Saucy dance rhythms and film-noire scores meet black comedy cabaret in Lyric Opera’s revival of Australian composer Malcolm Williamson’s work, Our Man in Havana, last performed over 50 years ago and before his spectacular fall from grace.
Director Suzanne Chaundy said the performance would provide Fringe Festival audiences with an amazing, immersive musical experience set in a seedy Cuban nightclub, complete with bar and showgirls from September 17-24.
“You may have read the book and seen the movie, but we can promise you’ll experience the story in a whole new dimension with this immersive opera cabaret experience in the spirit of the Buena Vista Social Club,” she said.
Williamson’s Our Man of Havana premiered in 1963 to an enthusiastic reception and was part of a body of work which led to his being appointed as the Queen’s official composer in 1975. However, his fortunes later nosedived after he failed to produce a symphony for the Queen’s Jubilee, left his wife and children for a male partner and turned up at official occasions wearing gay pride badges pinned to his kaftans.
The production will be staged at the Athenaeum 2, and will deliver Lyric Opera’s trademark accessibility and contemporary twist.
Set in Cuba during the era that saw both the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, ‘our man’ Bramble is an unlikely recruit to the British Secret Service with his struggling vacuum cleaner sales and a daughter who loves to spend.
Artistic Director and Conductor Pat Miller said the music reflects Williamson’s ‘well lived’ life: “All the situations, all the sentiments and experiences I’m sure were ones that he had encountered in his life; rapturous joys to sinister darkness. Williamson is arguably one of Australia’s most successful composers, and yet he is also among the most forgotten. His flamboyant personality shows in the brilliance of the music, which is never pastiche but has integrity because it came from him.”
Our Man in Havana has an outstanding cast including seasoned baritone Michael Leighton Jones, who worked with Williamson himself in the mid-1970s. Joining him is tenor Martin Thomas Buckingham (who solved the ‘Cuban Tenor Crisis’ for Lyric by stepping in to replace Jason Wasley who withdrew for personal reasons) and sopranos Elizabeth Stannard and Kate Amos.
It will be performed Saturday 17, Tuesday 20, Thursday 22 and Saturday 24 September at 7.30pm, at Athenaeum 2 (The Comedy Club), 188 Collins Street, Melbourne.
Tickets range from $40-$70 and can be purchased through Ticketek, or through the Melbourne Fringe Festival at 03 9660 9666 or melbournefringe.com.au.
See lyricopera.com.au for more details.
