Italian Opera Dinner featuring Joanna McWaters & Andrew Turner

About Italian Opera Dinner featuring Joanna McWaters & Andrew Turner

ONLINE TICKETING TO THIS EVENT HAS NOW CLOSED. For more info please contact the event organiser.

Two of Adelaide’s most accomplished operatic performers deliver an evening of fine, popular opera at the Mount Compass War Memorial Hall. Experience the excitement and grandeur of live opera performed by State Opera of South Australia principal singers Joanna McWaters and Andrew Turner, accompanied by their pianist. What could be better than the best of Italian opera, performed live while enjoying three courses of authentic, delicious cuisine? Experience a night of opera served between courses of fine Italian food, which will have you believing you are dining in an authentic Venetian restaurant. Like the fare, Opera Made to Order will be first class!

Joanna McWaters’ first starring role in a major opera was as Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly at Festival Theatre.  That show contained some of the most beautiful music written for the stage and a story that covered all the emotions from joy to tragedy. Joanna McWaters is not just brilliant vocally be also an exceptional actress.  She is familiar to local audiences for her supporting roles and ensemble work with State Opera and a favourite of South Australia’s long-standing touring opera company, Co-Opera.

For State Opera she has sung Nedda in I Pagliacci, Cupid in Orpheus in the Underworld and Rose in the Australian premiere of At the Statue of Venus, American composer Jake Heggie’s opera for soprano and piano.

Concerts include Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart’s Requiem and Handel’s Messiah. But Madama Butterfly is considered by McWaters as being the biggest role in her 20+ years on the professional circuit.  As a young person she attracted attention in the mid-1990s when she was appointed understudy to the role of Madame Giry in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.

Meanwhile, she’d been spotted at the Conservatorium by a visiting professor, Helen Chen Lee, who invited her to Taiwan on a nine-month study tour. With her McWaters travelled to Germany to audition for Luxembourg Conservatorium.  McWaters’ partner from Adelaide, Andrew Turner, met her there and both secured a place. To top off the experience, McWaters finished with a perfect score in operatic performance.

McWaters’  voice type combines the qualities of a coloratura soprano, or someone adept at singing upper-register, high-velocity passages, with the staying power of a dramatic soprano. Dramatic coloraturas are quite rare. Famous examples include American-born Greek Maria Callas and Australia’s Dame Joan Sutherland.

Above lists but just a few credits that Joanna McWaters has to her name and the list keeps growing.

Adelaide baritone, Andrew Turner, studied singing at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide and at the Luxembourg Conservatoire. He has performed operatic roles in Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, Finland and Singapore. He regularly sings with the State Opera of SA, performing roles in several operas, and singing in the chorus. He has toured extensively with Co-Opera, performing throughout Australia. He has also performed roles for Opera Australia, Windmill and the Adelaide Art Orchestra. He is frequently engaged as a soloist for oratorios by several of Adelaide’s choirs and regularly performs in concerts. His performances include the role of Kallenbach in Satyagraha with The Adelaide Vocal Project and Leigh Warren and Dancers, bass soloist for the Mozart Requiem and Rossini Stabat Mater with the Adelaide Harmony Choir and the role of Dashwood in Little Women for the State Opera of SA.

McWaters and Turner met through Adelaide University Choral Society. Now married, they live in Adelaide and have three young children. Turner also sings with State Opera and appeared in Madama Butterfly as Prince Yakuside.

What to expect on the night!

The show is tailored to suit the occasion – a cool autumn evening over dinner with fine Italian cuisine in ambient surrounds.  Elegant music for an elegant event.  The best of the well-known and popular operatic songs for newcomers as well as seasoned opera-goers.  First class and fun!