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A couple of weeks ago we heard from Maestro Richard Hickox, the music director of Opera Australia. During the conversation, we noted the diversity of performances on offer in the present season. There was the ever popular and somewhat raunchy 'Carmen'; an old classic, 'A Masked Ball'; the rarely performed 'Arabella'; and 'My Fair Lady' - to many minds a Broadway and West End musical though others would see it as an operetta. I had the pleasure of seeing 'My Fair Lady' last week. I had seen the 1964 film version with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn a couple of times on TV but never a stage performance.
And this production was just great. Opera Australia, director Stuart Maunder, and the whole cast, crew and orchestra have delivered a highly crafted and hughly entertaining performance. Taryn Fieberg's voice is exactly right in tone and range for Eliza Doolittle and, at moments, she has the stage presence of Audrey Hepburn; Reg Livermore has travelled a long way from 'Jesus Christ Superstar', though his Henry Higgins has much of the self absorption of his King Herod of 30 years plus ago; and Rhys McConnochie, whom I've only ever seen on stage with the Melbourne Theatre Company, is more the Colonel Pickering, Harrow, Cambridge and late of the Indian service, than the quite wonderful Wilfrid Hyde-White who played the role in George Cukor's 1964 film.
Time does not allow mention of other excellent performances, save those of Nancy Hayes as Henry Higgins's mother, a matriarch and feminist and the other woman in Higgins' life, his long suffering housekeeper, Mrs Pearce played by Judi Connelli. Oh! And Roger Kirk's costume designs, especially for the scenes at Ascot (or 'Askit' as the Brits say) are stunning. The audience I saw it with was not the usual opera crowd - there was only a smattering of applause for the arrival of the conductor, Julia La Plater, in the pit - so maybe Opera Australia's strategy of popular and unknown, classic and contemporary will build opera audiences and soften the elite image that opera has endured for so long. And it seems to be working - Opera Australia has just reported a small trading surplus for 2007. With sell-out crowds for 'Carmen' and 'My Fair Lady', that might be a big surplus for 2008.
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