Peter Rose

Don Pasquale (Opera Australia)

ABR Arts • 24 November 2014

Epicœne, or The Silent Woman is one of Ben Jonson’s most witty and least familiar satires. First performed in 1609 and published in 1616, it is set in contemporary London. Morose, a well-named old bachelor, is intent on finding a bride who will give him an heir so that he can disinherit his nephew, Sir Dauphine Eugenie. Morose, a famous misanthrope, detests noise (‘the perpetuity of ringing h ... (read more)

Tosca (Opera Australia)

ABR Arts • 17 November 2014

Opera Australia’s spring season in Melbourne opened with John Bell’s production of Tosca, which had its première in Sydney, in June 2013. The company is now adding strong readings of masterworks to its repertoire: this Tosca preceded David McVicar’s brilliant production of Don Giovanni, first performed in Sydney in August and bound for Melbourne next autumn. Both productions are likely to s ... (read more)

Rodelinda (Melbourne Chamber Orchestra)

ABR Arts • 05 October 2014

There were few opportunities to hear Handel’s opera Rodelinda, regina de’ Longobardi during the two centuries that followed its première in 1725. Although the opera was a great success at first (Handel said of the 1731 London revival, ‘it took’), it soon fell into obscurity, along with most of Handel’s many operas. A few productions of Rodelinda in the first half of the twentieth centur ... (read more)

Peter Rose reviews 'Joe Cinque's Consolation' by Helen Garner

September 2004, no. 264 • 02 October 2014

Already, Anu Singh’s story is grimly familiar. Now free again, just thirty-one, she has entered the popular pantheon of malefactors. Her attractive face appears in the newspapers, taut with self-justification. There is talk of a documentary. Notoriety, even a kind of celebrity – that amoral nirvana – is hers. If Singh’s deepest motivation for killing Joe Cinque (the victim in th ... (read more)

Peter Rose reviews 'The Spare Room' by Helen Garner

May 2008, no. 301 • 01 October 2010

The Spare Room marks Helen Garner’s return to fiction after a long interval. Since Cosmo Cosmolino (1992), she has concentrated on non-fiction and journalism: newspaper columns and feature articles. She has speculated in public about her distance from fiction, while giving us The First Stone (1995) – an account of an incident at a Melbourne university and its bizarre aftermath – and the lanc ... (read more)

Peter Rose reviews 'The Riders' (Victorian Opera)

November 2014, no. 366 • 01 November 2014

Here is a fine new Australian opera from Victorian Opera. Composer Iain Grandage and librettist Alison Croggon have taken Tim Winton’s Booker-shortlisted novel The Riders (1994) and created a highly expressive work. Marion Potts directs it on a wide but stark stage furnished only with wooden saw horses. There is a balcony and a revolve, but mostly Potts chooses to observe her anguished and intro ... (read more)

Peter Rose reviews 'Acute Misfortune: The life and death of Adam Cullen' by Erik Jensen

October 2014, no. 365 • 01 October 2014

Erik Jensen, a young journalist who now edits the Saturday Paper, has written an unusual memoir of his four years shadowing an artist – a difficult artist, it must be said (putting it euphemistically). Any new memoirist like Jensen will be interrogated umpteen times about his motivation. Such is the fascination with biography – fascination mixed with ambivalence – he will be asked about cath ... (read more)

The Pearl Fishers (Melbourne Opera)

ABR Arts • 22 September 2014

Georges Bizet was twenty-four when he wrote Les Pêcheurs de perles, which was first performed at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris, in September 1863. This was twelve years before Bizet’s masterwork, Carmen, which premièred in the year of his death. The first opera was immediately popular. Berlioz reviewed it warmly. As it happens, this was Berlioz’s last review. Lucrative royalties from Les Tr ... (read more)

Jonas Kaufmann in Concert

ABR Arts • 18 August 2014

Six words would suffice to describe Jonas Kaufmann’s Melbourne début. He came, he sang, he conquered. This was Kaufmann’s second appearance in Australia, after a gala in Sydney (repeated on August 17). It’s not often that an impresario or Opera Australia manages to lure a great tenor to this country. The inimitable Carlo Bergonzi visited in 1979 and gave a masterclass in tenor singing to a ... (read more)

Opera Australia's new Don Giovanni

ABR Arts • 11 August 2014

Enterprisingly, Opera Australia has enticed Scottish director David McVicar to create new productions of three Mozart operas, beginning with Don Giovanni, currently playing in Sydney (Figaro and Così will follow in 2015 and 2016, respectively). We saw the fifth of thirteen performances scheduled in this long opening season, and already the production was in superb shape – one of the finest Moza ... (read more)