Bringing Carmen to life
ISRAELI opera star Rinat Shaham has performed in concert halls in New York, London and many parts of the world, and now she has added the Sydney Opera House to the list.
The New York-based mezzo-soprano is currently playing the lead role in Opera Australia’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, reprising a role she has made her own across Europe and America since her first performance in 2004.
Although she is in her debut season with Opera Australia, Shaham, who was born in Haifa, and who completed her musical studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in the USA, is no stranger to our shores. Her husband is well-respected Australian violinist Peter Bucknell.
“It’s really a lovely company and I was expecting that because I know Australians and, as a people, they’re really nice and easygoing,” she told The AJN.
Shaham says she brings a lot of herself to Carmen, which is set in Spain in the 19th century and centres around a beautiful gypsy with a fiery temper who woos a young soldier, Don José.
“I am Israeli and there’s a lot of main things in her character that I identify with,” she explains.
“Carmen has a lot of stuff that I can say that I bring from home. Just her character itself – charisma and sexiness and being funny and witty, and being impatient and being fatalist – that’s another thing that I bring from my own roots.”
Shaham has certainly come a long way for someone who had no intention of becoming an opera singer. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with classical music because I was born and raised in a house with a brother who is a violinist and a father who is a musician,” she explains.
“Classical music was playing 24/7 but, at a certain stage, I started taking voice lessons and I started to realise that singing classically is much more challenging to me than singing any other genre.
“The whole idea of acting, singing and dancing, fighting, you have so many things that are involved, so many elements that are involved in making an opera that I adore it.”
Shaham is performing in Carmen until February 19, when Milijana Nikolic takes over until the season ends on March 30.
Shaham will also perform in Carmen in a free concert at Mazda Opera in the Domain in Sydney on Saturday, January 29 at 8pm.
Enquiries: Carmen and Mazda Opera in the Domain, visit www.opera-australia.org.au
REPORT: GARETH NARUNSKY
Photo: Israeli soprano Rinat Shaham in Opera Australia’s Carmen. Photo: Branco Gaica
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