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On tour at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, the Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities and his literary agent embark on the next instalment of Eat, Pray, Bruv.
The Drover’s Wife, directed by Leah Purcell with a libretto by Purcell and composer George Palmer, is based on Purcell’s acclaimed reinterpretation of Henry Lawson’s iconic 1892 story. Purcell broadens Lawson’s tale of a pioneering woman battling isolation and a snake to confront Australia’s violent colonial history through the introduction of Yadaka, a First Nations man fleeing persecution.
Wednesday night is an interesting choice for the opening night of an opera in Sydney, particularly when it collides with State of Origin. My husband mentioned this several times.
On tour at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities and his literary agent embark on the bromantic sequel to Eat, Pray, Bruv.
Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour is always an event. But this feels like something else. A story that has slipped its usual confines and found a new way to breathe. Go for the spectacle. Stay for the feeling. Leave with the distinct and slightly inconvenient sense that some stories do not end when the curtain falls. And possibly give you a sudden, inexplicable desire for a cape.
And yet the Sydney Opera House was packed. The forecourt swarmed with tourists, opera regulars, elegant women in excellent coats and the occasional bewildered husband with the expression of a man who had been promised “a nice night out” and was now confronting Russian tragedy. Even under an overcast sky, Eugene Onegin had drawn a crowd, which says something for Tchaikovsky, Pushkin and the enduring public appetite for emotional catastrophe in formalwear.
While Brad Pitt, Liam Hemsworth and Jacob Elordi are all undeniably thriving in the cheekbone arena, it takes more than symmetrical bone structure to make my heart do so much as a polite flutter. A jawline is lovely. A bicep is commendable. But talent? Talent is the thing that sends my pulse into a light jog.
Opera Australia’s revival of Hänsel & Gretel, originally staged by the late Elijah Moshinsky and now revived by Claudia Osborne, is a glorious sugar rush of spectacle and dessert-based anxiety.
Opening nights at the Opera in Sydney have changed, and I’m not sure whether to clutch my pearls or cheer. Gone are the black ties, the diamonds, the gowns that require industrial-strength shapewear and a spare inhaler.
If your idea of the festive season involves elbowing strangers for the last box of mince pies at Woolies, then Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary would like a quiet word. Nestled in the Neyphu Valley, this luxury retreat (the world’s only wellness-inclusive one, mind you) has decided that December is best spent in the crisp Himalayas with an eggnog in one hand and your chakras realigned in the other.
La Traviata begins like a velvet curtain kissed by shadows, spilling its tale of beauty and decay into the heart of Sydney’s Opera House with such luscious allure that one could almost believe the ghosts of Verdi’s muses were haunting the rafters.
In the untouched wilds of Vancouver Island, where the whisper of the wind through the cedars and the call of the eagles remind you just how far you are from the ordinary, there lies a place that has captured the essence of luxury and seclusion.
