The opera Project’s first major production venture, The Romantic Trilogy completed in 1999, was a radical reassessment of our theatrical heritage, rampaging through a musical, theatrical and literary repertoire of remarkable scope. The Berlioz – our vampires ourselves (1997) explored the woman’s voice and body as a conscious and active protagonist in male homoerotic pornography. The Terror of Tosca (1998) considered the problems in reconciling carnal desire with religious piety, proposing the historically inscribed female “victim” as an eager and effective participant in sexual and mortal violence. Tristan (1999) portrayed the male body and psyche as a feminised hero (and victim?) and explored the woman’s body in a repudiation of its casting as male inscribed victor.
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The Berlioz – our vampires ourselves (1997 – 2001)
Co-created and performed with THE oPERA PROJECT INC.
Based on a scenario by Keith Gallasch
Director: Nigel Kellaway
Performers: Nigel Kellaway Annette Tesoriero Dean Walsh
Sound Design: Peter Wells
Costume Design: Nigel Kellaway
Lighting Design: Simon Wise with Nigel Kellaway
Premiered: 19th September 1997 at Performance Space, Sydney
2001: Toured to Salamnca Arts Centre (Long Gallery), Hobart and Brisbane Powerhouse for the Live Arts (Powerhouse Theatre), Brisbane.
How triumphant!
The purity of this work, with its intelligence expressed in daring physicality, sets The Berlioz quite apart …one of those very rare works where all the parts fit together, absolutely.
Informed, provocative, funny, oozing with exquisite music (Berlioz’s Summer Nights) and unorthodox sexuality, it operates on dozens of planes. On one level its an acid critique of contemporary opera manufacture and attendance. On another, we have the camp comedy of an opera couple’s night out. We have a study of the connections between 19th-century romanticism and decadence; relating to that, a tease on the history of vampirism in literature. Via three sensational performances, the teeth of this work sink quietly into our necks, our blood flowing helplessly as we submit to its pleasure.
James Waites, Sydney Morning Herald
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…precisely the sort of contemporary music theatre initiative one hopes to encounter every time a world premiere is mooted.
David Gyger, OPERA OPERA
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The Terror of Tosca (1998)
Co-created and performed with THE oPERA PROJECT INC.
Based on TOSCA, an opera by Giacomo Puccini with libretto by G. Giacosa and L. Illica, derived from the drama by V. Sardou
Director: Nigel Kellaway
Performers: Regina Heilmann, Nigel Kellaway, Jai McHenry Annette Tesoriero, Dean Walsh, Xu Fengshan
Music: Giacomo Puccini and Nigel Kellaway
Costume Design: Annemaree Dalziel
Lighting Design: Simon Wise
Premiered: 16th October 1998 at Performance Space, Sydney
Kellaway has been alternately shocking, frightening, offending, fascinating and exciting Sydney audiences for more than a decade. Puccini’s “Tosca” is stripped bare (literally and figuratively) as the opera is cut down to the psychology of Tosca’s relationship with her nemesis Scarpia and her obsession with the artist Mario Cavaradossi. There is plenty of material in this show which could be construed as offensive – there are strong and often-times challenging images. But the intellectual journey on which Kellaway takes his audience is not only intriguing, it is also compelling and, in a way, probably more honestly reflective of the characters the opera is based on than the original piece. It is certainly powerful theatre!
Stewart Hawkins, The Daily Telegraph,
October 23, 1998
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The fertile imagination of Kellaway and his colleagues has been let loose to probe the inner reaches of the minds of the opera’s characters … a fascinating, if sometimes scarifying and perplexing theatrical experience.
David Gyger, OPERA-OPERA, December 1998
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The themes here revitalised, of republican, anti-church and irreligious sentiment are presented with enormous energy. Intellectualising may extrapolate interesting meta-theatrical discourses from the complexities of this performance. However, the action, energy, spectacle and humour of it provide for a very timely return of lyric opera to the popular theatre. The stultifying 19th century conventions are here irredeemably lost. The sense of spontaneity and improvisation… euthaneses melodrama and reinvigorates opera. The illusory anarchy is rightly underpinned by the evident discipline and virtuosity of the performers.
John Glynn, RealTime, December 1998
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Tristan (1999)
Co-created and performed with THE oPERA PROJECT INC.
Directors: Nigel Kellaway, Keith Gallasch
Writer: Keith Gallasch
Performers: Regina Heilmann, Nigel Kellaway, Jai McHenry, Annette Tesoriero, Xu Fengshan, Michael Bell
Music: Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt
Lighting Design: Simon Wise
Costume Design: Jane E., Nigel Kellaway
Premiered: 14th May 1999 at Performance Space, Sydney
Tristan is all stops-out, outrageous music theatre, incredibly intimate, brazen and seductive – a recital gone mad, the dark side death-wish of 19th century opera laid bare.
“Tristan” tells you all you never wanted to know about Wagner but were afraid someone would ask. Why do all the women die in soaring ecstasy about half an hour after the men have carked it? What exactly are those suppurating slit-like wounds in Tristan and Parsifal which never heal? And just what is it with the big bosoms anyway?
This work is thought-provoking, intelligent and clearly funny for those who enjoy examining the boundaries of sexuality, as in the way Tristan picks at his wound.
Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 1999
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Tristan is the third and final work in The opera Project’s Romantic Trilogy.
As with previous opera Project works, Tristan is derived from a work that audiences are oddly intent upon revisiting time and time again. And again, it explores the issues of gender representation in the theatre – the transgressive heroine (Isolde) and the nature of the “feminised” hero (Tristan).
Like other opera Project works, “Tristan” is ambitious. It sets out to challenge the way “the work” functions as a classic, the way it represents romance, sex and gender, what makes it tick.
Leigh Raymond, Sydney Star Obsever, May 20, 1999
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In this Tristan, the hero (Nigel Kellaway) barge-bound, adrift in limbo, and not as dead as he’d like to be, floats into a song recital delivered by a wounded but majestic “no-bullsit-please” soprano (Annette Tesoriero). Is this his Isolde? Or is it the miscast actress (Regina Heilmann) who dispassionately pursues him? Or is it the distant, dancing figure (Xu Fengshan) of his dream of transcendence? Keeping things barely under control is Tristan’s minder (Jai McHenry), a doctor of philosophy, medicine “and everything” with the deathwish of Schopenhauer, the psychosis of Dr Miracle (the soprano killer in The Tales of Hoffmann), the demeanour of Dr Caligari and the ‘optimism’ of Hitler’s favourite, Oswald Spengler.
Stylish, surprising, gutsy and intelligent and, as a result, thoroughly engaging … this production heaps image on image, idea on idea until it reaches a crescendo.
Stewart Hawkins, The Daily Telegraph, May 21, 1999
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