon Rickard (Semele)

Natalie Shea (Semele)

Dan Walker (Orfeo)

Brett Weymark (Semele)

OUR GENEROUS SUPPORTERS

Stephen Booth & Zorica Rapaich

Neil Burns

Mary Jo Capps

Max & Joan Connery

Janet Cooke

Moya Crane

Barbara Fisher

Reg & Kathie Grinberg

Judy & John Hastings

Esther & Beatrice Janssen

John Lamble

Mary Jane Lawrie

Tim & Gillian MacDonald

Margaret Newman

Ern & Deidre Pope

We would also like to acknowledge our long-time supporters Don and Ilona Walker. Sadly, Ilona died four years ago and Don died a few weeks ago. And finally, our heartfelt thanks to Liz and Ken Nielsen, who have been there for Pinchgut from before day one.

2020

Pinchgut At Home, our digital platform, and Baroque Banter, our podcast series, are launched

Our first opera-film: A Delicate Fire, featuring music by Barbara Strozzi

2021

Apollo & Dafne is our first opera production to be filmed

Taryn Fiebig Scholarship established in her memory 20th birthday production, directed by Neil Armfield

2022

Cesti’s Orontea and Charpentier’s Médée

Pinchgut embarks on its first tour of regional NSW and performs in South Australia and Tasmania

PLATÉE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS

Pinchgut Opera exists so that we may touch lives, and to see our audiences transcend the everyday through the power of music and the beauty of the human voice.

We exist also because of the generosity of our incredible family of donors, and would like to thank everyone who has supported us by making a financial contribution over the past year.

To make a donation or to find more information about our targeted Giving Circles, please visit: pinchgutopera.com.au/donate

MAESTRO’S CIRCLE SUPPORTERS

Leading Patrons ($10,000 and above)

Justice François Kunc & Ms Felicity Rourke, in memory of Lidia Kunc*

Supporting Patrons ($5,000 to $9,999)

Wendy Amigo, Tony Gill, Anonymous (3)

FARINELLI PROGRAM

Leading Patron ($10,000 and above)

Emily & Yvonne Chang

Supporting Patrons ($5,000 to $9,999)

Nena Beretin, John Claudianos, Andrew Goy, James & Claire Kirby Family Fund, Anonymous (3)

ORCHESTRA OF THE ANTIPODES –CHAIR PATRONS

John & Irene Garran – supporting Kirsty McCahon (bass)

PLATÉE GIVING CIRCLE

Principal Supporters

James & Claire Kirby Family Fund, Suzanne Kirkham

CONTINUO MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

Principal Supporter

Norman Gillespie

TARYN FIEBIG SCHOLAR PROGRAM

Sisyphus Foundation, John Allard, Hon. J Campbell QC & Mrs Campbell, Emily & Yvonne Chang, Ian Dickson & Reg Holloway, The Elliott Family, Richard Fisher AM & Diana

Fisher, Justice François Kunc & Felicity Rourke, Pam & Ian McGaw, Nick & Caroline Minogue, Frances Muecke, Trevor Parkin, Stephen Shanasy, Shane Simpson, Leslie C Thiess, Mark Walker, Graeme Wood Foundation, Anonymous (4)

JUPITER (SEMELE)

$20,000 and above

Emily & Yvonne Chang, Danny Kaye & Sylvia

Fine Kaye Foundation, Suzanne Kirkham, Noel

Donna McIntosh & Family, Patricia H Reid

Endowment Fund, Agnes Sinclair, Sisyphus Foundation, Anonymous (3)

THEODORA (THEODORA)

$10,000 to $19,000

Rebecca Davies, Nick & Caroline Minogue, James & Claire Kirby Family Fund, Justice

François Kunc & Felicity Rourke in memory of Lidia Kunc, Gillian & David Ritchie, Fe Ross, Anthony Strachan, Alden Toevs & Judi Wolf, Cameron Williams, Anonymous (4)

DIANA (IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE)

