THE FRANZ LEHÁR Proud Production Sponsor of State Opera 2018 State Opera South Australia presents 29 NOVEMBER – 6 DECEMBER 2018 Adelaide Festival Theatre Conductor – Wyn Davies Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper Director & Choreographer – Graeme Murphy AO Assistant Director & Choreographer – Shane Placentino Creative Associate – Janet Vernon AM English Version – Justin Fleming Set Designer – Michael Scott-Mitchell Sound Designer – Murray Keidge Costume Designer – Jennifer Irwin Chorus Master – Simon Kenway Hanna Glavari – Antoinette Halloran Dominik Bogdanovich – Norbert Hohl Count Danilo Danilovich – Alexander Lewis Sylviane – Deborah Caddy Baron Mirko Zeta – Andrew Turner Raoul de St Brioche – Adam Goodburn Valencienne – Desiree Frahn Viscount Nicolas Cascada – Jeremy Tatchell Camille de Rosillon – John Longmuir Olga Kromov – Sarah-Jane Pattichis Njegus – Mark Oates Konrad Pritschich – Joshua Rowe Alexis Kromov – Nicholas Cannon Praskovia – Catherine Campbell STATE OPERA CHORUS ADELAIDE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Duration: 190 Minutes including two intervals This production proudly sponsored by: TRILITY www.trility.com.au 2 3 SOSA 2018.indd 1 27/04/2018 15:25 welcOme PRODUCTION SPONSOR STATE OPERA TRILITY is delighted to partner an organisation like State Welcome to State Opera’s glorious finale to the operatic Opera South Australia. They are renowned for their rich year – and what a way to end! There is so much to artistic practices and with this production of Merry Widow; celebrate in this brand new production of Lehar’s classic State Opera continues a tradition in bringing this much- operetta The Merry Widow. With settings by Michael loved operetta; with its exquisite music, magnificent waltzes Scott-Mitchell (best remembered in Adelaide for his and lavish art-deco sets to life in a fresh production which is stunning Ring Cycle in 2004), glamorous costumes by both beautifully romantic and devilishly funny. Director and Jennifer Irwin, illumination by Damien Cooper and direction choreographer Graeme Murphy weaves his magic in this by the inimitable Graeme Murphy; this production has sumptuous production, designed by Michael Scott-Mitchell triumphed all over Australia. We are also delighted to and Jennifer Irwin and we as South Australian’s benefit from present the State Opera debut of Wyn Davies conducting work such as this in so many ways. your Widow, Antoinette Halloran, alongside Alexander Lewis as Danilo, a glorious cast, the State Opera Chorus TRILITY too welcomes exciting challenges, and is actively and our own Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to showcase pursuing projects across the nation including South Australia, this much-loved score. whilst preserving very high service levels to our many sites in urban and regional South Australia. Many of you will know what a busy and inspirational last few months we have had here at State Opera; the launch The Merry Widow is a glitzy, glamorous good time and of our 2019 season has been greeted with enthusiasm and there’s no doubt this bubbly, beautiful, and full of tunes delight, our sell-out production of Dido and Aeneas at performance will have you humming as you leave the Plant 4 Bowden has put a new cool venue on the map, by theatre. TRILITY is very proud to be a part of this outstanding the time you read this we will be announcing the recipient production and we hope this operetta is the highlight of your of our inaugural 2019 Director Fellowship, and our new cultural life in 2018. 2019 Opera Club is shaping up to be the hottest ticket in Opera by its very nature is expensive because it combines town (buy to 7 or more events next year and automatically all the dramatic, musical and visual arts in a single creative receive exclusive entrée). Exciting times ahead my friends! vision. It needs sponsors. This is why TRILITY is very proud to Thank you to the State Opera Board, our precious donors, support the State Opera South Australia. sponsors, opera lovers everywhere, and you especially, our South Australian audience, who bring this company to life FRANCOIS GOUWS every year. My very special thanks also to our long-term Managing Director and valiant sponsors TRILITY who are genuine believers in TRILITY Group the value of the performing arts to our society. We hope you enjoy this wonderful production and I look forward to seeing you many more times in 2019 at the opera. YARMILA ALFONZETTI Executive Director State Opera South Australia 5 IMAGE: Stephanie Do Rozario, Courtesy of Opera Queensland. DIRECTOR’S nOte My first formal dance step was definitely a waltz. It was adaptation which respects the original while injecting most certainly in a community hall in country Tasmania pace and clarity. This clarity is reflected in the elegant and my mum Betty was, as always, at an upright piano Art Deco set design by Michael Scott-Mitchell, which pumping out the 3/4 rhythm of a progressive barn