Operatic Austen: Australian mezzo soprano Ashlyn Tymms stars as Mansfield Park's heroine, Fanny Price. NZ Opera stage the production early next year. Photo / Supplied
Operatic Austen: Australian mezzo soprano Ashlyn Tymms stars as Mansfield Park's heroine, Fanny Price. NZ Opera stage the production early next year. Photo / Supplied
NZ Opera’s new general director, Brad Cohen, says his first season with the company will offer “refreshed choices for New Zealand audiences”.
The three main productions are an attempt to attract an audience beyond opera fanatics, and one kicks off the national company’s 2024 season in unconventional venues.
Mansfield Park,based on the well-loved Jane Austen novel, has its New Zealand premiere in April with the Regency ballroom atmospheres of the book replicated at Wellington’s historic Public Trust Hall and the north-west Auckland wedding venue, Settlers Country Manor.
The chamber opera that originally debuted in 2011 has music by 21st century English composer Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton. Rebecca Meltzer of UK’s Waterperry Opera Festival is to direct its 10 performers, led by Australian mezzo soprano Ashlyn Tymms as the story’s heroine, Fanny Price.
The start of winter sees Rossini’s comic opera Le comte Ory take the stage in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Cohen himself will conduct the piece which has a cast including tenor Manase Latu, soprano Emma Pearson and Sol3 Mio’s Moses Mackay.
The season’s final stage production is the Auckland-only season of Verdi’s enduring Rigoletto, an adaptation of a 2021 Opera Australia production with its tale of love, betrayal and revenge being set in 1950s Italy with mafia overtones and La Dolce Vita-inspired sets and costumes.
Wagner is getting a one-night stand with an Auckland August concert performance of Tristan und Isolde, partnering with Auckland Philharmonia and featuring tenor Simon O’Neill, soprano Manuela Uhl and the New Zealand Opera Chorus.
The 2024 season won’t include any major new local operas following The Unruly Tourists, Ihitai ‘Avei’a (Star Navigator) and The Strangest of Angels of recent years. But Cohen says the launch of a “New Opera Forum” will “create a space for the conception of new opera from this land”.
“[The] future of opera in Aotearoa relies on an ecosystem which we hold and sustain,” he says, “this is a long game, and one we are firmly committed to.”
The company will, however, be taking a new bilingual opera for rangatahi, Te Hui Paroro by writer and director Rutene Spooner (Ngāti Porou, Ngāruahine), on a tour regionally throughout the year, as well as bringing Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love to schools between February and April.
NZ Opera will also continue its free Opera in the Park events with Auckland Council as part of its Music in Parks series in 2024.
