Harbour City Opera’s Mother’s Day concert used superb and passionately blended ingredients with which to bake us intensely flavoured delights. BECAUSE I SAID SO was a well-packaged and marketable concept. A crowd-pleaser with champagne, show bags and afternoon tea, it was also an impressive, endearing musical start to the company’s busy and interesting 2014 season.

Sixteen artists delivered arias, duets, a quartet and choruses from almost one and a half centuries of the operatic and art song repertoires. Outside of a staged opera the excerpts could have been in danger of emerging as a clumsy shopping list. This was not possible though in the hands of artistic director Sarah Ann Walker and well nuanced, evocative piano accompaniments from Bradley Gilchrist.

The members of Harbour City Opera ensured we were swiftly taken to the essence of each operatic moment. The visual and emotional tensions were rendered in detail. Effective entries and exits from the rear of the venue assisted in enabling new characters, styles and plots to successively own the stage. Characterisations and interactions were so genuine that even without sets, much costuming or surtitles we could easily have settled in for more of each opera’s tale.

Twenty-one items filled two halves of the concert. Several of opera’s smash hits were cleverly woven through the programme. Easily recognised were Mozart’s ‘Sull’aria’ and ‘La ci darem il mano’ and Verdi’s chorus ‘Va pensiero’ from “Nabucco”. The Puccini favourite ‘O mio babbini caro’ was included with an exquisite vocal and dramatic display by Julie Lea Goodwin. The quartet from ‘Rigoletto’ was sung with humour and rich character here.

Mention needs to be made of Daniel Macey’s rich communication of Korngold’s ‘Mein sehnen’ from “Die tote Stadt”. Matthew Reardon’s ‘E lucevan le stele’ was a thrilling moment of inimitable tenor expression from Tosca. Rosa Krel was impressive with her commanding interpretations of the art song “The Harvest of Sorrow” and Massenet’s ‘Va! Laisse couler mes larmes’.

The Harbour City Opera was consistently mesmerising in this concert. Its solo and ensemble success is quickly winning hearts as a newcomer in the contemporary Sydney opera and live performance scene. Its range of skilled voice types will inspire us in 2014 with no less than four diverse one-act operas and two more themed concerts. Like honorary mothers of this prodigious group, we were deliciously spoiled this 11th May, and will no doubt continue to be so.

For more about Harbour City Opera, visit http://www.harbourcityopera.com.au