A taste of opera in Buninyong

MUSIC from Mozart, Gounod, Britten and more will be performed in the Buninyong Uniting Church later this month.

Cordelia’s Potted Operas will be presenting Women in Opera with arias from La Boheme, Don Giovanni Carmen, Lucretia, and Romeo and Juliet.

The initiative was created by Stee Cordelia, director of Savoy Opera Company, with the aim of providing experience to up-and-coming singers.

“When we auditioned for shows we would get something like 30 or 40 people auditioning and I used to wonder if they weren’t cast what would they do,” she said.

“They said they didn’t do anything, they’d just go back to their singing teacher, and I thought, what a waste.

“I formed the Potted Operas as in a shortened version of full operas which I started and now it just gets singers constantly calling me.”

Ms Cordelia said the snippet style performance is entertaining, even to people who may think they don’t like opera.

“When I say to people I do opera, they say ‘oh I don’t like opera.’ I say, which opera don’t you like? and they say, ‘I haven’t seen any’,” she said.

“Coming to something like this, invariably the people…will say ‘I recognise that from the spaghetti ad’ or ‘I recognise that from the petrol ad.’

“Once they come once, they come again, but it’s getting the word out.”

Women in Opera will be on Sunday 25 August at 2pm. Adult tickets cost $35 and can be purchased at bit.ly/4dIz5Sw.