BY LYDIA MCCLELLAND, WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL CUTCOMMON YOUNG CRITICS’ MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
Linda Barcan and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Opera Students
Peninsula Summer Music Festival
12 January (two events)
Our first concert: A Peninsula Salon, featuring Linda Barcan and talented uni students, 1.30pm at the Beleura Estate
A Peninsula Salon sold out well in advance of the event. Set in the Tallis Pavilion beside Beleura House and Garden, the concert room was ornate and impressive, yet still cosy. The centrepiece was a large chandelier.
Perhaps still more impressive was the Australian Stuart & Sons piano that greeted us, constructed from Huon pine and boasting 102 keys (compared to the usual 88). Apparently, just one remarkable piano was not enough. A second, matching piano stood behind us with onekey difference: a count of 108. Commissioned by the Tallis Foundation and completed in 2018, this was the world’s first nine-octave concert grand piano, testing the boundaries of manufacturing.
Mezzo-soprano Linda Barcan – a lecturer in voice at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music – slipped easily into character as Pauline Viardot as she welcomed the audience to her Parisian-style salon. The program featured compositions by Viardot, a 19th-Century French-Spanish opera singer and famed salon hostess. Linda sang only two songs before she gave up the stage to younger singers, most about to commence studies at the Melbourne Conservatorium in a Master of Music (Opera Performance). This collection of singers included Joshua Erdelyi-Gotz, Benjamin Glover, Chloe Harris, Teresa Ingrilli, Hannah Kostros, and Amelia Wawrzon.
The piano’s intensely rich tone filled the room. Its sound was thus exposed, and occasionally risked drowning out the other performers. However, the vocalists were not intimidated, and instead sang with confidence. The most enthralling moments of the afternoon were excerpts from Cendrillon (Cinderella), a salon operetta that Viardot composed at the age of 83. The French opera proved accessible with all dialogue provided in English. Teresa Ingrilli, who played Cendrillon, stole the show with soaring highs in C’est moi, ne craignez rien!. Although the prince nearly forgot to ask Cinderella to marry him, ultimately all was well as the cast united for Je viens pour la dernière fois.
The Peninsula Summer Music Festival’s website promised that A Peninsula Salonwould “transport [us] to another era”. Not only did it transport us to the past, but it also reminded us of the future of classical music – the stars of the concert were the emerging singers. The post-concert finale next door was perfect: an afternoon tea, complete with sandwiches and macarons.
Our second concert: Fairy Tales in Opera at 6pm in St John’s Church, Flinders
I arrived expecting more operatic melodrama, but soon found this performance was a comedy. The evening’s concert was a performance opportunity for more students of the Master of Music (Opera Performance), and included tales of Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Albert Herring.
Led by creative director Jane Davidson and pianist Francis Greep, the order of songs – not printed in the program – allowed welcome surprises. The witch’s solo from Into the Woods was followed by the song of Hansel and Gretel’s witch. Excerpts from Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel featured rather childish humour, which added to the light-hearted comedy of Britten’s chamber opera Albert Herring. Interspersed songs from Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods contributed welcome dark humour, often a parody of the absurdity of fairy tales.
Some of the most effective comic delivery emerged from the Into the Woods song Agony, a fairytale mash-up duet starring the princes in pursuit of Cinderella and Rapunzel. The two singers used mournful, vibrato-filled tones rather than the bright style of much musical theatre. In the setting of an opera performance, the princes’ competitive, self-pitying catalogue of woes was so close to the content of some operas that it took most of the audience some time to realise they could laugh.
The singers made sure to profit from the possibilities of the church setting. At the beginning of one Albert Herring song, the soloist’s voice emanated from an unknown location. Audience members cast their eyes in front, behind – even upwards (we were in a church). The singer finally emerged through the front door of the church, miming drunkenness, and removed all illusions.
Another great use of the church included the Into the Woods cast creeping down the centre aisle, as they bounced along to the title tune. We didn’t miss out on the concert at the back of the room – no, the performers made sure to bring it to us.
Finally, the oft-repeated Into the Woods theme closed the concert. The performers’ grinning faces sang, “Into the woods to go to the festival… Into the woods and out of the woods and home before dark!”.
I was home before dark. That’s a happy ending.
Lydia undertook one-on-one mentorship guided by CutCommon Deputy Editor Lucy Rash, on-location at the 2019 Peninsula Summer Music Festival and digitally outside the event.
Images supplied.
