Australian tenor Nicholas Jones, currently a principal artist at Paris Opera, is in Adelaide ahead of State Opera South Australia’s new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Speaking between rehearsals, Jones reflects on the timeless and perpetually relevant magic of Mozart’s final opera, composed in his native German at the peak of his creative powers. From the thrill and challenge of performing Tamino, a role notorious among tenors, to the anticipation of taking the stage at the beautifully renovated Her Majesty’s Theatre, Nicholas Jones shares insights into both the technical demands and appeal of bringing this enduring fantasy to life.
His journey from Melbourne barista to acclaimed opera performer, and the cultural contrasts experienced between Australia, France, and beyond, reveals a thoughtful artist dedicated to connecting audiences with the enduring power of musical storytelling. Read on to discover more about his perspectives on language, culture, and the joys and challenges of opera performance.
Nicholas Jones, you’re currently rehearsals at the moment?
Today is actually perfect timing because we are in that interesting moment in rehearsals where you’ve finished in the rehearsal studio, and usually there’s a bit of time when people who have important jobs of greater consequence than us, are apparently constructing stages and making sure everything is safe and all that. So, we had our Sitzprobe, or in France, we would call that the italienne. And I don’t know why they call it the Italian. That was last night at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Graniger Studio. And then tomorrow is our first day on stage at the beautifully renovated Her Maj.
For those that don’t know The Magic Flute, what would you tell them about it?
I would say that it is generally agreed to be Mozart’s best opera, and that might be a slightly controversial thing to say, but I do believe that to be true. I’m a big Mozart fan. Some people who aren’t are familiar with all his operas; they might have heard of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte. Those are his what are generally referred to his Da ponte operas. Despite not being Italian, he wrote them all in Italian because it was the done thing at the time. It was considered in Austria that the best operas were being written in Italian.
For The Magic Flute, which was towards the end of his life, he decided after having written essentially three operas, those three that I mentioned prior, that are all about status and class and things that, although compelling for us in 2025, they’re all about cultural norms of the late 18th century, which are fascinating, but as best as we can try to present them, they’re always going to feel a little bit dated or not reflective of our own life and times.
Whereas The Magic Flute conversely, was written in his own language. It was written when he was at the absolute height of his compositional powers, at the same time that he was writing his Requiem.
It’s a piece that is a fantasy. So, in a way it’s perpetually relevant. It makes me think of other pieces like Turandot, which will never go out of fashion because it’s about this magical, timeless place, at the same time as being one of the great works in musical history. It is also very malleable as a work of art, and it’s very accessible because it’s you don’t have to sort of know. that in that time a Count wouldn’t have done this to someone who is his manservant or whatever. All that stuff that is assumed knowledge for the Da Ponte operas.
I’d never really thought about the fact that he’d written them in a language that wasn’t his own. Is the Italian actually correct?
Italians would say that it is very accurate. And he was working with an Italian speaking librettist. There are also things like forms within the language that to a modern Italian ear sound are kind of odd and archaic. They had different ways that you would refer to people depending on formality and class and everything. There were extra versions of that back then. But Italians would say it’s very, very good, very expressive, very naturally set, the way the language fits on the music. But you wouldn’t say that it’s 100% idiomatic.
So in The Magic Flute, you star as Tamino. Tell us about that role.
As I was alluding to before this opera doesn’t have all of the cultural bells and whistles of affording someone a specific title . He’s referred to as a prince a few times, as Prince Tamino. It doesn’t necessarily mean much what hierarchy he is. So, in that sense, traditionally in the show, you’re introduced to him as a prince and he introduces himself as such. And all that, you know, from the beginning of the show is that he’s a prince of somewhere and that he’s found himself in an unknown land. He’s attacked by a monster, Schlange, which is like a serpent or a snake but he also refers to it interchangeably as being a monster. So, in some versions we just see that he’s been attacked by a monster.
