Opera Australia – Bizet’s The Pearlfishers. February 9, 2016.

Joan Sutherland theatre, Sydney Opera House.  Circle (Seat L32, A$99).

Story.  See previous post.

Conductor – Guillaume Tourniaire; Zurga – Jose Carbo, Nadir – Pavol Breslik, Nourabad – Daniel Sumegi, Leila – Ekaterina Siurina.

We saw a Met production of this opera about 3 weeks ago, and thought it would be interesting to see this in Sydney and compare the two, perhaps determining if my saying “they should go out more” has any truth to it or is just what a snob would say.

I saw this in Sydney more than 10 years ago (before my blogging days).  In discussions with Wendy – my nephew’s wife – who saw a different performance during the same season, we were both puzzled by the implied homosexual relationship between Zurga and Nadir.  Anne and I went to the pre-concert talk, by one of Opera Australia’s directors (not for this performance), who confirmed that there were more layers in the love triangle in the plot for the last production.  For this season they used the version believed to be closest to Bizet’s original, and that nuance would not be there.  That at least explained my puzzlement when I was seeing the Met performance.

The other point the speaker bragged about was that the Pearlfishers has been in OA’s standard repertory for the last 30 to 40 years while the Met has it on this season after about 100 years.  I have to give credit to the choice of operas by OA.  We will see Luisa Miller on Thursday, and I have not seen it performed anywhere else.  There are other operas that I first got to see in Sydney also: The Turk in Italy, or La Sonnambula, for instance.

Being the first doesn’t necessarily mean being the best, however.  I will get to the details later, but in nearly every aspect this performance fell short of the one at the Met.  I often joke that I am not a food connoisseur, and thus assign grades of B+ to the best and B- to the worst.  With music I can assign a grade of wider range – subjective, no doubt.  This is a B+ to the Met’s A.

This was a new production, and it was clear from the start that the design team wasn’t nearly as imaginative as the team at the Met.  Symmetry seems to be a big deal here, with all three sceneries (village with temple, temple close up, and Zurga’s study) neatly laid out.  And one would be hard pressed to say this is a fishing village.  There is a glimpse of an ocean in the background, but the “storm” is nothing more than some lighting/lightening flashes.

I do wonder if opera house managers talk to one another.  One would think they know their counterparts’ plans, and perhaps could discussion joint productions a little.

The performance started on an unsteady note, my remark to Anne was everything seemed a bit off.  Since this was already the seventh (if I heard correctly) time, I thought I was in for disappointment; indeed after the famous duet I had an “is that it” feeling.  As in the Met performance, the violin passage introducing Leila was botched.  Things improved a lot as the show went on, I especially enjoyed Nadir’s solo towards the end of Act 1.  Nadir ended up doing quite well, one problem was his voice was weak in comparison to Leila, so he was overwhelmed in some of the duet passages.  Zurga was a solid performer.  The orchestra, however, never came to its own and sounded just like an uncertain accompanist most of the time.  Not for lack of trying on the conductor’s part, his movements were among the most exaggerated I have come across.

As I mentioned before, we got to the venue early to hear a talk on the opera.  Perhaps I can be a bit boastful and say I knew most of what the speaker had to say, with the exception of the principals for tonight’s performance – not having bought the program, I knew nothing about any of the artists.  In this opera the priest’s role is divided into two: a mercenary part who takes in money (and does the singing), and a religious part represented by a guru-like character.  I don’t understand it, and I am sure it added at best a touch of silliness to the story.

There were enough empty seats for this performance that we managed to move up one row, and I occupied Seat K28 for the duration.

Curtain with set for Act 3 in the background.  The little blue patch seen through the arch is the ocean.

In the rush to get to the venue, we only had time for a sandwich between the two of us.  On our way back we shared a Whopper meal as we walked back to Walsh Bay.