Statutory warning: this is not a review of Ahi Karunaharan’s latest offering to the New Zealand theatre landscape, My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak, which is running at Auckland’s Q Theatre till December 14.
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America Rex is a story about power, politics and personalities colliding in an epic drama that calls for a return to indigenous ways of knowing and belonging. Led by a diverse cast of New Zealand talent this is multi-disciplinary collaborative production that invites the audience to imagine a different present - or relinquish ourselves to an inevitable future.
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The upcoming Auckland Arts Festival, which will run from 8 to 26 March, will feature the world première of a new New Zealand opera, The Bone Feeder. Staged from March 23 to 25, the opera is scored by Gareth Farr with libretto by poet and playwright Renee Liang, that explores the mysteries, traumas and gifts of migration, home and belonging. The Bone Feeder is inspired by the story of the SS Ventnor, which, in 1902, set out carrying the bones of nearly 500 Chinese men who had died in New Zealand. Tragically, the ship never made it. The Ventnor hit a rock off the Taranaki coast and eventually sank off the Hokianga Heads. However, the bones ultimately found a home on New Zealand shores, when they were recovered by the people of Mitimiti and respectfully buried.
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Two outstanding German singers will perform in this year’s Gala of German Opera, which is part of the annual Lansdown Narropera Festival held at 132 Old Tai Tapu Road between February 12 and March 26.
They include the soprano Dorothee Jansen, who is the wife of Christchurch’s Haydn Rawstron, who created the concept of narrating the story of an opera during the presentation of its most significant arias.
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Almost 150 people attended the festivities with some participation from the wider community. The highlight of the event was India - Kaleidoscope of Cultures, depicting the diversity of the country.
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It needed something special and NZ Opera has delivered it. Coming out remarkably well from the dangers of being compared to the previous renditions of an opera so well-known and oft-performed, Giacomo Puccini's 100-year-old story of love and betrayal between a Japanese geisha and her US naval officer husband, is set to mesmerise Christchurch in the coming week.
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