David Garrett, who wrote the Notes, began writing about music in the early 1970s, when he was changing his day job from teaching history in universities to music programming and management. Since then he has become one of Australia’s most read, respected and commissioned writers about music, for all the major Australian presenters. Most of the writing to be found here is linked to concerts and opera productions – the occasion brought forth the words. Here is a virtual library of program notes and introductions to operas.
This site is a work in progress, please visit often.
Featured
Eugene Onegin
- Details
- Opera
Simple lyricism, keynote of this opera, explains the success of Eugene Onegin, which is emotionally straightforward, and concerned with real, simple people, searching for family happiness, love, and social adjustment. This harmonised with an age wearying of grand historical drama, of ideological conflicts and unbelievable passions....
Turandot
- Details
- Opera
Puccini was well aware that Turandot was quite different from anything he had done before; he wanted to ‘try unbeaten paths’, and Turandot seems to have moved up the scale of popularity, for more substantial reasons than the sudden discovery by anyone who isn’t deaf of Calaf’s ‘Nessun dorma’...
Hansel and Gretel
- Details
- Opera
Hansel and Gretel was greatly successful not only because it was ‘both thoroughly good and thoroughly German’... but because Humperdinck treated the subject as one ‘not so much for children as for adults remembering their childhood’.
La traviata
- Details
- Opera
The critic Vincent Godefroy felt that Alexandre Dumas the Younger's play La Dame aux camélias and Verdi's La traviata, the opera based on it, were two totally different works: ‘the play was a slice of life; the opera was grand, bright, lofty, epic…' It was Proust who said that in La traviata Verdi had lifted La Dame aux camélias into the realm of art...
Can't find what you're looking for?
Notes from the garrett is an ongoing project. Writings are constantly being added, old ones and new ones.
If you are searching for something about a particular musical work or subject, and you don’t find it here, please ask if it exists, and can be made available.
The garrett (that’s me…) may even consider writing something new if the subject is of interest and time allows. A fee can be negotiated.
If what you find does not suit your needs – in length, for example – it may be adapted, by the author with his agreement. Again, terms are negotiable.