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SYDFEST 2016 - O MENSCH!
Review

SYDFEST 2016 - O MENSCH!

January 26 2016

O MENSCH! Sydney Festival, Sydney Chamber Opera and Carriageworks at Carriageworks – Track 8; January 22-24 2016. Photography by Lisa Tomasetti: above and right - Mitchell Riley.

For me, the revelation of this year’s Sydney Festival has been a company that resides right under my hitherto oblivious nose: Sydney Chamber Opera. This is the local outfit outgoing Festival director Lieven Bertels has said he would most like to take overseas. He also said, in another context, how marvellous it is that they produce brilliant work “on a shoestring”. 

What a pity not more has been done by those who could to ensure less shoestring and more hard cash. One might have had just a little respect for former arts minister George Brandis if he had put into SCO even a fraction of the public money he lavished on his advisor’s pet project, World Orchestra. Hey ho.

Meanwhile, after last week’s glorious outing for SCO’s orchestra in Passion (see review on-site) this work goes to the opposite end of the spectrum visually and musically. In torrid heat an attentive audience settled in as pianist Jack Symonds and baritone Mitchell Riley lowered the temperature to the precise and ecstatically chilly creation that is Pascal Dusapin’s musical setting of 21 fragmentary poems by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Seemingly trapped in a series of light “boxes” (lighting installation artist Katie Sfetkidis) built into and above two short staircases, Mitchell Riley beguiled with a mesmeric and beautiful voice and physical performance, both of which repeatedly broke free of these – apparent – restraints (director Sarah Giles). 

SYDFEST 2016 - O MENSCH!

It’s not an easy work, not least because the surtitled English translation of the libretto/verse often seemed at odds with the German, but Riley’s artistry and presence rose above it and gripped the attention for most of the 70 minutes. And this despite the extreme heat – to which he seemed impervious and which also failed to affect Symonds’ concentration on the minimalist intricacies of Dusapin’s music. 

The soul-searching meditation on humanity’s frailties: “O mensch – gib acht”: O man(kind) – take care/heed” was fully explored by Symonds and Dusapin across the piano’s lyrical and percussive possibilities. At the same time Riley and Giles’s tender attention to the detail of the verse went some way to overcoming the awkward translation; summed up by the recurring motif “Is, for such ambition, this earth not too small?”

Excess ambition is never enough and all involved in this piece are remarkable artists. 

 

 

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