dance. transports us to a world far from the babble of the now. I was perhaps 9 years old and would have stepped on Costume designer Jennifer Irwin drapes the cast in dreams the toes of many a farmer’s wife. that float through subconscious memory and lighting design by Damien Cooper paints this lost world with The first time I heard the iconic Merry Widow waltz was faceted mirrors and shards of impressionistic gossamer. on a tinny music box at my Uncle Hinton’s house in the big smoke, Launceston. Little did I know how often that If this all sounds escapist, how right you are! Yet, there waltz and I would get together! Fast forward and I am is at the heart of this operetta a grounding force: our waltzing in one of The Australian Ballet’s most successful protagonists Hanna and Danilo, who because of proud ballets, The Merry Widow - choreographed by Ronald vanity risk losing the great love of their lives - each other. Hynd, directed by Sir Robert Helpmann, with a wordless The Merry Widow touchingly reminds us of the universal score adapted by and conducted by John Lanchbery, and and all-pervasive need to love and be loved. starring, among other luminaries, Dame Margot Fonteyn. To you, dear audience, I offer a warm invitation to submit With The Australian Ballet, I waltzed through countless to an amazing cast in the service of a timeless musical performances and thousands of miles, from the London gem. Palladium to Broadway’s Shubert Theater and beyond. I remember joking with Janet Vernon, my sometimes dance partner, my current creative associate, and my always life GRAEME MURPHY AO partner, that we were doomed to waltz in ‘The Weary Director & Choreographer Meadow’ till our legs became stumps! Fast forward to now and...SHE’S BACK, once again filling my life not just with lush orchestration but this time with vocal magic and sparkling dialogue. What an absolute pleasure to be working with State Opera under Stuart Maunder’s artistic direction, ASO and conductor Wyn Davies. How thrilling to have Justin Fleming’s new 7 IMAGE: Stephanie Do Rozario, Courtesy of Opera Queensland. A LOVE AFFAIR Australia has had a love affair with the Widow since In 1978 Designer Kristian Frederickson transformed the Carrie Moore, a Geelong-born 25-year old opened as Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House into a cream, The Merry Widow in 1908 at Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s grey and white Art Nouveau confection to showcase the Theatre. Over 100,000 people enjoyed Carrie Moore’s Widow of Dame Joan Sutherland. The company certainly ‘dreamily alluring’ dancing and for the next twenty years got their monies worth from this extravagant production The Merry Widow continued to play all round the country. as it played numerous revivals with equally numerous Widows over the following 35 years. Despite being remembered today for only one role, the Maid in The Maid of the Mountains, Gladys Moncrieff In 2004 director Simon Phillips and designers Michael always maintained her favourite role was The Merry Scott-Mitchell and Hugh Coleman created an Art Deco- Widow. ‘Our Glad’ waltzed her way through the thirties inspired showcase for the Widow of Yvonne Kenny. and forties in a highly corseted black velvet gown with the Resplendent in black and pink, Yvonne appeared from an debonair matinee idol Max Oldaker as her Danilo. oversized- cigarette box and waltzed down an equally oversized fan which opened to become a staircase. In J C Williamson mounted a new production of The Widow what was to be the penultimate version to this production, in 1943 to showcase Australia’s celebrated song and 2010 saw Amelia Farrugia and David Hobson headlining dance partnership in the mould of Fred Astaire and Ginger a revival of Giles Havergal’s Opera North version. Rodgers; Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliot. Dubbed by the press as ‘the greatest love story in Australian theatre’ the The Merry Widow has never enjoyed a major revival in two had consistently denied that they were romantically Australia because It has virtually never been out of the involved. According to Madge, they were ‘just good repertoire. companions’ who danced. And Cyril commented that they The ‘heart’ in The Merry Widow is irresistible. It is married ‘after ten years of whirlwind courtship’. charming, romantic, amusing, tuneful… and sentimental. This production ran for eight months and continued to tour “Sentimental” is, of course, a dangerous word to use Australia from 1944 until the end of World War 2 playing today, but remember what composer Richard Rogers (a to troops in Cairo, Alexandria, Italy, Paris, Holland and man who acknowledged that his first experience with Brussels. The Merry Widow began his life-long obsession with the waltz) once said in response to the charge that The Sound The 1950s was a ‘Widow-free zone’ in Australia. Perhaps of Music is sentimental: there were deemed no possible Widows in Australia at the time.