Pilot Report

Archive for November, 2009

Stephanie was anxious about her upcoming audition for Opera Queensland. The company performs in the Lyric Theatre, which is housed in the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Stephanie has been a fan of the company since she was a child and can remember wanting to play for the opera from a very young age. She was given a clarinet when she was six and played the saxophone for two years in high school though she went back to the clarinet and studied it in college where she graduated with a degree in music performance.

Stephanie has worked in Sydney and for a brief time in England and now she is back sitting in one of the hotels Brisbane waiting for her chance to audition for the Opera Queensland. She thought it was rather funny that her dream was to return here all these years and perform for this company rather than staying in London and pursuing a career there. It’s not that Queensland isn’t a quality and respected company, it absolutely is, but many of Stephanie’s peers were trying to carve out professional careers at the international level.

One of the aspects of the Opera Queensland that attracts Stephanie now on the professional level is its partnership with The Opera Conference. Due to this relationship with the national partnership of professional opera companies Opera Queensland is involved with commissioning and presenting new works. Stephanie loves some of the opera classics and is a huge fan of Mozart, she has always strongly supported the development of new work and has herself even worked with composers before. Stephanie firmly believes that she will love working with Opera Queensland and hopes they will feel the same way about her.

John Relyea performed “Le Nozze di Figaro” by Mozart last year at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He will be returning to the city for a performance on March 9, 2010 at Carnegie Hall. This time he will sing withMariinsky Theatre Chorus, accompanied by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra. The Mariinsky Theatre is also known as the Kirov Orchestra, and makes their home in Saint Petersburg.  This is a long running company that was founded during the times of Peter the Great, in the Eighteenth Century.  This is Russia’s oldest institutes of music and now they are the leading orchestras in the country of SaintPetersburg.

John Relyea was born in United States but grew up in Canada. Relyea began training at the age of seventeen.  Both of his parents were singers, his father Gary is a bass-baritone and is mother Anna is a soprano.  It was his parents with whom he received the first three years of formal training.  He has stated that he recently bought them a satellite radio that has a station that broadcasts the shows live from the Metropolitan Theatre, so that his parents could listen to his performances in order to critique him later.  They still influence his work a great deal.

He has performed in Figaro more than seventy times but he has stated that when a cast is as great as the one he is working with currently, the show feels as though he is doing if for the first time.  On the music of Mozart,Relyea says that the music has its own life, that its honest, natural and straightforward.  Much as in the way Shakespeare leads the players, Mozart’s music leads the players, and shows them wear to go naturally.  And as with the writings of Shakespeare, the more you hear Mozart the more you become surprised by something new you have not heard before.  So next year book a hotel, stop at one of the cities best restaurants, New York City has many to choose from, and head to Carnegie Hall to experience the amazing talent of JohnReylea and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra.

India has something to offer everyone, with a magnificent history and a spectacular culture that is always evolving.  There are always multiple Indias that exist simultaneously in one place and at one time, and even in the space of one block, there are many realities that somehow seem to exists side by side.  Kolkata is one of the major city centers here, and for many people it has become the place to experience some of the real India.  There is a spectacular array of humanity here, and people watching is one of the most rewarding activities.  There is also a great culture for luxury here, looking to experience the finest things in one of the world’s oldest cities, and for this, there are magnificent five-star Kolkata hotels.

It is a singularly pleasurable experience to begin the day in gorgeous surroundings, and here you also have the magnetic energy of Kolkata right outside the door.  You can take the opportunity to enjoy all the amenities of the hotel and pamper yourself for days on end, and there is also a fabulous energy in the city proper, where many fascinating adventures wait for you.  There are some fascinating new things going on in the art world here, as in the rest of the world, and digital work is becoming more of a presence in curated shows these days.  That’s because there are some fantastic artistic minds doing work that’s crossing into the digital, because it has been revealing itself as an extremely useful tool for artists.

The crossover of disciplines is also something that’s considered a new trend, when actually it’s something that always existed, but in different terminologies.  One local designer crossing back and forth into the visual arts realm is Mriganka Madhukailya.  He’s on the faculty of the Department of Design at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati, and has done work in Kolkata that has the makings of the beginning of a new rock star academic.  His work in film and video is technically extremely proficient, and the expanse of his projects seems to suggest some very interesting connections between work, life, and the world at large.  He worked with Sonai Jain on About body, borders, and other things and applied new technologies to new ways of conceiving the adverse affects of cultural inscriptions, suggesting sites of resistance.