Lyndon Terracini to be new
Artistic Director of Opera Australia
New blood
Not since Eberhard Waechter controlled the Vienna Staastoper have baritones held so much power in an opera company. Two baritones now hold the highest creative and administrative posts in opera in Australia with Opera Australia’s appointment of baritone and artistic administrator Lyndon Terracini to the newly created post of Artistic Director. The company’s CEO Adrian Collette is also a baritone singer by training. As an administrator Terracini has been artistic director of the Queensland Music Festival and more recently the 2006, 2008 and 2009 Brisbane Festivals.
As
a singer Terracini made his operatic debut with Opera Australia (then
called The Australian Opera) as Sid in Benjamin Britten’s Albert
Herring and sang a variety of roles with them as a career baritone
ranging from Strephon in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe
to Tarquinius in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. One of his last
roles with the company was Lord Byron (doubling with the role of the Monster)
in one of their most impressive contemporary commissions Mer de Glace
by Richard Meale. An early example of barihunk Terracini had respectable
career singing the standard repertory with the national and state companies
but it is his contemporary music performances that established him here
and overseas. At the 1976 Adelaide Festival and subsequent Melbourne,
Perth, Barossa and Darwin Guitar Festivals he gave outstanding performances
in Hans Werner Henze’s solo theatre work El Cimarron. He was invited
by the Henze to create the role of Sancho Panza in the world premiere
of his adaptation of Paisiello’s opera Don Quichotte at the first
Montepulciano Festival in 1979. Terracini stayed in Italy for over a decade
but returning to Australia to perform and create new work including the
lead role in Brian Howard’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis
in 1983. Other important premieres included The Ghost Sonata
by Aribert Reimann after Strindberg's play for the Opera Factory Zurich
in 1983.
Terracini returned to Australia taking the title role in the Australian premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd for the State Opera of South Australia, one of the earliest stagings of the 'opera house' version of the musical. He continued to sing overseas, still working with leading composers and theatre makers. The most notable was the title role in the world premiere of ROSA - A Horse Drama by Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway in 1994 for the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam where, performing nude, he displayed his nackers in earnest.
In 1993 he founded Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) and in 2002 was awarded the Myer Foundation Group Award. As a member of the Australia Council’s music committee of the Performing Arts Board and his commitment to securing performances of contemporary music would enable Terracini to have a keen understanding of the issues surrounding the commissioning, creation and performance of new 'performance' works. Interviewed on ABC Radio National the following day Terracini spoke of new works being part of the company repertoire at a modest rate, suggesting one new opera per season. He also enthused about digital technology being applied to staging and cited the work of Greenaway.
Terracini's appointment commences in October.
Michael Mangusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews, check out his blog at On Stage (and walls).
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