Five members of the WA Opera Chorus regaled a large and enthusiastic audience with the kind of thing many concertgoers love best – famous arias from famous operas by famous composers. For most people in my age group, all these songs are familiar and beloved. They used to be part of the staple offering on the ABC, when ABC regional classical stations still existed and had a wide audience.
Alas, today very few young people would recognise ‘One Fine Day’ or ‘Vilia’ and they are the poorer for it. Hackneyed as these items have become, they are damned fine songs (only good songs become hackneyed!) and the audience at the Maj on Wednesday morning, being largely made up of retirees, were enraptured, and rightly so.
The performers were Young Artists of the WA Opera: mezzo-soprano Caitlin Cassidy, sopranos Sarah Guilmartin and Harriet O’Shannessey, baritone David Costello and tenor Richard Symons. As soloists they shone; as ensemble singers they enchanted.
Caitlin Cassidy set the ball rolling with ‘Chanson Boheme’ from Carmen. Cassidy has already completed a Bachelor of Music and a Graduate Diploma at the WA Academy of Performing Arts and is now studying for a Master in Creative Arts. She currently holds the WA Opera’s Bendat Scholarship for 2012. A tad unsteady at first, she quickly gained confidence. She was not, perhaps, fully in character as Carmen, but she more than made up for that later in the program: her Cherubino and her Perichole were delightfully entertaining as well as being musically well and truly up to scratch.
The Carmen segment concluded with Michaela’s aria, presented by Sarah Guilmartin, looking utterly lovely in a pink gown with diamantes and floating panels. Guilmartin has a dramatic voice with more than a hint of vibrato: not quite the kind of voice best suited to Michaela, perhaps, but lovely all the same. Later, as Susanna and Cio Cio San, she was able to show herself to better advantage, and her duet with David Costello, ‘All I Ask of You’ from Phantom of the Opera, was a gem.
David Costello is an assured young performer. His Figaro was fun, and his duet with Guilmartin, mentioned above, showed him to be a sensitive and supportive singing partner. The other young man, Richard Symons, only showed up in the ensemble numbers so didn’t have a chance to show off his solo talent, but his voice blended well with the others in the final quintet from The Marriage of Figaro and in the final number from Carousel. He is an ‘Emerging Artist’ with the opera, and is still in his honours year at WAAPA.
Harriet O’Shannessy showed herself to be a confident singer, and her contessa from The Marriage of Figaro with Guilmartin’s Susanna was extremely well done. This has to be one of the trickiest numbers in Mozart’s oeuvre, with its difficult entrances, but both ladies acquitted themselves well, and gave us a few laughs, too.
Later, O’Shannessy gave us ‘Vilia’ from Lehar’s The Merry Widow. The audience were told they could join in, and they did! (Amazing how the old words come back to one, even after 50 years …) O’Shannessy led the makeshift chorus with aplomb, and then the entire cast led us unto another old chestnut, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, from Carousel. We all went out humming.
It’s very difficult to jump from Bizet to Lehar to Lerner and Lowe, and if I have one small criticism to make of the young performers’ efforts it is that much of the time they were not fully in character. With the exception of Cassidy in her second and subsequent numbers, they seemed, for the most part, to be performing moves set on them by their coach, not moves that arose from the characters’ thoughts, sensations and emotions. Learning how to do this in a mixed program is one of the big challenges a young artist has to face, and the ability to do it on call is one of the hallmarks of a true professional.
Mention must be made of accompanist Caroline Badnall, whose sensitive and sympathetic work must have been a great support to the Young Artists.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
The West Australian Opera and His Majesty’s Theatre present
Morning Melodies Opera Concert
Director: Andrew Foote
Musical Direction: Burhan Gűner
Accompanist: Caroline Badnall
His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
June 20