In a great way, that’s as much as one needs to know about who he is. And as a performer you can, with the director, start to imagine where he’s come from, or in a certain way, depending on how he’s dressed, it might give you a sense of his origins, or you can just leave it up to the audience’s imagination. You refer to him as a prince, and that’s the sort of thing that if there are young kids in the audience, it certainly lends him a sense of status but you don’t really need to know where he’s a prince of.
I feel like this is a 250 year old opera so I don’t know if I can spoil it, but I feel it also lends something to his character in the sense that when he meets the Queen of the Night (who sings the famous aria that we’ve all heard on various talent shows sung by 12 year old sopranos), she tasks him with rescuing her daughter. And in that sense, in that fantastically princely sort of way, he takes up the task because he’s a sort of man of nobility and valour and all of that stuff. Whereas, his sidekick in the opera, Papageno is called a bird catcher. And in that sense, we think of him as being like a working man. So you have that contrast there both in terms of their status and also the way they behave, the way they talk. That sort of thing.
Are there any particular challenges in performing the role of Tamino?
It’s a bit of a kind of a notorious challenge for all tenors. I’m a tenor; it’s a tenor role. It’s like in a lot of a lot of endeavours: if you said to someone who’s a great artist how would you feel about the idea of drawing a perfect circle freehand? In a sense, it’s very simple. But the actual challenge is that it’s almost impossible to do it perfectly. And even if you’re very good, the very nature of the challenge can show you up, as it were. And that’s kind of Tamino.
Vocally it sits in what we would call the passagio, this point where you move up out of your speaking voice into a slightly more elevated register. Almost all singers would say, if someone asks “is it an easy role?” And then they might respond saying, “oh my God, for the whole role it’s just like I’m just singing in the middle, dead centre of my passagio, at that point, when you move from one register to another”. Tamino feels a lot like that. But at the same time, the way it’s written, it requires you to sing with elegance, with a steady hand. In that sense, you could talk to star tenors who are still performing in their 70s and they would agree. it’s a role you can do well. But almost nobody can absolutely nail it. So, it’s a perpetual challenge.
That must be somewhat frustrating.
Sort of. But I think it’s also like that’s a bit of a glimpse into the psyche of, I think most opera singers, much like ballet, and maybe some forms of traditional theatre like Shakespeare. There is this sense of searching for something you’re never going to find. Opera and ballet share a sense that predominantly they’re about form. There is an archetype of like a perfect balletic posture that we could imagine. And, in a similar kind of vocal way, you are sort of always aspiring for certain ideals, and you never really get there. I think if you don’t like doing that and you want to become an opera singer, you’re going to be very disappointed.
Basically, you have to accept that the perfection is not going to be all possible.
Yeah. I’ve worked with a performance psychologist, and one of the great things that she introduced me to is, I don’t know if it’s technically called this, win-learn journaling. So, you try to interrupt that technical. “Oh, that was crap. That didn’t go very well. Today was a bad day.” You tried to interrupt that instinct by saying to yourself: “Let’s reassess everything in terms of all my wins. “You know what? What are the great things I’m really proud of? And what did I learn?”
I know that there are sports people who do this same thing as the famous Australian female high jumper who will write in a journal after every jump. It’s really good for fostering a positive, productive sense that always kind of moves forward. So, it’s frustrating, but it’s also like you’ve always got to try to take something away from yesterday and apply it today. We are all going to have days when you roll out of bed and feel “hmmm, I don’t feel like singing today.”
What’s the highlight of performing in The Magic Flute for the State Opera of South Australia in Adelaide? Or is it difficult to say what the highlight is because you haven’t actually performed in front of us yet?!
Yeah, it’s hard to say. I think if I were to try to guess what the highlights will be. I’ve been working with State Opera of South Australia for a few years now. I think maybe about ten years. From memory, this is my fifth production in the company. Devout audience members might remember productions like, Cloud Street, which was, I think, about ten years ago now, which is crazy to think of. There were some other things, like, I was here for the G&S Fest in H.M.S. Pinafore a few years ago, and there was a one night only spectacular called Voss. It was in the middle of COVID. For me, they have all kind of been circling around the various tools in my toolkit that I like to use as an opera singer. Some of them would be acting challenges, and some of them allow you to flex a different muscle maybe. Voss had very complex music.
