Opera show to reach full voice

BALLARAT’S major choral and operatic companies have been hard at work for the past few months to usher in a collaborative concert this Sunday, hosted by Victorian Opera.

The show will bring together more than 70 performers from the Ballarat Choral Society, Ballarat Symphony Orchestra and Ballarat Lyric Theatre for a one-hour concert at Civic Hall called The Big Sing.

VO education manager Tim Ryan said the performance will be the company’s first step in reviving the Ballarat Opera Festival through community engagement.

“We’re keen to bring that back as an event in Ballarat,” he said. “Part of that is to have a community element which is what The Big Sing is.

“It’s about bringing community arts organisations together, to work together, to explore the art form and put it on stage in an accessible way.

“Ballarat’s always had a really strong culture of opera and opera singers. We’re Victorian Opera, not Melbourne Opera. We’d like to immerse ourselves across the state and Ballarat’s the prime location.

“We’ve got Anvil Chorus, we’ve got Nabucco, Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves. We’ve got some Donizetti, Verdi, Frosini. There’s a bit of this and a bit of that.”

The Ballarat Choral Society will provide opera choruses with accompaniment and overtures from the Ballarat Symphony Orchestra.

With Ballarat Lyric Theatre’s production of The Sound of Music coming up, actors Anna Marshal and Jenna Featherstone will preview two songs in their roles as The Mother Abbess and Maria Rainer respectively.

The Big Sing concert is meant to be an annual fixture, set to return next year alongside VO’s Ballarat Arts Foundation fundraiser, with plans from the company to also bring a fully-staged opera to Ballarat for a separate performance.

Ballarat Choral Society’s musical director Helen Duggan has been leading the group’s regular Wednesday rehearsal to prepare for the show.

She said it’ll be a great opportunity for the company.

“We’ve sung choruses before but we’ve got a real expert [Richard Mills] who’s been working with us,” she said.

“We’ve learnt a lot and I reckon we’re doing quite well. We’ve had good rehearsals and we’re enjoying the languages and they style which we don’t do all that often.

“The music itself is in that popular classical vein, choruses that people will either know or be familiar with the style.”

Tickets range from $15 to $30 and can be booked at bit.ly/42mjFxl.