Pinchgut Opera is doing two operas and two performances in two cities in 2019

Sydney and Melbourne are set to host the Pinchgut Opera’s 2019 season between them, from a program comprising of internationally celebrated artists. Pinchgut Opera rediscovers operatic masterpieces from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and next year, the company will stage four seasons: in April, Pinchgut performs a concert of Bach’s Easter Oratorio together with Telemann’s Thunder Ode; in June, Monteverdi’s final opera The Return of Ulysses; in August, the multi-award-winning counter-tenor Valder Sabadus will perform in Australia for the first time for one night only; and in December Pinchgut will stage Vivaldi’s favourite opera, Farnace. It’s an exciting time for the production company who’ve made the baroque era of opera and the striking days of the countertenor their ‘bread and butter’ since launching in 2002 in Sydney. What are the opera about? Based on the final chapters of Homer’s Odyssey, Monteverdi’s late masterpiece, The Return of Ulysses, is an epic yet intimate story of love, constancy and sacrifice. This production will be directed by Chas Rader-Shieber, designed by Melanie Liertz, and features Portuguese tenor Fernando Guimarães, last seen in Australia in the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Handel: Heaven, as Ulysses, a role he has sung to international acclaim. Australian mezzo-soprano Catherine Carby, whose performances have earned her rave reviews around the world, joins him as Penelope. Widely acclaimed as Monteverdi’s crowning achievement,The Return of Ulysses was his first opera for the city of Venice, with its humming network of thriving and competing opera houses. Gramophone has described Monteverdi as illuminating ‘almost every aspect of human experience in a way that was without precedent’ in this, his final opera. Vivaldi’s Farnace is a passionate drama of political and dynastic intrigue. In… Read More