But I’m really excited about the idea of doing something that is, I think first and foremost about beautiful music. Primarily, you do Gilbert and Sullivan, and it’s almost like the charisma and the fun you have on stage is one of the most important things that the audience needs to be sort of drawn in by that.
This is a bit closer to being “a serious opera”. Not in the sense that it takes it so seriously. But, you know, it’s more traditional than things that I’ve done in the past for the company. And I’m looking forward to sharing that with audiences and also sharing the stage with obviously a really stacked cast. Pretty much top to bottom, all of the cast members are of incredibly high standard. Some of them will be known to audiences, people like Pelham Andrews or Jessica Dean or Mark Oates. I should not name everyone because then someone will be upset that I’ve forgotten them! People who might be familiar, like Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who is doing his first Sarastro, which is pretty cool. He sounds fantastic. Pamina who I perform beside : Sofia Troncoso is a fantastic singer of a very high standard. Then there’s a different kind of excitement of anticipating how audiences will respond to her performance as well.
You have performed in German before, but you haven’t done The Magic Flute in German. Does that mean that The Magic Flute has been done in other languages, and you’ve performed it in another language?
So, The Magic Flute is very commonly translated into the language of the places being performed. And, I was involved in a national tour of The Magic Flute, in a production that Opera Australia created with director and playwright, Michael Gow and his designer partner, Robert Kemp, and that was in English. To do it in English is exciting in a sense that a piece that is already so accessible, particularly because we were taking it to regional centres, often for audiences for whom it was their introduction to opera. That has its own kind of excitements to it. I think “accessibility” can be a bit of a dirty word because we’re dealing with something high art, Hohe Kunst as the Germans would say. Trying to change it into a form where it is impossible to not lose something in the translation.
So, I have done it in English, and there’s a version that I was going to be involved in for Opera Australia that was unfortunately one of the COVID cancellations. So, I learned that version, which was a different English version, but then I didn’t get to do that.
In the past, I’ve done a couple of snippets of the music in German. I really love singing in German. So, this is quite exciting to be doing the whole thing musically in German, and I think it just sounds it’s best in that language. It’s hard to argue with that. Even Robert Kemp, who I mentioned earlier, who did the translation for Opera Australia, as an excellent writer who was working with a German speaker in creating his translation, said, “you never win because the way that Mozart so carefully and beautifully sets the words onto the rhythms, onto the different notes.” So, you either translate it in such a way that you get all the information accurately, but then maybe that one word that just had a beautiful little flourish in the melody. Suddenly, flöte in German, becomes flu-ute and you’d sing it over two notes. It kind of sounds a bit daggy.
So, I’ve sung a lot in German. Some of my career highlights have been performing in German. But not The Magic Flute in its entirety. And I should say that we will be presenting the dialogue in English, which I think also historically comes with a little bit of baggage. I think everyone involved in the production agrees that it sounds strange in theory, but I don’t think the audience will bat an eyelid.
You were talking about accessibility earlier. Having the dialogue in English probably makes it easier, for example for children, to sit there and hear English for bits and hear German for others, and to only need to read titles for just the German bits.
Oh, absolutely. In the tradition of something that is shared with musical theatre and The Magic Flute is a singspiel. It’s an older, slightly kind of less formal form of opera where you do have a spoken dialogue which is broadly speaking, quite rare in traditional opera. That’s where a lot of the exposition happens in the spoken text. That’s where you sort of find out where people are from and what their objectives are and if they’ve got props or whatever. All the information that you need as an audience to navigate the story, a lot of that comes in the dialogue.
