Idomeneo - Mozart
2023/2024
Victorian Opera / Opera Australia
- CONDUCTOR
- Benjamin Bayl (Melbourne), Johannes Fritzsch (Sydney)
- DIRECTOR
- Lindy Hume
- SCENIC DESIGN
- Michael Yeargen / Richard Roberts
- COSTUME DESIGN
- Anna Cordingly
- LIGHTING DESIGN
- Verity Hampson
- VIDEO DESIGN
- David Bergman
- CINEMATOGRAPHY
- Cat Pettman (Rummin Films)
- PRINCIPAL ARTISTS
- including:
(OA - Sydney) Michael Schade, Caitlin Hulcup, Emma Pearson, Celeste Lazarenko, John Longmuir, Kanen Breen
(VO - Melbourne) Steve Davislim, Catherine Carby, Olivia Cranwell, Kathryn Radcliff, James Egglestone
Opera Australia Chorus - IMAGES
- Charlie Kinross (Melbourne) Keith Saunders (Sydney)
“Lindy Hume’s new production of this early Mozart opera offers much to delight both eye and ear. Balancing refinement and natural energy, this production is directed with great clarity by Lindy Hume. Projected onto the walls of the set, filmed by Catherine Pettman and video design by David Bergman, aerial imagery of Tasmania’s wild coast sets the scene for Crete. Later…negative imagery and extreme close-up turn natural elements into everything from a dark, pulsing void representing the sea monster, to a lava-like evocation of Elektra’s rage. Brilliant.”
Limelight
“A striking co-production that draws on Greek mythology to offer hope for a new world.”
ArtsHub
“Hume admirably explores many opportunities to emphasise the humanity of the work.”
Arts Review
“Hume directs Idomeneo with her usual clarity and attentiveness. …The lighting, video design and cinematography are inspired. Wild seas, bright skies, and soaring birds are projected on the walls…. It is, after all, a profoundly emotional opera. Done well, as it is here, a most stirring experience.”
Australian Book Review
“This production manages the intricacies of the narrative and the emotions beautifully. Clear blue skies, rough seas, thunderous storms, lush forests and vertiginous cliff faces all feature as striking backdrops as the tragic tale unfolds. The timing of these moments is often breath-taking and exquisitely deployed.”
Stage Whispers
“There was something deep yet indefinable, or perhaps deep because indefinable, in Hume’s production…The sense of directorial absorption in study of this story was palpable, a sense of watching something magnificent and consequential.”
OperaWire, March 9, 2024
“Lindy Hume’s Sydney Opera House Summer Season has been a triumph in demonstrating possible new directions and collaborations for Opera Australia.”
Australian Arts Review, 25 February 2024
“An unexpected treat full of ravishing singing and dazzling visuals…Lindy Hume is one of Australia’s most seasoned and astute opera directors, evident in the way she moved the chorus around the stage…”
Canberra City News, February 2024
"Director Lindy Hume brings into sharp focus the more disturbing aspects of Puccini’s opera. … not simply the sexist mores where Cio-Cio-San is a commodity, but the supremacist, imperialist and colonialist attitudes in the characters embodying male entitlement and coercion…Hume’s approach makes for a more disturbing experience than the romantic pull-at-the-heartstrings this work is assumed to be."
The Guardian
"WNO’s intelligent, insightful and, finally, piercingly emotional modern-day interpretation of this squalid story of exploitation and callousness. Tiny details take on epoch-defining significance. As The Star-Spangled Banner sounds in the orchestra, Pinkerton flourishes a credit card to pay for Butterfly."
The Times
"Hume isn’t afraid to press the emotional buttons either. Snipe all you like at Puccini’s ‘manipulative’ score but plenty of handkerchiefs will surely have had a workout when Sorrow added his toy dinosaur to Butterfly’s flower arrangement. No spoilers, but the final minutes were as swift, inexorable and brutal as anything on stage or screen. This might not be the Butterfly you expect, but it hits you where it hurts."
Spectator
"Director Lindy Hume brings into sharp focus the more disturbing aspects of Puccini’s opera. … not simply the sexist mores where Cio-Cio-San is a commodity, but the supremacist, imperialist and colonialist attitudes in the characters embodying male entitlement and coercion…Hume’s approach makes for a more disturbing experience than the romantic pull-at-the-heartstrings this work is assumed to be."
The Guardian
"WNO’s intelligent, insightful and, finally, piercingly emotional modern-day interpretation of this squalid story of exploitation and callousness. Tiny details take on epoch-defining significance. As The Star-Spangled Banner sounds in the orchestra, Pinkerton flourishes a credit card to pay for Butterfly."
The Times
"Hume isn’t afraid to press the emotional buttons either. Snipe all you like at Puccini’s ‘manipulative’ score but plenty of handkerchiefs will surely have had a workout when Sorrow added his toy dinosaur to Butterfly’s flower arrangement. No spoilers, but the final minutes were as swift, inexorable and brutal as anything on stage or screen. This might not be the Butterfly you expect, but it hits you where it hurts."
Spectator
Culture, music, storytelling, dance and image-making have been practiced on Country for millennia by Australia's First People. I acknowledge and pay respect to the original custodians of Culture and Country where I live in Tathra, the Djiringanj people of the Yuin Nation on the Far South Coast of New South Wales, and the palawa/pakana, First People of lutruwita Tasmania.
© 2023 Lindy Hume
© 2022 Lindy Hume
© 2022 Lindy Hume