words by Carol King
The Sydney Opera House inaugurates its opera season today with a gala performance of Giacomo Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’.
The production sees the Italian composer’s heart-rending love story transported from a Parisian garret and café to a bawdy Berlin nightclub of the 1930s, where the high-spirited bohemians revel in the exotic seductions of the Spiegeltent. Italian tenor Gianluca Terranova stars as Rodolfo.
The new season includes productions of several operas by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth in 2013. There will be a bold new production of ‘Un ballo in maschera’ (A Masked Ball) by the cutting-edge Catalan company La Fura dels Baus, and performances of ‘La traviata’ set during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Other Verdi operas to feature in the season are ‘Falstaff’, ‘Il trovatore’ (The Troubadour) and ‘La forza del destino’ (The Force of Destiny).
The opera house is also mounting productions of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera ‘Don Pasquale’ and Puccini’s melodramatic ‘Tosca’.
Ticket prices for the opening night start at AUS$285 and go up to AUS$449. The cost of attending a pre-performance dinner, the gala performance of ‘La Bohème’ and a midnight party afterwards with cocktails on the balcony offering views of the New Year’s Eve fireworks is AUS$1,110.