I had the privilege of being in a production of The Magic Flute at the Paris Opera at the Bastille last year, and they did all the dialogue in German. The audience had a got a great kick out of it. But with the dialogue, I mean there’s so much wordplay, there’s sometimes innuendo or something like that, it winds up going over people’s heads.
You said that you like singing in German. Which language do you find most challenging to sing in and why?
It’s an interesting question because everyone finds something challenging depending on what their first language or their native language is, and even what their accent is. Someone who has a strong Scottish accent may find French challenging in a way that someone from London doesn’t. And then, you’ve got multiple accents in London as well.
I was lucky that when I was at the Victorian College of the Arts, I was introduced sort of very early in my opera journey to what we might call the sort of core romance languages: Italian, German and French. Italian is “the simplest” in that it has fewer vowel sounds, fewer complex rules – like this changes when it’s after that, that sort of thing. But strangely, I find I think tonally German feels closer to an Australian English accent. And there’s a lot of sounds that other languages don’t have that we would be more familiar with. French, I studied when I was in high school, although ironically I dropped out, so I had familiarity with that. Tonally I enjoy singing the French language. It’s very musical.
I have sung in some other languages like Russian, Polish, Czech. And on paper, they’re a bigger initial challenge because you’re just dealing with sounds that are so unfamiliar that someone couldn’t even say to you, “oh, if you’re looking for an example of how to pronounce this sound, it’s the same as this in this English word.” You start encountering those sorts of things. But strangely for me, I find the intellectual challenge of those are incredibly rewarding. And in my experience, I’ve had more native speakers who are Russian or Czech say to me that they find listening to me singing in their language to be approaching the level of a native speaker.
Whereas strangely, I think to sing in a perfectly idiomatic, authentic way in Italian is incredibly hard because it’s comes down to rhythm and energy and tone in such a specific way that a local speaker can hear you as a foreigner from a mile off. I think that it’s often a thing that’s said to English speakers in particular, who try to improve their Italian singing that people who are teaching them coaches, conductors, you know, language specialists, whatever they wind up saying in the end, “you’ve just got to go live there.” Maybe your Italians at 80%, and they’re saying if you really want to get it over the line, you’ve just got to go to Italy and talk in Italian every day, and then it’s ringing in your ears and you sort of start to understand the nuance, a bit better. Sorry, that was a very long-winded way to answer what was probably quite a simple question.
Not at all. Perhaps more of a complicated question than I had anticipated. It’s really interesting.
You could simplify it by saying I like French and German. Eastern European languages are actually fun. Italian is deceptively hard to nail.
Nice summary, thanks! Before your opera career, you spent a decade as a barista. What made you decide to get into opera?
I should start by saying it wasn’t as though I quit being a barista and then became an opera singer. I think it’s much closer to the cliche of a semi-employed artist who supplements their income. You meet someone and tell them you’re an opera singer and they say “oh, but how do you earn your money?” It’s the experience of a lot of singers. I always had an interest in coffee. And I think part of that is because if there’s something that being an opera singer and being a barista share, in a broad sense, it’s hospitality because you have this thing that involves a lot of care and preparation and sometimes an intricate technique, that is all done in the service of preparing something to give to someone in the hope that they’ll enjoy it, and in particular, in the hope that they will appreciate the quality of what you’ve given to them. That’s what initially attracted me to being a barista.
And then I had a small window where I was hell bent, at the end of my studies at the College of the Arts, on studying in London. And it just so happened that that was on the tail end of the global financial crisis. So perhaps it was not the best time for an Aussie to go over to London and start over, and say could you also give me a £60,000 scholarship even though I don’t live here.
And when I visited, I was looking for the best coffee in the area. And I was also starting to wonder, “oh my God, it’s so expensive. How am I going to make a life here?” And I was already at that time at college, and also had begun performing in the chorus for Opera Australia. So, incidentally, the journey had already begun.
And one of the staff at the cafe said, oh, but if you make coffee in Melbourne then we’ll just give you a job. At that point I thought, “oh I should really work on this. I should get really good.” Oddly, at that time, being a good barista was a job that could take you anywhere around Europe.
