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Teddy Tahu Rhodes.
 For their third Bundaleer Festival, to be held this weekend, the people of Jamestown - the nearest town to SA's Bundaleer State Forest - have gathered an impressive lineup of artists including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Australian String Quartet and two very fine vocalists - local soprano Kirsti Harms and the acclaimed baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes. The concert featuring the singers and the ASO should easily prove to be the highlight of the weekend.
Talking recently to Rhodes - from Sydney where he has been involved in Opera Australia productions of 'Carmen' and Prokofiev's more obscure 'The Love Of Three Oranges', the baritone admits that he hadn't heard of the event prior to being contacted with the opportunity to perform. In fact Teddy has been seen much more in Australia's concert halls and theatres, citing only one prior outdoor performance of this type - at a winery outside Canberra.
"We used to do them in New Zealand a bit. In fact I used to do them in my earlier days of singing. The outdoor concert was quite a phenomenon at that time [in the mid 'nineties] so I'd done a few of them. It's been a while since I've done one in Australia actually - the one near Canberra and I think that's about it, but I love doing them," he enthused.
"The whole idea of a festival like this is a great way of introducing a wider audience to opera and indeed classical music. Audiences are often attracted by location and the atmosphere that is created, like with the outdoor 'Tosca' that we've done up here in Sydney, and the whole occasion of taking a picnic basket and sitting under the stars is unique. That context is a really great way of taking it further afield.
"What makes Bandaleer so special is that it's the local community who are behind it and who are presenting it to the wider community. It's of real interest."
Teddy agrees that it is often very difficult in terms of repertoire at such events - taking an aria out of an opera and taking on the role for that brief excerpt.
"That is always a problem. A personal thing. It can be a bit tricky to do because the operatic aria is written to be done within the concept of the form as a whole entertainment. And that's what the original idea for the concert was going to be.
"But having said that, the programme that Kirsti, the orchestra and myself have chosen is a bit of a mixture - a few arias (Puccini and Mozart), folksong arrangements (New Zealand and Britten) as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein.
"And then there's stuff that the ASO will be playing by themselves. It's not going to be just a whole bunch of arias. In fact I'm probably only going to be singing three solos including the toreador, Escamillo's famous aria from 'Carmen'.
"Kirsti and I will be doing some Puccini which is probably the easiest to sing out of context," he laughs.
When I express surprise at a baritone doing Puccini (surely didn't the sopranos and tenors get all the good tunes?) he offers, "The piece [he's] chosen to perform (Frank's aria) is from 'Edgar' - one of Puccini's early works that isn't often performed. It's one of the very few arias for baritone that he wrote in actual fact. So this one is one I haven't performed before."
And upon expressing a more personal preference for Germanic repertoire, I'm told that the concert will feature an excerpt from Mozart's delightful 'Magic Flute' and one of Wagner's 'Tannhauser' arias ("so hopefully that should coincide with dusk!"). It should be a rather wonderful experience sharing the forest canopy with the fading light as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra show their flair performing with Rhodes.
The fact that the festival will be held in a forest will also make the site a most appropriate setting for a planned performance of the 'Flute's duet between the bird catcher Papageno and the heroine of the piece, Pamina. Rhodes also adds that he flies straight out of SA to rehearsals with the Welsh National Opera in this very role.
Upon mentioning my preference for baritones, I made mention that the famed German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who although famously recorded this role several times throughout his long career, refused to play it on stage as he felt that he was too tall at 6'4''.
"Actually I saw Fischer-Dieskau in concert two or three times and think that he is one of the truly great artists, but me and Papageno? They offered it to me so I think I'm the sort of person that they want for the role. Hopefully I'll be able to make something of it so he turns out to be the humourous character he's supposed to be."
At this I backtracked slightly by suggesting that ultimately it's what's there in the text and music that is most important.
"That's the way I look at it. Opera companies make pretty specific choices as to whom they want to cast in their productions. They look at all sorts of things these days. I'm sure they know I'm 6'5"."
Brett Allen-Bayes
 | The Bundaleer Weekend is on Sat 12 and Sun 13 March in the state forest, between Clare and Jamestown. |
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