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Opera lovers disappointed that Handel's comic opera, Xerxes, will not be showing at the Auckland Festival in March may like to mark next August in their diaries and book tickets to Melbourne.
The light-hearted romp through a tangled web of love has been cancelled for AK09, but the good news is that it has been picked up as a joint production between Victorian Opera and NBR New Zealand Opera at the much-anticipated Melbourne Recital Centre from August 13-20. There are plans for performances in Auckland and Wellington at a later date.
The new staging of Xerxes will feature a specialised baroque orchestra conducted by Australian early music expert John O'Donnell and a cast including counter-tenor Tobias Cole singing the title role.
Trelise Cooper will create the costumes and another New Zealander, John Verryt, is the set designer.
Victorian Opera's Richard Gills says the joint production is a first for the young, innovative company, which will be into its fourth season next year.
There was a genuine feeling from both companies that it was not about ownership of the piece, he said, but how the two companies could make the best work possible.
A "very nice venture" is how New Zealand Opera general director Aidan Lang describes the collaboration between a New Zealand design team and an Australian director. Opera NZ will stage a similar co-production of Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers with Scottish Opera next year, with performances in Auckland and Wellington in May, followed by a season across Scotland in October.
"It's a hugely beneficial way for us to do new productions by finding a performance partner. It gets our work seen overseas and, of course, costs are basically shared. It makes total sense to do it."
Lang said using Trelise Cooper for Xerxes was a first for Opera NZ and her cut of modern and classical would make the early piece come alive in a modern context.
Gill, nicknamed the Pied Piper for his enthusiastic educational work with children, sees an exchange of New Zealand singers coming to Australia and "some of our kids" going over to New Zealand as a way of keeping the extraordinary art form alive.
"The days of the glorious productions with the gorgeous costumes, the 85-piece orchestra, the 90-voice chorus and the seven trillion frocks are over. It is just not affordable."
Gill says the biggest competitor to the arts these days is isolation. People who travel to work listen to an iPod, spend the workday in front of a computer screen, communicate by text and go home to watch television.
"We have got to penetrate that. We are not saying that is wrong but we are saying, 'We have got other slices of life you might like to see' and it's up to opera now to address those challenges.
"Just saying we are doing opera now is not enough. We have got to find new ways."
Under Gill, Victorian Opera has held special community events such as Sing Your Own Opera, done educational work with young people from school-age to university level (including Noye's Fludde, Snow Queen and The Happy Prince), and run an artist development programme.
On the web: www.victorianopera.com.au