But in terms of getting into opera, which kind of happened in tandem, my initial dream was to be a musical theatre star. And at that time, there was there was no musical theatre degree in Melbourne, really. The only places, if you were serious about singing “properly”, you’d either go to the Conservatorium and I had no musical theory background other than playing an instrument, or you could go to the College of the Arts where you could do a performance degree. And I successfully auditioned, and caught the opera bug by virtue of luckily being offered the opportunity to audition for The Pirates of Penzance in my first year of study.
And for me, catching the opera bug was being around opera voices, and kind of losing the whole stigma of what that was about, and realising “Holy moly! Hearing people use their voices in this way is inherently thrilling”. And then beginning to discover that there was a whole world of music that in my childhood, I’ve had no introduction to. So, I guess I kind of snuck in the back door in that sense.
Did you enjoy singing as a child? You mentioned you had played a musical instrument. What instrument was that?
I played clarinet because my Mum had a clarinet because she had played when she was younger. I wouldn’t say that we were an incredibly musical family, but there was a lot of love of music and, singing in general, even if it was just Billy Joel or Simon and Garfunkel or something in the car, that was very normal. I was a very loud kid. I was the youngest of three, so you’ve got to be loud if you’re going to stand out. And it’s kind of funny how often you hear that story from professional opera singers. Everyone says, “oh, it’s strange. I was a very loud child.”
I think that was a big part of it being offered an environment where if I wanted to sing in a choir or anything like that at school, that was an opportunity that was available to me. And then I think partly because I was quite sporty and all the friends that I made, who were incidentally in my various social or sporting groups when I was in high school, were doing this full stage musical. I eventually decided well, either they’re all going to be busy hanging out without you or you get involved in this musical thing.
So, you really did almost fall into it, didn’t you?!
I had no intention whatsoever of doing stage performance when I was in high school. I was ensconced in the sporting thing. But serendipity led me there through various forces and then I caught the bug. I think that just as for me being sporty and being active and using my body was a great outlet for me as a teenager, I think also being able to be in an environment where, doing stage performance and rehearsals and things like that, you can use your voice, you can be loud, you can also make mistakes, and you get to do things that are a bit scary, but it’s in a safe environment. I think it’s a common story that a lot of young people get to have that experience and then go, oh, there’s something that’s very sort of valuable about this.
And now you’re based in Paris? In your third year as a principal artist with the Paris Opera. How did you come to be working with for the Paris Opera?
So, I’m about to commence my third year. It’s one of the strange things about the industry in Europe is almost all of the houses have a performance calendar that is basically our Australian financial year calendar. The French they take the whole Summer off to relax.
Yes, you can’t work then!
You couldn’t possibly. I should say I don’t mean that mockingly. I love how important resting and relaxation is.
Yes, it’s part of the culture.
Absolutely. So, I’m about to commence my third year. How it started was, again, very much by chance. My wife and I decided at the beginning of 2022 that we were either going to move to Europe or buy a dog, which are two things that, if you’re familiar with Australian customs and immigration – dogs and entering Australia don’t go hand in hand. So, we thought, what are we going to do? One of those things. We’d always seen some sort of overseas move as being in our future. And I think COVID taught us that sometimes you do just have to grab life by the horns or whatever, sort of.
Especially because you were living in Melbourne during COVID, right?
So, I was born in Melbourne, but we had both moved to Sydney and for my wife that was via Canberra because she worked in the public service. That, we might say, traumatic, but also just straight up challenging experience of going into a period in for 2020 and 2021 where I had all of these exciting things that I was really thrilled to have coming up, and then realising that that contract you signed for whatever gig ten months from now, can just disappear. We thought if we’re going to do it, we need to just do it.
