December 2024

It had been a very long time since Phoenix Choir performed a concert of opera. And what a lot of fun it was to rehearse and perform some of the great opera choruses.

When a choir sets about building a concert program of opera choruses, there are a couple of approaches you can adopt. You can look at the world of opera as a box of goodies, so beautifully depicted by our graphic designer, Veronica Gilmer in her design for this concert, with musical scores bursting out of the picnic basket for our summer afternoon feast. Or you can perhaps find a worthy theme, a narrative arc from the world of opera.

This concert was very much a box of goodies, so there wasn’t really a story arc to explain. Nonetheless musical director Amy Moore in making her selection was continually drawn to the plight of leading female characters in opera, and the unfortunate reality that they face only one of two fates – by the final curtain they are going to be married or dead.

At the centre of this tragedy we found Mascagni’s Easter Hymn. Santuzza, ostracised and pregnant, is locked outside the church while we all sang our glorious hymn of praise. Maybe we see the heroine’s plight in the partying of the bowzy sailors as they take their shore leave in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas or in the deceptive calm of Mozart’s glassy ocean.

It may all have started to go wrong in our opening chorus from Verdi’s Brindisi when the guests give a toast to Violetta’s supposed improving health, in her futile attempt to treat her illness with a party. Enough said, perhaps, so we’ll just hum Madame Butterfly’s humming chorus while she awaits her double fate, married AND dead!

Carmen showed signs of breaking this mould. She is in so many ways the architype wayward operatic figure, but Bizet writes her part with great respect for her strength, guile and indeed her empowered independence. None of which, or course, prevents her inevitable fate.

After all this dramatic tragedy our encore, Verdi’s Va pensiero, was a fitting way to close. It may be one of the most powerful tunes ever written and it carries with it a message of hope, sending thoughts from a place of bondage and slavery to a better world beyond.

Phoenix Choir performed with the Kanimbla quartet and with Janette Norcott on piano. We were fortunate to be joined again by leading Soprano Susannah Lawergren who not only gave us Carmen, Violetta and Santuzza, but also a delightful duet with Trish Mcmeekin on cello for Credete al mio delore from Handel’s Alcina. Amy also secured emerging opera star Tenor Nathan Bryon on a breif visit back in Australia for a few months away from his recent award winning success in the US, where he has been developing his operatic career and he thrilled us with Dein its mein ganzes Herz, amongst several other solos. And there was also the opportunity for some of the stars in our choir to shine, with Joe as our handsome toreador and Brian, Dorelle, Ellen and Norma all with impressive solos in the Carmen sequence. That’s the beauty of opera – something for everyone.

Brindisi, from La Traviata, Act I (Giuseppe Verdi)

Sailors’ Song, from Dido & Aeneas, Act III (Henry Purcell)

Voyagers’ Chorus, from Idomeneo, Act II (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Pourquoi me reveiller? from Werther, Act III (Jules Massenet)

Easter Hymn, from Cavalleria Rusticana (Pietro Mascagni)

Humming Chorus, from Madame Butterfly, Act II (Giacomo Puccini)

Credete al mio Dolore, from Alcina, Act III (George Frideric Handel)

Evening Prayer, from Hansel & Gretel, Act II (Engelbert Humperdinck)

Priests’ Chorus, from Magic Flute, Act II (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, from Das Land des Lachens (The Land of Smiles), Act II (Franz Lehár)

Sequence from Carmen, Act II (Georges Bizet)

Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, from Nabucco, Act III (Giuseppe Verdi)

3pm Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 December 2024
Wentworth Falls School of Arts