BY CHANTAL NGUYEN
Orontea
Pinchgut Opera
City Recital Hall, 26 May
I’ve stood in the bathroom queue during a Pinchgut intermission before, and heard audience members remark, “It sounds beautiful, but looks so…modern”. It’s not a bad way to describe Pinchgut Opera, which seamlessly melds the two worlds of meticulously performed Baroque opera, and witty modern zaniness, in one electrifying artistic universe.
Attending a Pinchgut performance can be – quite literally – like watching the Kardashians express themselves in perfect Monteverdi.
Pinchgut’s latest offering, Orontea by Antonio Cesti, bears all these fascinating Pinchgut qualities. First premiered in 1656, Orontea quickly became one of the most popular operas of the 17th century. It has a rollickingly fast-paced libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, who – famously disgusted with the power abuses of courtly life – satirised the nobility and gave the servants heart, depth, and loads of stage time. It’s a social aspect that Orontea’s director Constantine Costi paid special attention to in this restaging.
If you’re thinking, “That sounds like what people said about The Marriage of Figaro”, you’d be right. Except remember – you heard it from Cesti centuries before it was cool.
Orontea takes place in what’s described as “Egypt cum Las Vegas” (Jeremy Allen’s set design), a world of banquet halls and strip clubs, decked with glitzy drapes and scarlet-sheeted beds. The eponymous Queen of Egypt – who accessorises with gold power suits, stilettos, and flick knives (Sabina Myers’ striking costumes) – has vowed never to fall in love. That is, until a handsome refugee painter named Alidoro is attacked near her palace.
Unfortunately for Orontea, and to the despair of the men in court, Alidoro is soon winning all the ladies. A tangle of absurd love affairs, rivalries, and mistaken identities ensues, but (spoiler alert!) love wins the day. (Or should I say “love”, because love in Orontea’s Egypt is fickle, immature, and changes at the drop of a stripper’s hat.)
It’s a fun and bawdy performance, decked with Pinchgut’s trademark light-hearted wittiness, physical theatricality, and absurdist humour. As always, Pinchgut has assembled a stellar cast. Soprano Anna Dowsley, in her Pinchgut debut, is vocally and dramatically gorgeous as Orontea, equal parts regal and sulky. Her famous aria, ‘Intorno all’idol mio’, was sung with beautifully coloured tone and tenderly affecting emotion. It was a wonderful contrast to her thrillingly enraged outburst (prompting Alidoro to ask, “Did she utter words or vomit arrows?”) just minutes earlier in ‘E che vorresti?’.
Jonathan Abernethy (pictured below) makes another Pinchgut debut as the rugged flannel-wearing Alidoro, his confusion and helplessness at life’s events softening the fact he uses his looks to get ahead. Abernethy’s polished tenor is a perfect fit for the heartbreaker role.
The superficial bubble gum-chewing courtesan Silandra was a real standout, sung with a shimmering tone and beautifully accomplished phrasing by Sofia Troncoso. In the modernised libretto translation, Troncoso delivers some of the funniest lines with fantastic comic timing: when spurned lover Corindo asks, “Oh gods, who has taken you from me!”, she pouts back, “Someone hotter than you.”
The hapless polo-playing Corindo was performed by Douglas Kelly, a dramatic and vocal delight in all his scenes. Pinchgut favourite David Greco, ever the scene-stealer, played the royal tutor Creonte with confident baritone poise and hilariously escalating intellectual frustration. Dominica Matthews also brought all her stage experience and vocal command to the role of Aristea, Alidoro’s big-haired about-town mother and (crucial to the plot) former pirate-wife.
Special mention also goes to Roberta Diamond (pictured below), who sings the “pants role” of Giacinta, Orontea’s servant-turned-assassin who falls in love with the man she’s commissioned to kill. It’d probably be more poignant, but also a lot less funny, if she wasn’t wearing a moustached cowboy costume and rollerblades. Diamond deserves extra applause for being able to spin both rollerblade wheels and beautiful soprano lines across the stage, all at the same time.
The cast is completed by Louis Hurley (Pinchgut’s inaugural Taryn Fiebig Scholar) as the duel-ready Tibrino, and Andrew O’Connor as the manservant Gelone, often considered to be the first buffo role ever written. Gelone has almost as much stage time as Orontea, and is sung in O’Connor’s rich, plummy bass-baritone. His drunken “Eh Là”, sung with dancing wine bottles, is one of the comic highlights of an already very joyous production.
There is also a lot of dancing and physicality in this opera (Shannon Burns’ choreography). This was an intentional choice by Costi, who deplores traditional “park-and-bark” operatic direction and considers that movement improves the emotional depths of the singing.
The roles of Amore and Filosofia (love and reason) are sung respectively by Diamond and Troncoso, but feature as a visual presence danced by Ryan Smith and Alexandra Graham. As Amore, Smith is a Puck-like, bestial presence, red-horned and scampering about the stage on all-fours. It’s a sign that in Orontea’s Egypt, love doesn’t mature into much more than animalistic lust. The dance cast is rounded out by Heath Keating as a sailor stripper (much to the delight of Matthews’ Aristea) and one of Orontea’s waiters.
The Orchestra of the Antipodes, captained by artistic director Erin Helyard at the harpsichord, plays with a shimmering lightness and loving attention to musical detail. All the orchestral musicians were top-notch, but I particularly appreciated violinists Matthew Greco and Karina Schmitz’s work on Cesti’s beautiful melodic lines.
Whilst this production didn’t have quite the emotional depth of Pinchgut’s last opera, the mind-blowingly wonderful Platée, it’s still enormous fun and features some of the finest singing and musicianship you’ll hear on Australian stages.
After all, if you’re going to attend what looks like a Kardashian singing Baroque repertoire, you want it to be good.
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Images supplied. Credit Brett Boardman.