My wife had studied French in high school, and she’d done an exchange and then another exchange when she was at university, she majored in French and spent a semester studying in France. And she’s a big Francophile. And so, it was just the obvious choice. And so early 2022, we decided it’s going to be France and it’s going to be pretty much bang on a year from that point. And that was purely because that’s when lease was up in at our house in Sydney. And then, purely by chance, during the course of 2022, I had a friend whose partner was in the young artist program at the Paris Opera – they call it l’Académie who said they’re going to be starting an ensemble. That is very common in Germany and Austria and other parts of Europe.
But what the French called La Troupe had historically existed at the Paris Opera, but not for many decades. And they had announced that they were going to open applications globally for anyone who was interested in applying, and then fingers crossed, auditioning at the opera. I thought why the hell not? And you had to submit, you know, a whole dossier of stuff: the headshots, letters of recommendation, list of roles, your CV, video recordings. And I will admit that much like submitting a B-minus assignment right before the deadline, I put off redoing my recordings and then I went “ah, whatever. Hit submit”. I was lucky enough to be asked albeit at phenomenally short notice to go audition in Paris.
The surreal component was having already decided to literally move there, and at that point, we were September 2022 so, really only about five months from when we were planning to move. The longest amount of time I’d ever spent in France at all was 36 hours. So, my wife said, well, this is really exciting because you’ll get to look around and see what it’s like.
And did you?
Oh I did. I received some excellent advice from my agent. He said, arrive with enough time to completely recover from your jetlag before you sing a note. He said, “don’t arrive just in time” because all those things like your brain thinking that it’s four in the morning but it’s actually afternoon and you’re dehydrated and all that is not ideal for optimal singing.
No, of course not.
So, I sort of forced myself to spend 5 or 6 days wandering around going to Musée d’Orsay and eating probably too many croissants.
Tough life! Someone has to do it, right?
The suffering, the suffering!
What does daily life look like for you at the Paris Opera compared to other companies you’ve worked for.
The life at that company, and I don’t know whether it’s inherently something to do with the French National Opera, or if it’s just that there’s something specifically different to Australian operating culture, if such a thing exists, I think it reflects, broadly speaking, the French culture in the sense that people exercise a lot more personal autonomy and there’s a lot less hand-holding. People who work in administration at the opera company in Paris sort of joke that they realised that if someone from Australia or England or America sends them an email, that as opposed to what they would normally do, they have to send a sort of a placeholder email that says, “thank you. I’ve received your email and I’ll be following up on that.” That level of interaction and, hands on time and just kind of being seen is something that we take for granted as being part of our culture.
You have your rehearsal schedule in Paris, and you get used to the fact that they could rehearse any day of the week. It’s not unheard of to rehearse even on a Sunday evening. Basically, at those times you’re expected to be there. And if you turn up late, no one’s going to phone you saying, “ooh, you forgot to sign on. I’m just checking that you’re already in the building because the rehearsal starts in 30 minutes.” That level of hand-holding doesn’t exist. And so, in a sense, there’s a level of respect for the autonomy of the artist, and that you will just do what’s best for you. So, on the day of a rehearsal or a performance, I’ll get up, go grab myself a baguette, maybe a bit of milk. I’ll, of course, make my own coffee at home first thing in the morning.
Then it could be a trip to the gym or a bit of yoga and fuel myself for the day. Then if a coaching with a pianist that might be on the cards. Other than that, I just like to get to the theatre early and settle in. I would say that there is, maybe it’s just me, but there is a heightened level of pressure working in a house like that.
I can imagine.
Knowing that the average audience member is much more likely to come in with a lot of experience and with maybe higher expectations. You certainly feel that with the French public, particularly if you sing for them in French, when you deliver something to a high standard, that also the level of appreciation is reflective of that. I’ve witnessed some of the most phenomenal ovations – it’s quite arresting – that would be, I would say rarities on an Australian stage. But they can also be unforgiving so you’ve got to make sure you’re on form.
Have you encountered any other interesting cultural differences in the way that opera has performed or received in your travels around the world.
