REVIEWS
LIMELIGHT
La rondine
(Victorian Opera)
With a talented leading couple and handsome contemporary design, Stuart Maunder’s new production makes for a welcome discovery or revisit.
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​Emerging artists Douglas Kelly and Nina Korbe (who recently played Maria in Opera Australia’s West Side Story) are appealing as unlikely couple Prunier and Lisette. By turns suave and romantically uncertain, Kelly has a smooth tenor. Displaying a confident soprano, Korbe is pert and flirty.
AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW
La Rondine
Just as in La Bohème, another romance plays out in contrast. Like adding salt to the wound, love seems to come so much easier for Lisette (Nina Korbe) and Prunier (Douglas Kelly). They, like Magda and Ruggero, belong to different classes – she a servant in Magda’s household, he a poet and aesthete.
Korbe is delightfully coquettish and takes exuberant control in lush form as a Lisette of simple ambitions.
THE AGE
La Rondine
In the supporting roles of Prunier and Lisette, Queenslanders Douglas Kelly and Nina Korbe are perfect. They actually have chemistry! Kelly is charming – a natural actor – and possesses excellent evenness in range and tone. He is a young tenor to watch. Korbe is stunning, her soprano glorious at the top and her characterisation delightful.
From 'Somewhere' to Sydney Opera House with Nina Korbe
Victorian Opera's highly anticipated production of La Rondine (The Swallow), is a poignant, wistful, and romantic masterpiece from the brilliant Giacomo Puccini.
This production brings to the stage the first Melbourne performances of this rarely presented masterpiece, and Alice Zaslavsky spoke with award-winning First Nations soprano Nina Korbe who is playing the role of Lisette.
Nina spoke to the challenges of carving out an opera career while carving up jobs in butcher shops, and the influence her singing mother had on her career and skills.