2024 Opera Festival 2 -5 May

“A rich selection of arias, overtures and choral works from all your favourite operas:  A triumphant concert celebrating opera:  A lively, engaging finale involving all the vocal performers with a surprise inclusion from the conductor: Attentive and well-trained choir:  Superb soloists”

OPERA comes to Nelson

For 4 days in early May (2nd-5th) the Nelson Civic Choir, under its Music and Artistic Director Jason Balla, mounted an Opera Festival at the NCMA. This included an Opera and Broadway Masterclass with 3 local singers, an Opera/Jazz fusion Live Lounge event, and 2 Opera Gala concerts which featured the combined forces of the Nelson Civic Choir, the Nelson Male Voice Choir and an orchestra comprising of many Nelson Symphony Orchestra players, as well as some guest players and soloists from Blenheim, Wellington and Christchurch.

The lunchtime Masterclass on Thursday May 2nd at 12.30pm gave the audience an insight into how a singer might prepare songs and arias for performance, and the wide range of options available to singers in how they present the music both vocally and dramatically.

The May 3rd early evening Live Lounge included music from legitimate jazz operas by Gershwin and Weill as well as re-worked popular opera tunes by Mozart, Puccini, Rossini and others. This demonstrated the versatility of really good music, when it can be adapted and presented in other styles and genres.

The highlight of the festival were the two concerts on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, when over 140 choral singers and orchestral players on the auditorium stage of the NCMA offered the enthusiastic and appreciative audience a wide range of operatic favourites – from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture, to the exquisite Meditation from Massanet’s Thais, played beautifully by soloist and concertmaster Fleur Jackson. The stirring Te Deum from Puccini’s Tosca rounded out the first half of the concert in highly dramatic fashion with soloist Robert Tucker as Baron Scarpia bowing in reverence to the Cardinal (actor Anton Bentley).

The second half featured much more of the combined choirs in some of the most popular opera choruses in the repertoire, including the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco, the rousing Easter Hymn from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and ending with the effervescent Brindisi from Verdi’s La Traviata. The three soloists – Carleen Ebbs, Allison Cormack and Robert Tucker – all displayed a fitting sense of theatre, vocal skills and flexibility in a range of solos from Mozart to Puccini to Korngold.

The audience left in awe amazed at some of the highlights coming from the stage at the NCMA auditorium, where the musicians produced operatic sounds typically only found in the larger theatres or opera houses around the world. The festival was given an added dimension of theatre with a wonderfully curated costume display by Maggy Johnston – costumes were displayed throughout the foyer and the auditorium and accompanied by a range of art and poster displays of various operatic productions and images – as well as a few appearances from Anton Bentley’s troupe of actors.

Judging by the response to this 4 day mini Opera Festival there is definitely an appetite in Nelson for some real, authentic opera performed the way it would be in a professional opera house – which was achieved thanks to Music Director Jason Balla’s experience of over 25 years on the international opera stage. Now we can have real opera here in Nelson!

More exciting Nelson Civic Choir concert productions are planned for later in the year. The choir goes from strength to strength with each new set of concerts, and presents a variety of programmes from opera to oratorio to Christmas music and more. Be sure to purchase tickets early as NCC concerts tend to sell out weeks in advance.