Presented by The Royal Opera, screened live to the Palace Nova Cinema
Reviewed Wednesday 2 October 2013
Opera from the Royal Opera in Covent Garden captured live and screened around the world into a cinema near you. What an age we live in!
One of the interval tweets opined that seeing the opera live at the cinema was like listening to it with a microscope! Yes, you get the option to Tweet your opinion about the performance and, if you are very lucky and have it selected from amongst the thousands of tweets offered up by fellow audience members from over 800 cinemas worldwide that were screening the opera, your Tweet might flash up on the silver screen for the rest of the world to see! Mine didn’t, but the antici…pation!
Opera has to be the absolute pinnacle of all artforms. It has everything: glorious music, superlative singing, epic scenery, lighting and colour, costumes, big casts and larger than life plots (rarely believable of course, but who cares?!). It’s just grand in every way, but I’m hardly objective either.
If you are the teensiest bit curious about opera then a live screening at the Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas is just the shot. It’s inexpensive – less than the cost of a Gold Class cinema ticket, and MUCH less than live opera – and it’s comfortable. You can even take your glass of wine in with you and every seat is a premium seat. You are so close to the action that you can see the cast sweat!
This particular production of Turandot, Puccini’s last and possibly greatest opera, is sumptuous. It is a dark oriental story about the pursuit for the hand in marriage of the Princess Turandot. Royal suitors must correctly answer three riddles to claim her reluctant hand and if they fail, they forfeit their lives. Andrei Serban’s production is just spectacular: the sets are magnificnet, the costumes and elaborate masks worn by almost everyone on stage are intensly colourful and mood-setting, and the lighting is broodingly foreboding.
Lise Lindstrom makes her Royal Opera debut in the tile role, and she lives up to her reputation as being one of the finest Turandots alive. Her voice is arresting and chilling, and sails supremely above the orchestra and ensemble. Her in questa reggia grips you and never lets go, and she is a superb actress. She inhabits the role. Marco Berti sang Prince Calaf almost like Pavarotti, but perhaps not with the same overt passion. His nessun dorma had the pathos that is so often lacking. Ping, Pang and Pong – three ministers of the royal court – were highly entertaining and superbly sung by Dionysios Sourbis, David Butt Philip and Doug Jones. They were both menacing and comical when they needed to be. The surprise in the cast was young soprano Eri Nakamura who sang the role of Liu with heart wrenching beauty.
Of course it all counts for nought without a superb orchestra and inspired conducting, and the Royal Opera had that by the bucket load.
Opera doesn’t come much better than this. It’s just lavish.
Reviewed by Kym Clayton
Venue: Palace Nova Cinema, 250-251 Rundle Street, Adelaide
Season: 4, 5, 6, 9 October 2013
Duration: 180 minutes with two intervals
Tickets: Adults $24, concessions $21
Bookings: Palace Nova Eastend cinemas online or phone 8227 0505
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Palace Cinemas
More News
