A Talent Celestial

A hedonistic groundhog day" is how director Justin Way describes Handel's 1735 opera Alcina, and a week from the opening of Way's new production for Opera Australia, Ariosto's epic tale of a sorceress who casts a succession of spellbound lovers into stone is undergoing its own seemingly endless repetitions on the Sydney Opera House stage. It is Act Three in a technical run-through, and as Alcina's enchanted isle crumbles around her, there are the usual technical tweakings of an opera that lives and dies on the strength of its illusion: the elaborate sets seem to have a mind of their own,...