A peaceful and curious aura of scientific marvel and sacred rites greet patrons as they take their seats for composer Mary Finsterer and librettist Tom Wright’s Australian chamber opera, Biographica, now displaying at Theatre Works.
A piece first carried out by Sydney Chamber Opera and Ensemble Offspring in 2017, it’s welcome to see Lyric Opera Melbourne’s newest endeavour revive this worthwhile modern work in a potent new manufacturing.
On the left, a candlelit desk heaped with books and scientific paraphernalia is the first gadget alluding to the Renaissance lifetime of influential Italian polymath and topic of the work, Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576).
Additional again however close by, there’s a bed-sized platform. A collection of enormous brass-like rings sweep strikingly over the stage space, components of which a mesh curtain is connected that picks up projections beamed to the blackened rear wall.
It simply so occurs that they evoke the concentric rings of a gimbal, certainly one of many gadgets, it seems, Cardano described in his extraordinary physique of labor.
5 lengthy white-skirted performers with massive matching round collars take up their positions. Three maintain varied bowl gongs and one every is alongside a drum and a big gong awaiting musical director Patrick Burns’ cue, nearly unseen, along with his 12 musicians on the rear.
Directed by Heather Fairbairn, with an overlay of ritualistic motion and a spotlight to each the gestural and emotive, from this preliminary stage image, Biographica morphs by means of an 85-minute, 12-part tableaux including as much as a musically intoxicating, visually compelling and powerfully fused efficiency piece.
The decision of concepts bristling by means of Finsterer’s rating and Wright’s libretto through Savanna Wegmann’s suggestive set and costumes, Niklas Pajanti’s dramatic lighting and Aron Murray’s encompassing video designs – drawing on Cardano’s broad scientific research together with astrology and astronomy, arithmetic, physics, chemistry and biology – is faultless.
Concepts referring to an inextricable hyperlink between science and faith, the mental and visceral, working and private life and strengths and weaknesses seemingly orbit by means of the stage rings as Cardano’s complexities are revealed. In doing so, the work effortlessly conveys the omnipresent contradictions rooted in self and the universe.
Finsterer’s masterful rating thrums, surges and plinks with phenomenally thrilling vitality from moods magisterial to meditative. It’s magnificence, influence and theatricality – a soundscape drawing on the depth of Renaissance polyphony however reinvented with contemporary and artistic use of instrumentation and vocal preparations – emerges and soars as a lens is held to Cardano’s psyche.
It’s aided by a palpable structural cohesion starting with Cardano reviewing his astrological charts on the day he predicted he would die. A mirrored image on episodes in his life follows and culminates in his day of dying.
Finsterer juxtaposes Wright’s meaty textual content spoken by means of Cardano, with 5 sung voices representing varied private relationships – primarily his mom, daughter Chiara, youngest son Aldo and oldest son Giambattista and Giambattista’s spouse Catterina.
A well-polished preview night time bodes effectively for the quick season. Burns illuminated Finsterer’s music scored for 11 musicians with the utmost sensitivity, revealing its plentiful nuances and textures whereas supported by wonderful musicianship all through.
What does appear compromised, nevertheless, is the readability of Wright’s textual content. As Cardano, actor Dion Mills definitely wears the a part of an eccentric scientist with aplomb however the music generally overpowers his pacy spoken phrase as he renders Cardano’s manic, inquiring however impatient type.
The 5 singers are excellent in their very own proper and divine together. Nonetheless, the efficiency would profit enormously by way of English titles.
Belinda Dalton first impresses along with her attractively sinewy and penetrating soprano as Cardano’s mom in her grief of a traumatic childbirth. Assured and expressive, crystalline soprano Rachael Joyce is affecting as Chiara who’s dying of syphilis.
Mezzo-soprano Juel Riggall’s mournful and agonising portrayal as Catterina, poisoned by husband Giambattista and furthering Cardano’s private tragedy as scientific triumphs proceed, is an particularly fantastic spotlight.
Douglas Kelly is a commanding presence begin to end, using his agency and powerfully resonating tenor to nice impact, together with the function of the hopeless imprisoned youngest son, Aldo.
And stepping as much as the just about inconceivable problem to study his half lower than 72 hours earlier than curtain, baritone Raphael Wong slotted in easily. Because the miraculously cured archbishop and detestable oldest son Giambattista, Wong’s heat, pliant, depth of voice sounded assured. Even carrying a handheld gadget for the music by no means detracted from his efficiency. Till Bailey Montgomerie recovers from sickness, the half is in splendid fingers.
Biographica is slightly gem that serves as a reminder that greatness and achievement are merely a legacy that paints over the celebrated one’s lived expertise and true psyche. And it could effectively encourage additional exploration of this intriguing little identified Renaissance man.
Biographica
Theatre Works, 14 Acland Avenue, St Kilda
Efficiency: Friday 22 September 2023
Season continues to 1 October 2023
Data and Bookings: www.theatreworks.org.au
Picture: Dion Mills as Cardano and Artists of Biographica – photograph by Jodie Hutchinson
Review: Paul Selar
