Baroque Banter

Pinchgut Opera’s pre-concert podcast with Genevieve Lang and Pinchgut Opera Artistic Director, Erin Helyard.

Passion, divinity, transcendence: Pinchgut Opera presents its first concert of the season, Membra Jesu Nostri by Buxtehude. A cycle of seven cantatas composed by German composer Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680. The music is loving: pure, balanced and deeply expressive, demonstrating an extraordinary attention to unity of conception.

Pinchgut’s presentation of this astonishing work brings together a stellar chorus of soloists, including Alexandra Oomens and Lauren Lodge- Campbell, who both return to Australia after performances throughout Europe with some of the world’s eminent Baroque ensembles, along with the sublime sounds of Andrew O’Connor, Hannah Fraser and Louis Hurley. Joining them will be a specially selected group of expert players of the Orchestra of the Antipodes, led by Erin Helyard.

This is sacred, meditative music of the highest order and beauty, presented with all the intimacy, emotion and power that inspired its creation over 300 years ago.

Listen to a sneak peek of the Membra Jesu Nostri pre-concert podcast, hosted by Genevieve Lang and Erin Helyard.

Passion, divinity, transcendence: Pinchgut Opera presents its first concert of the season, Membra Jesu Nostri by Buxtehude. 1 - 4 April, Sydney and Melbourne.

Pinchgut Opera presents a very special episode of Baroque Banter!

Host Genevieve Lang is joined by Pinchgut's Artistic Director Erin Helyard to discuss the exciting season of Baroque and Early Music concerts and operas ahead for our treasured audiences in our 2023 Season.

We hope you enjoy listening!

PINCHGUT OPERA'S 2023 SEASON

April | Concert

Membra Jesu Nostri by Dieterich Buxtehude

May | Opera

Giustino by Giovanni Legrenzi

September | Concert

Pleasures of Versailles by Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Nov - Dec | Opera

Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel

Discover the season on our website.

To help you prepare for your attendance at Médée, we invite you to listen to Pinchgut's pre-opera podcast. Hosted by Genevieve Lang, with guests Pinchgut Opera Artistic Director Erin Helyard, and Director Justin Way.

For more than 20 years, Pinchgut Opera's end of year production has remained one of the highlights of the

live performance calendar, and this year will be no exception.

Charpentier’s towering masterpiece, Médée, brilliantly showcases our Australian cast, the chorus Cantillation and players of the Orchestra of the Antipodes in all their splendid glory.

Charpentier’s sensual lyricism and dramatic insight take us deep inside the mind and heart of this powerful and damaged woman who refuses to be a victim – even at the cost of her own flesh and blood. Médée is high drama and emotion: French tragédie lyrique in its most classic form. The sorceress Médée is driven by desperation and the abandonment of her lover Jason to do the unthinkable, and ultimately murder her own children.

Returning to Pinchgut after her star turn in The Return of Ulysses, mezzo-soprano Catherine Carby takes on the role of the tortured Médée, with the brilliant Michael Petruccelli, who was thrilling in 2019’s Farnace, as her lover Jason. Cathy-Di Zhang, Andrew Finden and Adrian Tamburini are joined by Cantillation and the inimitable Orchestra of the Antipodes to tell this passionate and unforgettable story.

Pinchgut Opera’s pre-concert podcast, hosted by Genevieve Lang, with guest, Pinchgut Opera Artistic Director, Erin Helyard.

For over three centuries, Venice was home to a special institution unique in music history: the ospedali. These were inaugurated as state-run shelters for poor or homeless children and the ospedali provided the very first formally organised music education for female musicians outside the convent. Between 1585 and 1855 the ospedali employed the very best professional musicians in Europe to educate the women who boarded there, and in the early eighteenth century the Pietà boasted the most famous musician of them all: Antonio Vivaldi.

Join Genevieve and Erin as they explore the little-known history of the women and girls of the Ospedale della Pietà, who were amongst the leading singers and instrumentalists of their time, with the composer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau quoted as saying, "I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music...."

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A transcendent concert experience awaits you this September with the divine element of the female voice at its heart as Pinchgut Opera presents Women of the Pietà.

Pinchgut Opera's pre-opera podcast, hosted by Genevieve Lang, with very special guests Pinchgut Opera Artistic Director Erin Helyard, and Director Constantine Costi.

Witty, beautiful and psychologically fascinating, Orontea is set in a heightened contemporary world somewhere between Egypt and Las Vegas. The story centres around a love octagon, where decadence, pleasure and power fuel our colourful cast of grandiose and joyful characters as they pursue their personal passions above all else.

When it premiered at Innsbruck in February 1656, Orontea became one of the most successful operas of the entire century, deftly combining Cesti’s melodic inventiveness with Cicognini’s clever and comic libretto.

With Pinchgut’s imaginative staging and musical assurance, Orontea is guaranteed to amuse and delight our audiences of today, just as it did then.

Pinchgut Opera's pre-concert podcast hosted by Genevieve Lang with very special guest, Pinchgut Opera's Artistic Director, Erin Helyard.

The Spiritual Forest by Monteverdi is a concert featuring some of the most sublime sacred music ever written, taken from Claudio Monteverdi's magnum opus of 1641, Selva morale e spirituale. Genevieve and Erin explore the history and musicology of the work, delving deep into early music that Monteverdi not only composed, but also helped pioneer.

In this podcast, Artistic Director Erin Helyard delves into the vibrant world of baroque ornamentation. Singers both then and now are expected to ornament their music in an exciting way that shows off their technique and expression. We look at treatises, unearth some recently discovered ornamentation in Handel’s hand, and lift a lid on the ornamental art of the great baroque singers.

Platée's pre-opera podcast hosted by Genevieve Lang with very special guests Pinchgut Opera's Artistic Director Erin Helyard, and cast members Kanen Breen and Cathy-Di Zhang.

Celebrated Australian director Neil Armfield makes his Pinchgut debut in a deliciously twisted comedy by one of the greatest French baroque composers. Rameau clearly enjoyed himself composing this one-of-a-kind comédie lyrique, for the marriage of the Dauphin Louis XV to the Princess Maria Teresa of Spain – reputedly a woman of very little beauty – telling the story of the irresistibly outlandish marsh nymph Platée being tricked into believing that Jupiter is in love and wants to marry her.

Platée | City Recital Hall | 1 - 8 December.

We are thrilled to present a new episode of Baroque Banter, The Economics of Opera.

In this fascinating episode, Erin examines how opera was run and funded in the age of Monteverdi, Cavalli and Cesti; who got paid the most and the least, who were the movers and shakers, and who were the impresarios who risked it all for a shot at fame.

Take a deep dive into the intriguing history of the business of opera, and see how it compares to how we do things today.