$5,000 to $9,999

Carey Beebe, Nena Beretin & John Claudianos, Stephen Booth & Zorica Rapaich, Toula & Nicholas Cowell, Edward Curry-Hyde & Barbara Messerle, Jean Dalton, Suvan & Shamistha de Soysa, John & Irene Garran, Tony Gill, Norman Gillespie, Mr Andrew Goy, Reg & Kathie Grinberg, Frank & Pat Harvey, Penelope Huntstead, Alan Hyland, Christopher

McCabe, Jan Marie Muscio, Andrew Peace, Shegog Pty Ltd, Westpac Good2Give, Annie & Anthony Whealy, Anonymous (3)

ORFEO (ORFEO & L’ANIMA DEL FILOSOFO)

$2,000 to $4,999

Antoinette Albert, Anne Amigo, Michael Ball, Nena Beretin, Christine Bishop, Henry Burmester & Peter Mason, J Connery, Prue & Peter Davenport, Jennifer Dowling, David Duncan, Dr Marguerite Foxon, Freilich

Prescribed Private Fund, Mark Gaal, Jocelyn

Goyen, Catherine Playoust & Elliott Gyger, The Hon. Don Harwin, Elisabeth Hodson, Janet Holmes à Court, Emma Johnston & Mark

Probert, Mrs W G Keighley, Diccon & Elizabeth

Loxton, Kevin & Deidre McCann, McCauley

Software Pty Ltd, Pam & Ian McGaw, Alexandra

Martin, Helen & Phillip Meddings, Frances

Muecke, Jennie & Ivor Orchard, Catherine

Playoust & Elliot Gyger, Rod Pobestek, Prof. Andrew Rosenberg, Robert Stewart, Jennifer Thredgold, Graham Tribe, Mark Walker, Dr Elizabeth Watson, David Wood, Ms Jocelyn Woodhouse, Anonymous (4)

GRISELDA (GRISELDA)

$1,000 to $1,999

Priscilla Adey, Alumni Travel, Maia

Ambegaokar & Joshua Bishop, Gillian Appleton, Martin & Ursula Armstrong, Ms Lynne Ashpole, Marco Belgiorno-Zegna am, Barbara Brady, Meredith Brooks, Hon. J Campbell QC & Mrs Campbell, Malcolm Cardis, Colleen & Michael Chesterman, Robert Clark, Robert & Julie Clarke, Alison Clugston, Jean Cockayne, Barbara Ann Colquhoun, Anita & Richard

Dammery, Raoul de Ferranti, Susanne de Ferranti, Julie & Bill Dowsley, Nigel Emslie, John & Diana Frew, Peter Garnick & Dr Jillian

Graham, Ruth & Ian Gough, Paula & Ferdinand

Gritter, Lyndsey Hawkins, Barbara & John

Hirst, Katherine & Darryl Hodgkinson, Elisabeth Hodson, John Hughes, Beatrice Janssen, Sue

Johnston, Carl Jones, Shinji Kakizaki, Melissa Kennedy, Mr Wolf Krueger, Diccon & Elizabeth Loxton, Peter McGrath, Mr James MacKean, Brendan McPhillips, Kerry Murphy, John Nethercote, Paul O’Donnell, Trevor Parkin, Rear Admiral Ian Richards AO, Jane Smith, Beverley Southern, Leslie C Thiess, Sue Thomson, Suzanne & Ross Tzannes, Dr Elizabeth Watson, David Wood, Anonymous (5)

Current as at 8 November 2021

The above list acknowledges those who have donated $1,000 or more.

To see a full list of our donors, visit pinchgutopera.com.au/our-donors

YOUR SUPPORT IS VITAL

Please consider making a gift to help us continue making music that inspires.

HOW TO DONATE:

Online: pinchgutopera.com.au/donate

Direct Deposit / EFT (avoids high credit card fees that Pinchgut pays on your donation):

Pinchgut Opera Public Fund

BSB: 012 003

Account #: 198 883

Please include your name as the reference and notify our Philanthropy Manager, Ilona Brooks, of your donation by email: ilona@pinchgutopera.com.au

Phone: (02) 9318 8344

All donations of $2 or more are fully tax deductible.

