By Nick Galvin and Hannah Francis
Opera Australia's 2018 program has landed, and Wagnerites will rejoice at the inclusion of the comedic Royal Opera Covent Garden co-production Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
The Australian run will include some of the same cast from OA's immensely successful Ring Cycle.
Opera Australia performs Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg as part of its 2018 season.Credit: Clive Barda
"I saw the [Covent Garden] premiere and I thought it was a tremendously insightful look at that production in the same way King Roger was, that Kasper [Holten] directed [also]," says Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini.
"This production is, I think, fantastic. We've got some wonderful singers in it, including the greatest Siegfried [from the Ring Cycle] in the world, Stefan Vinke; James Johnson, who sang Wotan for us last time; and Natalie Aroyan will make her debut as Eva."
The Australian run of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg will include some of the same cast from OA's immensely successful Ring Cycle.Credit: Clive Barda
Also returning for the Wagner show is Pietari Inkinen, who conducted the Ring Cycle, and Warwick Fyfe as Sixtus Beckmesser, who won a Helpmann award for his performance of Alberich.
In a fresh departure, OA will stage Australian composer Brian Howard's Metamorphosis, adapted by Steven Berkoff from the Franz Kafka novel – and will perform it at the Malthouse Theatre.
"We've never found that kind of grunge audience," says Terracini. "We're not going to play to 30,000 people … but it is a part of our audience that we need to find."
Terracini says Metamorphosis might be the "surprise packet" of a year that should provide a style of production to suit almost everyone.
Touching down from Italy, bass Ferruccio Furlanetto will take the title role in Massenet's Don Quichotte opposite local mezzo-soprano Sian Pendry.
"We're now bringing the greatest singers and conductors in the world here but we are also developing a lot of Australian singers and Australian singers are coming back to sing here," says Terracini.
"Getting that balance right it important. Some people will think we should have more Australian singers but our audiences now travel. Thirty years ago people didn't travel nearly as much as they do now. They see the best in the world in other opera houses and that's what they want to see here."
Speaking of travel, Melburnians will, as usual, miss some of the key attractions in the much larger Sydney program, which sees OA return to the newly renovated Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Opera House.
One of those is a Barrie Kosky production of Shostakovich's The Nose – a bizarre, comic tale of a nose that escapes from its owner's face and grows to human proportions.
"It's a great production," says Terracini. "Anyone who sees it will totally love it. When you see the 12 dancing noses it's hysterical."
Kosky's Saul, which showed at this year's Adelaide Festival, took home six Helpmann awards.
Sydneysiders will also be visited by legendary Verdi specialist Leo Nucci, who will perform in Rigoletto in July. Astonishingly, he will be 75 when he takes to the Opera House stage in the title role.
"Without doubt he is the greatest Rigoletto of the last 50 years," says Terracini. "People will think, 'Nucci has never sung Rigoletto here. I've never seen him do it live. Yep, I'm going to see a 75-year-old man knock it out of the park!' "
Other classics like La Traviata, La Boheme and Tosca return to Melbourne, for which Terracini makes no apologies.
"If people didn't want to come and see [them] then we wouldn't do it but we sell tens of thousands of tickets to La Boheme and Traviata," he says. "So I'm not going to say to people, 'It's too popular, we're not going to do it'.
"Of course, there are people who say to me, 'I've seen Boheme. I'm never coming again'. That's fine but there are still a lot of people who have never seen it and when they do you can see them at the end weeping. It's the same with Traviata."