Season 2023 – A Magical Fusion
Season 2023 - A Magical Fusion
“Prima la musica, poi le parole?” Or “prima le parole, poi la musica?” – “music first, then words” or “words first, then music?” – a question as old as the artwork of opera and also the subject of Capriccio, the opera by Richard Strauss and Clemens Krauss which is an important moment in our 2023 program.
This season celebrates the unique power and capacity of this artform, builds on the magic fusion of music and words, to offer us a window on the marvellous through which we experience enchantment, delight and entertainment via glimpses into the glorious complexity of our shared humanity.
Victorian Opera is proud to welcome a group of great international singers to Melbourne, some art old friends, like Vide Mikneveciūte and Jessica Pratt and others whose appearance with us for the first time is keenly anticipated. I am also proud to welcome the many fine Australian-based singers whose artistry has helped forge our company identity and our reputation for high artistic standard. I extend a special welcome to esteemed colleague, conductor Simone Young and cordially acknowledge our performance partnerships with Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and University of Melbourne with whom we share our commitment to creating pathways for developing talent – a feature of our ‘Victorian Opera Emerging’ and our youth opera projects.
As always, our company creates new work. We revisit Joe Twist’s and Finnigan Kreuckmeyer’s very successful opera for young people, The Grumpiest Boy in the World as our youth opera for 2023. Next, a project from two First Nations artists, composer Christopher Sainsbury and librettist Jane Harrison, which explores the ‘settler high from colonial’ project through a heart achingly generous and poignant lens on the arrival of the first fleet. There is also my own new major opera, Galileo, with a beautiful Italian libretto by Malcolm Angelucci. The opera examines the complex fortunes of a great thinker through snapshots of his public and private worlds, his network of relationships, the conflicts of fame, political discord, and the ultimate ambiguities of faith, knowledge, power and truth, set against the wider contexts of human mortality, social chaos and the unknowable mysteries of creation and existence. These performances will be given in a new format – Opera as film – with an exciting text of moving images by artist Jamie Clennett, which embrace the scale and grandeur of our story.
This is a milestone in our company history, 2023 marks my final year as Artistic Director. I warmly welcome my successor Stuart Maunder and extend my profound gratitude to our CEO Elizabeth Hill-Cooper and our Victorian Opera team who have tirelessly enabled my vision for the company, and to our chair Genevieve Overall and our Board for their constant support. I must also thank our patrons and audiences for their support and involvement over the years. Artistic practise does not exist in a vacuum and you have all contributed to our capacity to speak to you, with you, and for you in our yearly schedule.
Finally, I would like to thank our Head of Music Phoebe Briggs, whose support, skill and dedication have been a “treasure without measure” on a daily basis over my decade at the helm.
Our company is poised for new and exciting ventures. Please join us. On with the show!
By Richard Mills.
