Limelight

Independent, in-depth and intelligent, Limelight offers Australia's finest coverage of music, arts and culture. Inside each issue, we invite you to take a deep dive into at least four main features exploring the music, opera, theatre and dance sectors, as well as articles addressing the big issues facing the arts and entertainment industry. Additional interviews, reviews and opinion pieces are included in the Soundings and Coda sections. Plus, discover upcoming events across the country in On Stage, and schedule your at-home listening with On Air & Online, which includes ABC Classic, independent radio and online broadcast information.

Limelight

Contributors

On Stage

In the Limelight

SONIC IDENTITY • In his second program as Artistic Director of the Canberra International Music Festival, Eugene Ughetti presents a lineup rich in site-specific bell works, from his own Bell Curve at Parliament House and Thomas Laue's Bell Plains at the National Carillon to Aaron Wyatt's decolonising reinterpretation. Jansson J. Antmann speaks to all three composers about creating music in dialogue with place, history and community.

Mahler's Titan • Once dismissed as “a brutal din”, Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is now acknowledged as a monumental, groundbreaking work that expanded the symphonic genre. Clive Paget explains what made it so audacious in its day and talks with Kahchun Wong who is about to conduct it for Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

ON A HIGH • After living in the UK for two decades, Helena Dix is back. Harriet Cunningham talks to the Australian soprano about moving home, her hectic schedule and why she's sick of people saying the golden era of singing is over.

STING IN THE TALE • Sting not only wrote the book and lyrics for The Last Ship, he will also play the leading role when the show arrives in Brisbane. The renowned singer-songwriter tells Clive Paget why he wanted to write a musical and how it draws on his childhood in the working-class community of Wallsend in the UK as it faced the closure of its shipyard.

Keeping Opera Alive • In her entertaining new book Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for its Survival, Caitlin Vincent takes a lively, illuminating, insightful and, at times, irreverent look at the world of opera. Drawing on interviews with two dozen insiders, as well as her own experience as a classically trained singer, award-winning librettist, opera company director and arts commentator, she unravels the clichés that plague the art form and addresses the challenges it faces today. In this extract, she talks with several composers about the fear often associated with contemporary opera.

INTERVIEW The Music in His Mind • Leading musical director Guy Simpson has supervised numerous productions of The Phantom of the Opera around the world. As he returns to Opera Australia's stunning Sydney Harbour production, he tells Jo Litson how he fell into theatre and about his new passion for orchestration.

What's new on disc • This month mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately rediscovers the remarkable Madeleine Dring, plus contemporary works by Kalevi Aho, Daniel Bjarnason and Dan Walker, and operas by Lully and Vivaldi.

Wrangling the Machine • Luminescence Chamber Singers is set to premiere a new, electronically infused program. AJ America breaks it down for Maddy Briggs.

The Big Finish • With the Goldner String Quartet's final release Child's Play out now, violinist Dene Olding talks to Jansson J. Antmann about the ensemble's relationship with composer Carl Vine.

Opera Wars by Caitlin Vincent • ½ A fresh, lively deep dive into the hot-button issues of the opera world.

Pepe Romero: Dialogues on a Life's Journey with the Guitar as told to Walter Aaron Clark • A portrait of the great Spanish guitarist from the...