A Beginner’s Guide to Opera 2011

Editorial

Some five centuries ago in Venice, opera was formalised in performance. This means that we, its novice audience, have an awful lot of history to learn. Don't think for a moment this elaborate art-form is a doddle to understand. In fact, the term "opera" is Italian for labour. Hard labour.

The genetically posh can bang on all they like about opera being something that one simply feels; one need not know its history, its present and its cant. Nonsense. Opera has a complex theatrical language that has evolved over half a millennium. Damned if we're going into a recital all frocked up without a few crib notes. Allow us to offer you a little help.

If you've heard Luciano belt out Nessun Dorma and been tempted to dip your toe in the ocean of opera's complexity, start out with a life-belt before diving in. As rewarding as a night at the opera might be, it's also horribly expensive. Tickets to performance by our finest company, Opera Australia, start at a c-note. If you cough up one-hundred-bucks for anything, you'll want to wring every last drop of value from the score.

Let's start with something light and portable. Many How-To guides suggest that we commence with comic opera. The opera buffa (comic opera, for a greater glossary please visit) by Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, has a soufflé-light libretto and can be viewed in the privacy of your own opera house. The Jean-Pierre Ponnelle take is highly regarded.

Madama Butterfly is quite something on film. Frédéric Mitterand gives us hotties in the title roles and Puccini gives us a seductive introduction to the big, mythic calamity true opera aficionados come to love. Actually, this powerful colonial tale is a great live start to opera, too. A few years back, we saw the unfairly beautiful Antoinette Halloran sing Cio-Cio San for the little-company-that-could Melbourne Opera and were quite stung by the sentiment and technique she brought to a relatively low-cost production.

So, once you've exhausted the films of Zeffirelli (La Traviata is a must) and performed a little light reading, you're ready to make an informed choice about the kind of work that trips your trigger.

In Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, your operatic needs are serviced by local companies. In Sydney and in Melbourne, you have dozens of reasons to dress your best every year. In these cities, Opera Australia will unleash octaves of great grief in 2011 with American opera Of Mice and Men directed by Bruce Beresford. Melburnians are fortunate to live in the company of Richard Gill, notable conductor and Director of the Victorian Opera; arguably our cheekiest producers of fine opera.

In our small-but-perfectly formed homes of culture Hobart, Canberra and Darwin, you'll have to attune your ears to the sounds of top notch tenors. Or, await Oz Opera, the touring arm of Opera Australia, who this year brings La Traviata to the regional stage.

Wheresoever the compass has spun you, be prepared to have your study of song rewarded with a life spent front and centre in a hall that honours the highest human voice.

Helen Razer, Citysearch