CENTENARY PAVILION, August 2022
Director’s statement – Adam Mitchell
This is my first time working with FFO (I’ve long been a secret admirer), and it has been a really wonderful adventure. What a special company this is!
Puccini describes La Fanciulla as his ‘finest work, his most successful opera’, and that is a big statement as it followed Madama Butterfly. It is an incredibly ambitious undertaking for any opera company, let alone our merry troupe of independent artists, to stage The Girl of the Golden West. Certainly, I find La Fanciulla Puccini’s most romantic score, and possibly one of his most musically demanding.
The jumping-off point aesthetically for our La Fanciulla was a series of photographs of the town on the west coast of America, called Trona, taken by documentary photographer Tobias Zielony (look them up; they are fantastic!). Originally a frontier town, it was built on the myth of the Wild West, exploiting individualistic freedom and the taming of the natural world. Trona moved from mining gold and silver at the turn of the century to today, where its main production is sadly methamphetamine.
There are many such towns in our own backyard. Settlements that once encouraged daring explorers west have also drawn misplaced and unwelcome vagrants into the undertow. The original protagonists of Western epics are often misfits or outcasts, and this is what’s celebrated in La Fanciulla. This is an opera that unusually sees our heroine, Minnie (a hard-working bar owner), win big in the hard-drinking world of men, and we love her for it. La Fanciulla is firmly set in the cultural echoes of the American Dream and the lament of longing to blaze brighter than you are.
I would like to thank the cast, creative team (particularly our brilliant Musical Director, Tommaso), musicians, and everyone at FFO and beyond for making this possible. I hope you enjoy your journey to the frontier.
Ax
CAST:
- Jack Rance – Teddy Tahu Rhodes
- Dick Johnson – Jun Zhang
- Minnie – Hattie Marshall
- Jake Wallace – Robert Hofmann
- Sonora – Lachlann Lawton
- Ashby – Jake Bigwood/Brett Peart
- Jim Larkins – Brett Peart/Kris Bowtell
- Sid – Keaton Staz
- Bello – Lachlan Higgins (Rogers & Thick Award Recipient 2022)
- Joe – Perry Joyce
- Happy – Kohsei Gilkes (FFO Rising Star 2022)
- Nick – Ammon Bennett (FFO Rising Star 2022)
- Harry – Tom Buckmaster
- Trin – Zoe Lancaster
- Wowkle – Michelle Pryor
- Postmas – Euan MacMillan
- Castro – Laurence Westrip
- Chorus – Devon Lake, Sam Claxton, Julian Cope, Vin Trikeriotis, Jessica Goodwin and Elizabeth Bruk (appear courtesy of WAAPA)
- Pianist – Tommaso Pollio
- Cellist – Sophie Curtis
- Piano Accordian – Cathie Travers
- Director – Adam Mitchell
- Music Director – Tommaso Pollio
- Designer – Bryan Woltjen
- Lighting Designer – Jerry Reinhardt
- Production & Stage Manager – Stephen Carr
- Assistant Stage Managers – Chloe Palliser, Simonne Mathews and Jocelyn Dale
- Wardrobe Manager – Rhiannon Walker
- Surtitle Operator – Allison Fyfe
- General Manager – Adele Williamson
Reviews:
