The Barber of Seville
Gioachino Rossini
Almaviva loves Rosina, but her crusty old guardian, Dr Bartolo won’t let him anywhere near her. Sounds like a job for Figaro!
Opera Australia’s much-loved production transports the barber and his cronies to the natty 1920s, all blazers, boaters and Buster Keaton stunts. Meanwhile Rossini’s pacy music tells the madcap story with some of the world’s catchiest arias and ensembles.
Whether it is our hero’s showstopping call ‘Figaro! Figaro! Fiiiiigaro!’, or the vocal fireworks of ‘Una voce poco fa’ this music will have you singing in the shower for days.
The Wild Duck
By Simon Stone with Chris Ryan after Henrik Ibsen
Director Simon Stone
Are there some truths it’s better not to know?
Hjalmar Ekdal’s father was rich until scandal cast the family into poverty. Now he lives in a tiny flat with his father, his wife Gina and his daughter Hedvig. And a duck. And there’s about to be a new member of the household. Gregers Werle has just returned to town with some unfinished business that could shatter the little world Hjalmar has built around himself.
Over the past few years, Simon Stone has been excavating Ibsen’s array of brutal and tender tragedies and reconstructing them for the modern stage. The process has already brought about The Only Child in the Downstairs Theatre in 2009. Now it’s The Wild Duck’s turn.
Stone has transplanted Ibsen’s characters into the contemporary world in a new play tailor-made for an astonishing cast. This bittersweet portrait of family dysfunction, deception and denial will resound for a new age in Belvoir’s first show of the 2011 season.