Pinchgut Opera is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

PLATÉE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PINCHGUT OPERA LIMITED

ABN 67 095 974 191 PO Box 291

Strawberry Hills NSW 2012

www.pinchgutopera.com.au

PATRON His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd) & Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley

LIFE PATRONS Liz Nielsen and Jeremy Davis AM

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Erin Helyard

CONDUCTOR EMERITUS

Antony Walker

GENERAL MANAGER Cressida Griffith

ARTISTIC MANAGER Alison Johnston

OPERATIONS MANAGER Andrew Johnston

MARKETING AND PHILANTHROPY MANAGER Ilona Brooks

MARKETING AND ADMINISTRATION COORDINATOR Alexandra Peek

FINANCIAL ADVISOR Emma Murphy

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTANT Barbara Peters

TARYN FIEBIG SCHOLAR

Chloe Lankshear

CONTINUO MENTORSHIP FELLOW Andrei Haddap

BOARD

DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

Norman Gillespie (Chair), Virginia Braden OAM, Nicola Craddock, Mark Gaal, Tony Gill, Monika Kwiatkowski, John Pitman

Tony Gill (Chair), John Claudianos, Norman Gillespie, Julia King, Mark Prior, Alden Toevs, Claire Wivell Plater

NIDA: PRODUCTION SUPPORTER Students from the Diploma of Live Production and Technical Services and the Diploma of Screen and Media (Specialist Make-Up Services) are part of the technical and production crew.

DIPLOMA OF SCREEN AND MEDIA

(SPECIALIST MAKE-UP Ella Colhoun, Polly Cooper, Lachie Masters SERVICES) STUDENTS Josh Ramandani, Jess Tatchell

DIPLOMA OF LIVE PRODUCTION AND Oliver Bryson, Ashleigh Elms, Julian Dunne, TECHNICAL SERVICES STUDENTS Siena Head

SUPERVISED BY INDUSTRY MENTORS Anthony Keen, Helen Thatcher

PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ARTWORK & DESIGN Alphabet Studio PROGRAM DESIGN Imagecorp

PHOTOGRAPHERS Brett Boardman, Jasmin Simmons

VIDEOGRAPHER Steve Polydorou for A Space Apart

VIDEO EQUIPMENT PROVIDED BY TDC FOR ABC CLASSIC Virginia Read, Brooke Green, Andrew Edgson FOR AUSTRALIAN THEATRE LIVE Grant Dodwell, Peter Hiscock, Rajban Sidhu and team

SINCERE THANKS TO The ever wonderful Natalie Shea; Sue Procter – Create NSW; Justin Boschetti and Sophie Mackay – CRH; Grant Dodwell, Peter Hiscock, Raj Sidhu and the Australian Theatre Live team; Julia Pincus, Matthew Dewey and Virginia Read – ABC; Rory Jeffes, Simon Craw, Neal Hughes, Will Dunshea, Emilia Simcox, Neroli Hobbins, Byron McDonald and Bonnie Harris – Opera Australia; Scott Ryan and Kevin Mann – Sydney Conservatorium of Music; Marnie Campbell and Ash Armitt – NIDA; Abbey Yazbek – Red Bull; Slade Blanch – Bell Shakespeare; Romy McKanna – Ensemble Theatre; and Brian Nixon, Elizabeth Johnston, Mark Probert, Laura Vaughan, Simon Rickard, Frances Muecke, Liz Nielsen, Hugh McCullum, Véronique Benett and Lydia Beslik

City Recital Hall Limited

Chair Rachel Launders • CEO Justin Boschetti

2–12 Angel Place, Sydney NSW 2000 Administration (02) 9231 9000 Box Office (02) 8256 2222 Website www.cityrecitalhall.com