On Stage (and walls) Melbourne: Review - Sydney Opera House Opening Concert 1973

April 26, 2009

Review - Sydney Opera House Opening Concert 1973 - ABC Classics

Mackerras - Wagner
Sydney Opera House Opening Concert 1973
Birgit Nilsson, soprano
Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Charles Mackerras, conductor
ABC Classics 476 6440

The attraction of the release is the inclusion of a DVD of the opening concert of the Sydney Opera House as televised by the ABC in September 1973 which is quite a surprise. As colour television was still a few years off, the transmission was made and perhaps in black and white. As FM radio broadcasting was still to come as well the audio is limited but the grainy, monochrome and limited sonics are acceptable enough and the archival tape has surprisingly few imperfections considering its age. EMI Classics have been releasing, in their Classic Archives series, concerts by leading classical artists derived from British, European and occasionally Japanese telecasts made live or as studio recordings often in lesser quality the current recording and usually released primarily as a record of a major artist or orchestra and not an occasion. This release is certainly an occasion and a record of a major artist as well, the famous Wagnerian soprano Birgit Nilsson.

Nilsson gave a series of concerts in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne before arriving at the Sydney Opera House for the first of two concerts (the opening event preserved here and another with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra). She recalled that the outside “resembles an enormous sailing ship and, looking out a dressing room window you might think you were on a great Atlantic liner.” She was pleased to learn too that the distinctive white tiles on the buildings sails were manufactured near to her home Sweden but was less pleased with the compromised interiors which was very clearly the work of “a different architect with less imagination and more limited financial resources” to complete the décor. None the less Nilsson is in powerful, late career, voice if with a tendency to be more concerned with delivering the ‘Nilsson Experience’ rather than actually music making. This is more apparent in the DVD which contains the second the half of the concert.

The 1970s camera work is very competent and ensures a variety of camera angles, focus shots on various players and instrumental section, plenty of captures of the Hall’s interior and even overlapping shots of Mackerras in close-up superimposed over the orchestra. There is nothing close up - probably at the singer’s instance -of Nilsson however. Mackerras secures some fine playing from the orchestra in this all-Wagner concert. In the Tristan und Isolde Prelude the strings make searingly lovely sounds in the long, arching phrases and again in the introduction to “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” sear into the high phrases and convey enormous weight and strength as well in the “Funeral March” where the horns make a terrific menacing sound. On the audio CD there is sense of depth and distance in “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey”, the horns sounding far off against the present woodwind, quite a nice achievement in a life capture. Audience noise is almost non-existent except at the end of each item where the applause sounds polite rather than conveying “the sense of wonder and national pride felt by all in the full house that night” alluded to in the booklet notes. The booklet notes, incidentally, are first rate, running to over twenty pages with histories of the Opera House project, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, soloist and conductor biographies, notes to each musical selection and full German and text and English translations of the vocal items.

this review appears in the Music Council of Australia's Music Forum magazine

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