In Conversation with Lyndon Terracini

Garry Alcorn

If you don’t work in the theatre, stage management can be a bit of a mysterious art. Garry Alcorn is one of our stage managers at Opera Australia, responsible for ensuring that our performances go off without a hitch. He’s responsible for calling hundreds of cues every night, for lighting, sets, sound, cast and much more.

In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Garry explains the work of a stage manager, his unusual musical background, and why stage management results in premature greying. He also talks about how he was personally responsible for bringing Opera Australia to his home town of Murwillumbah in northern NSW.

Andy Morton

UK-born director Andy Morton has worked with us since 2013, when he assisted Gale Edwards on her celebrated production of La Bohème. Since then, he's been revival and assistant director on many of our most popular productions and in 2018 created a new production of La Bohème for Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour.

In 2021, he returns to Opera Australia to create a new production of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, our first ever production of the curious and mysterious masterpiece. In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Morton talks about how he's approaching this incredibly beautiful but difficult opera with a 21st century lens, as well as how he came to work at Opera Australia.

Michael Cassel

Since launching his own company less than a decade ago, Michael Cassel has become one of Australia’s most influential and visionary theatre producers. The Michael Cassel Group has been responsible for award-winning local productions such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Kinky Boots, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and Les Misérables. Cassel is currently gearing up for the Australian premiere of Broadway juggernaut Hamilton, the most celebrated musical of the last decade.

 

In this conversation with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Cassel reflects on the 1992 production of Jesus Christ Superstar which inspired him to enter the world of showbusiness, the enormous Christmas carols event he produced when he was just 15 years old, and learning his trade working for Disney. He also talks about the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, starting his own company, and his plans for the future.

Hon. Anna Bligh AC

Anna Bligh made history in 2009 when she became the first woman popularly elected as Premier of an Australian state. For almost five years she served as the Premier of Queensland and achieved much for her people in that time. She was also a staunch advocate for the arts in her state, taking on the Arts Ministry and overseeing a major period of transformation for the state’s major cultural institutions.

In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Bligh talks about what’s required for a government to commit to supporting the arts, building Brisbane’s ambitious Gallery of Modern Art, and bringing both Mikhail Gorbachev and the Paris Opera Ballet to Queensland.

 

 

Rebecca Ritchie

Rebecca Ritchie is Opera Australia’s Head of Wardrobe, responsible for the team of experienced craftspeople who create the beautiful costumes and wigs you see on our stages. Rebecca started at Opera Australia when she was just 19, working on Baz Luhrmann’s production of La Bohème. After that introduction to our world, she further developed her skills studying at NIDA and worked her way up to the position she holds today.

 

In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Rebecca talks about how her team work with costume designers, the international search for costume talent, and the art of wig-making.

Kelley Abbey

Kelley Abbey creates dance that's eclectic, highly stylised, beautiful and extraordinarily energetic. The choreographer, actor and dancer has been working since the 1980s, when she got her start in the Australian Youth Ballet company. Over the decades, she's filled all played all sorts of parts in the arts industry, from starring roles in major musicals like Sweet Charity, Hair and Grease, to a role on the soap opera E Street, and choreographing everything from opera singers in our productions of Salome and Carmen to dancing penguins in the movie Happy Feet.

 

In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Abbey reflects on the "glorious mistakes" that have been key to her career and explains her creative process.

John Pringle

For an astonishing 41 years, baritone John Pringle was a regular and much-loved performer on our stages. Known as a fabulous singer with the dramatic chops to match, Pringle racked up 102 roles over the course of his career. He was celebrated for his performances as Marcello in our early productions of La Bohème and Figaro in both The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, and later on received acclaim for roles such as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Leporello in Don Giovanni.

 

In this interview with Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini, John talks about his favourite roles, how to be a great actor for the operatic stage, and all he learned from the great singers he performed alongside, including most prominently Tito Gobbi.

Tony David Cray

Creating a perfect sound design for any musical event is no easy feat. But what about when it’s an enormous outdoor performance for 3,000 spectators, with a full orchestra, a huge cast of singers, a pop-up grandstand and all sorts of natural sound to compete with?

This was the challenge facing sound designer extraordinaire Tony David Cray when he joined the team for Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. In this interview with our Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini, Cray shares the secrets behind his sound design for Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, and the ways he manages to simulate the feeling of being enclosed in an auditorium in the great outdoors.

Cray’s rich and varied career has seen him work with sound in all capacities; as a composer for major theatre companies and film, an engineer and producer for orchestras and world-famous pop acts, and in developing new technologies for live performance. In 2008 he won a Grammy Award for his work on a Chuck Corea and Gary Burton album recorded live in Sydney, and most recently he’s been working for the NRL to create an appropriate sense of atmosphere while crowds aren’t able to fill stadiums.

Constantine Costi

Constantine Costi is one of our most exciting emerging talents at Opera Australia, and has been honing his craft by working alongside many of our most experienced directors, assisting on large-scale productions and reviving celebrated stagings. In 2020, he was due to tackle his biggest project for us yet: directing Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. Costi was about to move his production of La Traviata (based on Francesca Zambello’s 2012 staging) from the rehearsal room to the harbour-side stage when COVID-19 restrictions forced the cancellation of the season.

 

In this conversation with Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini, Costi talks about growing up working in the family business, De Costi Seafood, and how he’s still on call to work at peak times. He also talks about some of his early adventures in opera — including a production of Il Tabarro staged in a commercial kitchen in Enmore — and explains why directors are “glorified stage mums”.

Anna-Louise Cole

Anna-Louise Cole began her association with Opera Australia as a member of our chorus back in 2013, performing in operas from across the whole repertoire. But it soon became clear that Anna-Louise was meant to step out in front and perform some of the great soprano roles; in particular the great Wagnerian soprano roles. She soon became a member of our Young Artist Program, and is continuing to develop an extraordinary instrument.

In this interview with Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini, she explains how she fell in love with music as a young Melburnian, and the path she took as a musician, choosing her voice over the cello, and preparing to sing Wagner. She also gives a gorgeous performance of Joseph Marx’s romantic lied ‘Hat dich die Liebe berührt’, accompanied by Opera Australia’s Head of Music, Tahu Matheson.