Strine ‘n’ Sand Opera
Newcastle Herald
Wednesday September 12, 2007
writes Ken Longworth
SOME opera purists shuddered at the news that Ghillian Sullivan had adapted Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro to an outback Australian setting.
What, they said, did Mozart's tale of a rich nobleman using his power to have his way with any woman he wanted have to do with cattle station owners in the Northern Territory?
Sullivan, a Newcastle-based leading Australian soprano who has performed in the opera houses of Europe and Britain as well as with Opera Australia in the past 22 years, showed them.
Her Figaro adaptation, with which she made her debut as a director, wowed audiences when Opera Hunter premiered it in 2004, and she subsequently adapted and directed Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Her third modern Strine Mozart Cosi Fan Tutte (which translates as All Women are Like That) wowed audiences at Gosford this month and will the first major non-school show in the new $7 million, 392-seat Hunter Theatre at the Hunter School of the Performing Arts, Broadmeadow.
The two-week season begins on Tuesday.
This time, Ghillian Sullivan's staging is under the banner of Newcastle Festival Opera (NFO), a company established by the singer and Newcastle University music lecturer Ian Cook.
The company, which has mounted several smaller-scale events including a one-night opera expo in Newcastle City Hall this year, aims to provide professional work for singers, instrumentalists and production personnel, with audiences, of course, also being beneficiaries.
The singers in leading roles in Cosi Fan Tutte have impressive resumes.
Sue Carson is well-known for her work with Newcastle bands, but she dazzled audiences and won a CONDA nomination with her trilling soprano in The Venetian Twins at the Civic Theatre a few years ago.
Kathryn Dries took home a CONDA for her Aboriginal servant Little Charlie in The Marriage of Figaro. Ashley Giles has sung several major roles in Oz-Opera productions, and Scone's Simone Easthope and Newcastle's Paul Morris also have the chance to show their stuff.
Young singers from Brisbane and Sydney respectively, John Peek and Javier Vilarino, play major role, with a chorus of 14 performers.
Sullivan decided to set her adaptation on the Gold Coast during the end-of-exam party Schoolies Week.
The two young women, Fiordiligi (Sue Carson) and Dorabella (Kathryn Dries), have become Tiger-Lily and Debra-Ella, spoiled private school girls, and the boyfriends, Ferrando (shared by John Peek and Paul Morris) and Guglielmo (Ashley Giles), are Ferris and Gazza, who use their school cadet corps as an excuse to disappear, claiming to have been called up for Iraq.
Cosi Fan Tutte plays at the Hunter Theatre on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week, then on September 28 and 29, with all performances at 7.30pm. There will be a 2pm matinee on September 30. Tickets are $13 to $41 and can be bought at Civic Ticketek, 4929 1977. | 
