La Boheme from the Sydney Opera House at the Cinema 24th April.

[Stanfordian]

Last night I watched La Boheme from the Sydney Opera House at my local Odeon Cinema. I loved the colourful production by director Gale Edwards who has taken 1830s Paris to decadent Berlin in 1929 The set design by Brian Thomson was excellent too. I think the live performance was recorded last year.

Korean tenor Ji-Min Park as Rodolfo sang and acted superbly a voice that I definitely want to hear more of. As Mimi American soprano Takesha Meshe Kizart was marvellous too. The amplitude of her voice is remarkable.

I look forward to the next 7 Aussie productions that are being shown worldwide: Puccini’s Turandot and Madama Butterfly, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Delibes Lakme, Bizet’s The Pearlfishers, Korngold's Die tote Stadt and Verdi's La traviata.

However, I felt the broadcast needed an introduction to set the scene and to introduce the opera, the singers and conductor before the opera started so abruptly. The way the cinema broadcasts are done from the Royal Opera House, London (often by introduced by Antonio Pappano) works very well.

[Stanfordian]

Last night I watched La Boheme from the Sydney Opera House at my local Odeon Cinema. I loved the colourful production by director Gale Edwards who has taken 1830s Paris to decadent Berlin in 1929 The set design by Brian Thomson was excellent too. I think the live performance was recorded last year.

Korean tenor Ji-Min Park as Rodolfo sang and acted superbly a voice that I definitely want to hear more of. As Mimi American soprano Takesha Meshe Kizart was marvellous too. The amplitude of her voice is remarkable.

I look forward to the next 7 Aussie productions that are being shown worldwide: Puccini’s Turandot and Madama Butterfly, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Delibes Lakme, Bizet’s The Pearlfishers, Korngold's Die tote Stadt and Verdi's La traviata.

However, I felt the broadcast needed an introduction to set the scene and to introduce the opera, the singers and conductor before the opera started so abruptly. The way the cinema broadcasts are done from the Royal Opera House, London (often by introduced by Antonio Pappano) works very well.

I'm not surprised by the moderate degree of interest shown in the Australian Opera Series on this Radio 3 Forum as there has been very little publicity. Yet the cinema was quite busy for La Boheme; the first opera of the series. Several people have said to me that they were not aware of the Australian opera braodcasts at the cinema as they are not on-line and the cinema gave little advance publicity; unlike the transmissions from the Royal Opera House which are fairly well publicised. Many companies/organisations make the mistake of assuming that all of their potential audiance are on-line. I attend a Recorded Music Society with an average age, I would guess, of well over 60 and most of the members that attend are not on-line.