Cantoris is one of a number of Wellington-based choirs whose activities serve to bring to local audiences a richly diverse range of the choral repertoire in committed and skilful performances. St. Peter’s Church on Willis St. provided a picturesque and elegant setting for this, the first Cantoris concert for 2009, featuring madrigals, sacred and secular, with one’s pleasure further enhanced by a beautifully-printed programme containing texts and commentaries about the music. Conducting Cantoris for the first time was Richard Apperley, Assistant Organist at Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, and previously of Lincoln Cathedral in the UK, where he also formed and...  Read More »

The first of the two staged productions from New Zealand Opera in 2009 made a hit of an opera that is not really in the top twenty, even in Italy. The Italian Girl has one of Rossini’s familiar, effervescent overtures, a couple of well-known arias and a lot of music that is infectious and witty, but a plot that is pretty thin. It was last seen in New Zealand in 1983 in a production by Mercury Theatre in Auckland, the successor to the short-lived National Opera of New Zealand. In the past 30 years, there has been a huge revival of...  Read More »