Review: AN ENCHANTED EVENING Helps Satisfy The Cultural Cravings Of Those Missing Opera And Musical Theatre

Saturday 17th October 2020, Riverside Theatres and Streamed Online at https://riversideparramatta.com.au

Riverside Theatres Digital's latest offering, AN ENCHANTED EVENING joins acclaimed conductor Guy Noble (Piano) with Opera stars Julie Lea Goodwin and Daniel Belle for a night of Opera and Musical Theatre standards. With an online audience and a 'Live Premium Cabaret' audience in the venue, Riverside Theatres Digital strikes a good balance to cater for as broad an audience as possible in these unusual times, potentially signaling a new style of live performance engagement.

For the evening, set on the mainstage at Riverside Theatres Parramatta, Guy Noble acts as host and pianist and shares his trademark affable banter between songs that range from Puccini and Bizet to Rogers and Hammerstein and Learner and Loewe. The repertoire chosen for soprano Julie Lea Goodwin, who featured as Maria in Opera Australia's Handa On Sydney Harbour (HOSH) in 2019, and tenor Daniel Belle, known for his part in The Ten Tenors, focuses on well known operatic and musical theatre works that the pair have often had previous connection to. The musical theatre numbers draw from the golden age of Broadway when composers were writing for performers that potentially had more classical training than modern day musical theater graduates, suiting the voices perfectly. Whilst most opera singers can fill a room without amplification, Noble, Goodwin and Belle all wear body microphones for the performance to ensure the sound mix for the streamed content comes across flawlessly.

While the works are presented on a predominantly bare stage apart from Noble's piano and a stool, Goodwin and Belle inject drama into the works by ensuring good use of the space and well balanced acting which is particularly useful for the operatic works, proving that despite what some would like to have audiences believe, Australian opera performers can sing and act at the same time, infusing the requisite emotion into both the music and the physicality of the performance. Goodwin and Belle also ensure that there is a strong focus on the text of the songs, ensuring that every word is clear and that their expression, both musically and physically, resonates with the intent of the words to deliver much more than the standard concert of music but rather a glimpse into each of the characters behind the songs.

In managing a live audience and an online audience, Noble ensures that the home audience is not forgotten whilst still presenting a banter that would feel welcoming to the live audience. The camera work for the online audience is well crafted to ensure that in moments of stillness, the audience remains engaged with overlays of different angles and a satisfying amount of shots of Noble's fingers on the piano keys ensuring that there is sufficient respect paid to his contribution to the performance.

While AN ENCHANTED EVENING was listed as a one night event, as with the other Riverside Theatres Digital offerings, hopefully they will open this up to a user-pays-on-demand offering so more people can experience this delightful performance, or better yet, stage another live performance for those itching to get back into a theatre.

Photos: BAM Studios