Opera Australia and Sydney Festival

Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

January 22, 2014

Rossini’s East-meets-West comedy of manners (or more correctly his commedia del arte of manners) The Turk in Italy (Il Turco in Italia) hails from 1814, the year after the highly successful Italian Girl in Algiers, to which it is in some respects a sequel. I confess to having rated it, in the past, behind its predecessor in terms of sheer musical invention and it does pale beside the comic, dramatic and musical genius of The Barber of Seville, still two years down the track. But, as Opera Australia prove in their smart new production, it has bags of wit and in the hands of an outstanding director, designers and some stellar turns it can charm the pants off anyone with a funny bone worth the tickling.

Simon Phillips is the director in question and, on this showing, Australia’s finest when it comes to buffoonery and sheer comic chutzpah. He fills every waking second of this fizzing production with ‘business’ but his business is not just busy, it’s lovingly crafted, given space to breathe, and packed with the kind of slow-burn gags which can take an entire musical number to...