Victorian Opera updates Mozart’s Abduction for the modern era

In 1781, he sat on the cooks of the Archbishop of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the deepest genius produced by the human race, but as a maid under the valets.

Already a very traveling and admirable child genius, humiliation felt acute. He could not even imagine that he would leave the Archbishop in a year, pushed it with a boat at the back of the Archbishop secretary, and that he would have great success. Missing from Seraglio. As an entrepreneur from the musician to the musician, he took his first leading steps.

Now, 244 years later, Victoria Opera, a very designed, shortened title for 2025 Melbourne, a brand new Libretto and some musical sections and additions to a new opera production. Kidnapping It is what the director con Costi calls “delicious dark Rom-com.

The original story tells two women, Konstanze and Blonde, and was kidnapped and taken to a Turkish harem. When their boyfriend Belmonte and Pedrillo try to steal them, they are caught, but they are released by the merciful Pasha with women.

In Costi’s re -expression, Pasha becomes a great Gatsby figure with detailed and genius parties that voluntarily enter due to possible dissatisfaction with the metrosexual boyfriends who attempt to “save them them.

Costi asks Belmonte assistant: “Do you think they have doubts?” Pedrillo answers: “Of course no. Look at us – we are young, we do meditation, we moisturize.” Absolutely gentle sarcastic, which is absolutely not in the original text, but emphasizes Costi’s orbit.

“In your heart, a sex comedy, CO COSTİ says, 35.

Victoria Opera went with a vibrant young cast to keep the energy high. Pasha Selim, a role that does not disappear, is played by 30 -year -old Lyndon Watts and giving his name as Aaron Burr HamiltonThen as Candide in last year’s vo production.

It is noted in the same way in theater and musical theater realms. Did others have gone through such a wide way? “Melbourne is full of them, actually, or he says. “You have no diversification or enough work in the fields of art in Australia. I am besieged by many artists carrying various worlds.”

This is Watts’s first main opera and exciting. Orum I squeeze myself to be a part of this incredible music. This is a dream – like making Shakespeare, like this mastery Hamilton Or Sondheim, or he says.

Compassion and empathy are the keys to opening the character of Pasha. “As long as you honor a person, I enjoy it because it is different or more than the original than life.”

The emerging Soprano Cleo Lee-McWan also has 30, Konstanze, which has the most difficult role with its 30, challenging technical and emotional demands. “This is a role monster, or he says. “Too long and too high, but also too low. Mozart wrote it for a friend [the diva Caterina Cavalieri] To exhibit its virtue and the ends of human voice, so difficulty, how to maintain these excessive technical demands how to maintain. “

The answer is not to think too much, but to dive into the character and rely on musical preparation. “I prepare brick bricks, I focus on Coloraratura [virtuoso] Passages and where I can breathe, where I can reset and find a strategy to pass through this marathon. I have to say that I have been singing and probably the most challenging role I will sing. “

Lee-Mcdowan says the original environment can be strange, but he is extremely relative. Konstanze and Blonde ask questions that every young person asks and probably at every stage of life: “Who am I and what really do I want?”

Costi says the couple is the first of the complex women in Mozart’s later operas. “You can’t notice his music and the time he gives to the female characters in his opera.

Costi, what is the kind of big problem that takes a long time to struggle? Opera is not just a comedy, but from time to time deeply serious, reflective and active. “This is not just a partial comedy opera buffa, but also an opera series in which emperors, kings and queens are engaged in the bad situation.” In both forms, there were strict contracts in which Mozart challenged to produce something new.

“The game I really want to play with the audience, this oscillation between comedy and humorous things, and I hope you laugh, but at the same time struggling with quite serious things.

“At the end of Tetherin, a really exciting challenge of changing gear between people and people.

He says there is a joy to embrace the wild and darkness about being human and to solve the complications of control in a relationship. “Where does love and commitment turn into something that controls? These things are very interesting to me, especially in the contemporary climate of a modern Victorian ethics and manners.”

Costi says that he chose the contemporary, cult -like, reflects the sexual charm, danger and strangeness of the world’s harem.

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The revision is categorical because it is not related to making the audience talk about the director – a charges that are levels level in some directors in Europe.

“I’m an opera fan. I am an obsessed Mozart, or he says. “It was actually an interesting in the 1980s. Now there is much more interesting to treat the opera as a dynamic environment.

He believes that this production is an ideal introduction for people who do not have regular opera. Orum I think it is something for those who know it and for the first time.

Kidnapping At the Palais Theater, St Kilda, 12-16 August.

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