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Category: Opera

Vulgarity, insanity, genius: The whirligig of Mozart

YOU NEED TO quietly gather your sensibilities when you find yourself in the presence of sheer perfection. Several decades ago, theatre practitioner Margot Luyt directed Peter Shaffer’s enormous Mozartian play, Amadeus. It had been translated into Afrikaans and reworked for radio by Nerina Ferreira. This completely flawless rendition […]

How to meet your maker

A TALE OF lust and evil, worthiness and bias in the face of a racist society, teeming with some of the western world’s best known covers, Porgy and Bess seems to cock a snoot at everything that serious opera traditionally was about. Conceived and written by two Jewish […]

Pavarotti’s gift

THE TRUTH IS a strange thing in the film industry. All too often the disclaimer that a piece is ‘based on the unbelievable but true story’ is used in the marketing junket. Does it really matter? Does it work? Do people flock more to see a film that […]

On Aïda and losing the plot

  A TALE OF politics and love, betrayal and death, Verdi’s opera Aïda, composed in 1870, is arguably one of the opera genre’s most known works. Indeed, it’s probably the repository for the most famous ensembles, tunes that you can whistle on your way to the theatre in […]