Pinchgut end year with blood, thunder and revenge served hot

Pinchgut Opera have saved the best for last with a superb performance of a Baroque blockbuster to close their 2022 season

Catherine Carby in Pinchgut Opera's production of Charpentier's Medee. Picture: Cassandra Hannaga

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Pinchgut Opera have saved the best for last with a superb performance of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Baroque blockbuster tragedy Medee to close their 2022 season and to say farewell to a year still disrupted by the vagaries of the pandemic.

The performance, conducted by Erin Helyard, marked a return to Australia of mezzosoprano Catherine Carby, who started out in Canberra and became a regular with Opera Australia before moving to London and the Covent Garden stage.

She was powerful and breathtaking in the title role of Medusa, the mythological princess who married the hero Jason of the Argonauts and who extracts horrendous revenge when he falls in love with another princess, Creuse of Corinth, sung admirably by Aussie soprano Cathy-Di Zhang.

Melbourne-based tenor Michael Petruccelli put in a stellar performance as Jason, matching Carby for charisma and chemistry, their voices blending beautifully in the opening act where Medee is persuaded by her soon to be unfaithful husband that they need to win the good graces of Creuse so that her father the king will protect them and their two sons from their enemies the Thessalians.

Michael Petruccelli, Cathy-Di Zhang and Adrian Tamburini. Picture: Cassandra Hannagan

Petruccelli and Zhang were also well matched vocally and physically in this production, directed by Justin Way, who worked for 15 years at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Their steamy affair sets off a tragic and violent course of events in which Medee uses her supernatural powers to commit murder and mayhem.

But despite the awful outcome – king and Creuse dead, as well as her children by her own hand – it is hard not to feel some sympathy for her, and this was where Carby was so persuasive.

Duped by Jason and Creuse, who in turn is duping her fiance Oronte (Andrew Finden), Medee has been convinced to hand her children over to Creuse for safe keeping after the king orders her to leave Corinth while Jason must stay to lead the army.

As Medee tells Jason on the eve of her exile, “a hero should not have a tender soul” – something her lover lives up to, showing remorse only when the stage is piled with corpses. Medee, meanwhile, radiant from the reflected flames consuming Corinth, stands on a balcony overlooking the stage as she prepares to head for the heavens, her thirst for vengeance satisfied.

Bass baritone Adrian Tamburini was magnificent as the king and the supporting singers, drawn from the ranks of the excellent Cantillation chorus, were all on point, both vocally and theatrically. Charles Davis’ stage design was highly effective, suitably monotone, aided by David Bergman’s giant video face which transforms as the bloody plot proceeds.

Helyard and the Orchestra of the Antipodes never disappoint and Charpentier’s score is multi-layered and diverse, ranging from timpanist and percussionist Brian Nixon’s thunder storms and folk dance rhythms to majestic trumpets and woodwinds, ominous lower strings for the death scenes and – most memorably of all – a trio of flutes and recorders accompanying the slow-mo thumping of the king by his bodyguards, under Medee’s spell.

Five star performances all round.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Charpentier’s Medee: Pinchgut Opera

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN December 7