The Australian Opera's The Mikado

Unusually for me, I seem to have been having quite a social time of it.

Thursday last week was the Global Illuminations cocktail party to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. The Opera House was coloured pink for the occasion.

Tonight I was back at the same end of town for the Australian Opera's presentation of the Mikado at the Opera House. I thought of Marcellous who has often written on AO matters.

The evening was a birthday present for Judith, my mother in law. We had drinks and nibbles first on the lower concourse looking across the water. Downtown Sydney is remarkably beautiful at night with the water and lights.

I am a fairly critical G&S fan. The school I went to, The Armidale School, had an annual G&S production for many years. This was a big event. Under the talented direction of Jim Graham, rehearsals went on for a very long time, aided by the large number of boarders who were available at all hours. Music was generally provided by the Armidale Symphony Orchestra. A number of people got their performance starts here including Australian TV journalist and presenter Paul Griffiths and singer and actor Peter Cousens.

How did the AO performance measure up?

This is not as silly a question as it may sound. The AO Mikado including lead Anthony Warlow (Ko-Ko) had to compete against my memories of performances when they were very fresh to me.

Quite well, I thought, The stage settings were very good as you would expect, the voices were obviously very good. However, I am not sure that a full opera company can actually do light opera; the very power of the voices tends to detract.

Still, I did enjoy it.