Stories that Must be Heard: Truth in the Cage and Limbo review | Melbourne Recital Centre

Presented by Nightingale Performing Arts Australia, Stories That Must Be Heard brings refugee stories to the forefront and gives a voice to those that are too often ignored. The musical double bill of works composed by Chloé Charody shifted seamlessly between emotional intensity and breathtaking physicality, producing performances that are compelling and sobering.

Truth in the Cage is a movingly intimate song cycle tracing Mohammad Ali Maleki’s seven years in detention on Manus Island. Charody uses his poems to create music that is raw, unflinching, and resilient. Through themes of loss, identity, and optimism, the songs provide a searing insight into life under confinement, conveying the anguish and the enduring human spirit of someone who survived years of unjust incarceration.

Il Mago di Oz review

It's been over 120 years since the release of L. Frank Braum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which a young girl called Dorothy Gale is swept away by a tornado and carried to the Land of Oz. While many would have read the 1900 story and many more would have seen the 1939 film, it is the first time that Italian composer Pierangelo Valtinoni’s opera, Il Mago di Oz, is being performed in Australia. Presented by the Victorian Opera, the opera mostly sticks to the source material but manages to throw in a few contemporary references to  surprise audiences.

Soprano Georgia Wilkinson as Dorothy possesses great presence and charisma as the determined and brave Dorothy and an even more captivating voice that takes us on a vocal journey that matches the magic of the physical one that Dorothy takes us on. James Emerson, Stephen Marsh and Michael Dimovksi deliver distinct characterisations to The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man and The Scarecrow, with their voices supporting each other but able to take the lead when required.