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LATEST NEWSOpera singers win coveted places as Emerging ArtistsThree aspiring singers have been selected as 2008-2009 PwC Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artists. A sad farewellThe NBR New Zealand Opera joins with the opera community in mourning the loss of Seamus Casey.  |
Latest News A sad farewellThe NBR New Zealand Opera joins with the opera community in mourning the loss of Seamus Casey.
Seamus made a huge impact on all of us here at the Company during his tenure as an emerging artist and will be remembered forever as a man who brought humour, passion and determination to everything he undertook. He will be sorely missed.
Voice lives onThe sad loss of Luciano Pavarotti has left the world short of a truly great tenor. Make no mistake about it; his was a unique and extraordinary talent, of a level one encounters very seldom in a single lifetime. It seems a shame that in his later career, certainly after the famous Three Tenors concerts, Pavarotti's public persona became almost a caricature of the large Italian tenor, for there is now a danger that this is how he will always be remembered. This would do him a grave disservice. Unlike the other great tenor of this generation, Placido Domingo, Pavarotti was never a natural stage animal; but that was not what he was really about. He brought to his roles an ease of line, a brilliance of colour and a natural lyricism which cannot be schooled in a conservatoire and can only be described as god-given. These qualities can be heard to their best advantage in the great series of recordings he made in the sixties and seventies, most notably the bel canto repertoire with Joan Sutherland, his Verdi and Puccini recordings, of which his La Bohème under Karajan and Turandot under Zubin Mehta are outstanding. I would dearly like to think that in time, when the hype has died down, it will be in these recordings that his true legacy is found. He may have died, but truly his voice lives on. Board Director of The NBR New Zealand Opera, Donald Trott says: "On a performance visit to New Zealand in 1999 Luciano Pavarotti accepted an invitation to conduct a masterclass with some of the young singers of Opera New Zealand, as we were then called. For the seven singers who took part it was a memorable experience. He could have spent his time resting in his hotel, but freely gave that time to work with young singers, to give them the benefit of his knowledge and great wisdom as a world-renowned performer."
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The NBR New Zealand Opera joins with the whole opera community in mourning the loss of Seamus Casey this week and sends heartfelt support to his family and wife, Laura, at this sad time. |
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