Breaking The Waves in the Press

Adelaide Review

“…thank goodness for Tom Morris's new direction of Missy Mazzoli's (composer) and Royce Vavrek's (librettist) 2016 opera Breaking the Waves. And, thank goodness for Adelaide Festival's Neil Arrnfield and Rachel Healy for their vision to collaborate with Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, Houston Grand Opera and Theatre National de l'Opera Cornique in bringing this production to Australia.

This production is a gift of casting and ensemble singing. As Bess, Arnerican soprano Sydney Mancasola is a revelation. Her performance is a heart wrenching, musico-theatrical tour de force. The vocal accolades extend co Duncan Rock's nuanced muscularity as Jan Nyman, Wallis Giunta's steadfast and ernpathic portrayal of Dodo, Orla Boylan presiding warmth as the mother, and Elgan Llyr Thomas's incisive tenor.

The design team's virtue is their collaboration. Soutra Gilmour's single structure set suggesting the imposing pillars of institutions depends on Wiii Duke's Projection designs and Richard Howell's lighting.”

Limelight

“Sydney Mancasola, who plays Bess, is a wonderful, wonderful actress who is able to hold the stage even when she’s not singing. Her track in the opera is very hard emotionally, partly because the staging required her to see and sense everything that is written in the score.

Obviously, I can’t promise an evening of delighted laughter, nor can I promise a sort of Sound of Music style emotional release - the opera is just not in that territory. But the score is full of energy, and hope, and light in opposition to suffering, and there’s a clarity in the musical characterisation of this woman that comes from the strange and inspiring gifts of a very unusual composer indeed.”

The Monthly

“When Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based librettist Royce Vavrek suggested to fellow Brooklyn-based American composer Missy Mazzoli that they turn Breaking The Waves into an opera, Mazzoli was reluctant. What more could they add, she asked. But she re-watched the film, noting that, apart from burst of rock numbers interspersed between chapters, the movie had no soundtrack. Music could become the subtext of the characters on stage…”

Adelaide Advertiser

“New wave opera brings classic film drama to stage. In Bess, the central character from Lars von Trier’s acclaimed but controversial 1996 film Breaking The Waves, Brooklyn composer Missy Mazzoli saw a lot of herself: Making waves and breaking with convention.

At the centre of each of Mazzoli’s three operas to date is a strong female protagonist who empowers herself against the odds in confronting, oppressive environments - echoes of the challenges she has faced to make her own music heard in a male-dominated field.”

The Weekend Australian: Review

“Missy Mazzoli typically draws her inspiration from emotional landscapes. But not this time.

…Mazzoli’s music is refined yet edgy, exciting yet highly abstract. She came to the music for Breaking The Waves in an entirely new way for her. She and Vavrek hired a car and toured around Scotland’s Isle of Skye, where the opera takes place.

…Her response was not transcendence but concrete evocations of what she’d seen.”

InDaily

“Festival opera casts fresh light on Breaking The Waves.”

“…From the beginning, we set out to make something that was very, very different to the film and I think we’ve done that. By the time I thought of it that way, I was really intrigued by the project.” ~Missy Mazzoli

Adelaide Festival Podcast

Listen to the podcast episode with Stuart Stratford and Sydney Mancasola here.