Millennial Opera – a new opera cabaret for the Sydney Fringe Festival

We are doing an opera cabaret for the 2018 Sydney Fringe Festival!
Millennial Opera is a brand new show written and produced by Allison Tyra, with music-dramaturgy and direction by yours truly. It features some of opera’s greatest arias and duets, with lyrics rewritten to hold a satirical mirror up to our own Millennial generation (for those still wondering, this means adults born between the early 1980s and 1995). This snarky, smart-ass show is performed by some of Sydney’s best young opera singers. It is part of the 2018 Sydney Fringe Festival, with shows at 8:30 pm on 6, 8 and 9 September at The Newsagency in Camperdown. Get your tickets here: http://www.thenewsagencyvenue.com/shows/milennial
Writer/ Producer Allison Tyra writes: “I love the beautiful music of opera, but constantly find myself frustrated by the plots, characters and original lyrics of the works. After attending a production with particularly bad English translations last year, I started wondering why I couldn’t just re-write the words to create something new. That thought turned into the show we will be staging in September. Subjects range from hipsters and a barista’s lament to online dating and the trials of adults living with their parents. The music featured will include works like Nessun DormaLa Donna e Mobile, and the Habanera aria from Carmen.
While I wrote it partially for my own amusement, the underlying goals are to make opera more accessible by putting it in a less intimidating setting than a three-hour performance; by presenting a greater variety of viewpoints than are typically seen in opera; and by making it more relatable to modern, young audiences.”
MC’d by me in what I trust will be a swashbuckling style, this show features dazzling emerging opera stars Jessica Harper (soprano), Rebecca Hart (mezzo), Carly-Anne Evans (mezzo) and Gerard Atkinson (bass-baritone), with Viet-Anh Nguyen at the piano.

TYRANNO: A New Music Drama by Ludwig van Distortion & Coco Grainger – A Review

by Holly Champion, 4 August 2018. Three out of five stars ***

The Sydney-based director-composer duo Coco Grainger and Ludwig van Distortion (a stage name to end all stage names!) have now, trading as the bootstrapped Distortion Forever Productions, created and staged their third original musical in less than two years. My hat is off to them. This an incredible feat, especially given Sydney’s ragingly expensive cost of living and the resulting few hours that are left each week after earning one’s keep, for making (non-commercial) art.

This time Distortion Forever are presenting the über-intellectual and often very funny new show TYRANNO, at the Erskineville Town Hall. I have seen all three of their shows, including the two productions of their debut, the Aussie Christmas musical Somewhere Else Today. It is interesting to chart their progression. I note that the vocal writing is becoming much more voice-friendly and the staging is becoming more assured. Despite my longing for a real band and conductor, all four productions so far have been accompanied by pre-recorded accompaniment that seems to have been synthesised in Finale or Sibelius. (Blame the cost of living.)

Overall, it has to be said that I am not so keen on TYRANNO as I am on the other two shows, even though the concept is if anything, more interesting. I have to make the disclaimer at the outset here that I am friends or acquaintances with several of the cast and creative team, which makes the criticisms I have to make all the more difficult to write. The show has many good points, however, and plenty of potential. You can see a trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP4L4PnbPS0

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