This is going to sound like a strange one, but my mind immediately goes to how people show appreciation. I can often be surprised when people are waiting at the stage door for autographs. For many people to use the example of France and the Paris Opera, because people are so proud of the institution of the Opéra Nationale de Paris, they also like to keep their eyes on who the hot young singers are – I say hot in the sense of the talent [laughs]. And they’re interested to talk, and there are autograph collectors.
But even in the theatre, in the way that people show their appreciation, there’s a fascinating phenomenon where French audiences in particular, if they’re really having a good time during the ovation, they will stop clapping randomly and all start clapping in unison like clap clap clap clap clap all together, which is bizarre to me.
That must be so strange the first time you encounter it.
In particular, because if you’re waiting in the wings about to go on to bow and if you’re doing a small role, you get used to the idea that sometimes you will hear a small swell of applause that reflects a particular appreciation for your work. Or also you prepare yourself for the potential to walk out and hear zero difference registered in a level of applause. You kind of go. “Yep, okay. Alright”.
There’s a strange contradiction in a sense that the French will start clapping in unison when they really enjoy something. But actually, when people clap like that, there is no difference registered. So, you can’t even tell that that guy over there did they like it? Who knows.
To use it, another random example, I’ve noticed when I go to London to Covent Garden, that people don’t react well, if you woo or even yell Bravo! That comes across as a little bit stuck up to me. Like, come on, guys, just enjoy yourself. If you hear a great aria or even during the bows, if you woo or yell out of Bravo, someone might turn over their shoulder and look at you in shock and surprise.
So, you’re going into your third year with Paris Opera, and you will make your Palais Garnier debut in November. But you normally perform out of Opera Bastille?
That’s actually been increasingly the norm in Paris. I would admit that I’m not exactly sure why this is, but certainly, given that all of my performances so far have been at the Bastille. That theatre in particular has a phenomenal infrastructure for presenting operas in repertory. The facilities and the sheer amount of space backstage that allows them to move these gigantic sets even in the middle of a show within the space of 30 seconds. They can move an entire set off to one side and bring another one on from the opposite side, and then can move it back into a dedicated rehearsal space that will be sort of acoustically cushioned. So, if you wanted to rehearse a cast change you can do it on the set during a day when a different opera will be performed on the stage.
Comparatively you know the, the Garnier is beautiful. It’s positively ancient but it doesn’t have the infrastructure. And I imagine that a lot of the much more modern operas, particularly those that are performed and shared with other major opera houses around Europe perhaps by necessity need to be performed at the Bastille. Also, I think there are a lot of people who are interested in going to the Garnier, appreciate perhaps seeing the ballet there more so than someone might at the Bastille.
Because it is traditionally known for its ballet isn’t it?
Yes, and I think that the company has also led towards presenting Baroque opera at the Garnier as well. And that’s perhaps because baroque opera doesn’t always demand a gigantic, complicated sets. Or perhaps culturally it seems to fit better there.
When you’re in Paris, is that anything in particular you miss from Australia?
I miss the birdsong, particularly hearing magpies and rosellas and kookaburras. Even though they might sound like some sort of strange screeching dinosaur to unfamiliar ears, it’s honestly the sort of thing that you take for granted until it’s not there. I think also there’s a certain quality of the light in Australia that, I absolutely love. The same could be said in a different way for Paris. Standing on a bridge, looking out over the Seine at sunset and you know, marvelling in the beautiful pastel colours, one’s reminded of why famous painters used to paint the damn things.
Something that is so enjoyable that Australia is how beautiful the light is. Even in the winter. We’ve had some stunning sunny afternoons and beautiful sunsets in Adelaide over the last couple of weeks. My apologies to everyone in Sydney, that is enduring one of the wettest Augusts in decades.
I think the other thing that I miss about Australia is that people are chatty in the best way. It’s quite a shock after having been away for 6 to 8 months to come back and you get off the plane and, and the barista asks you “how are you doing”. And that level of chattiness (I should say my wife calls me a Chatty Cathy!). I do love that she and I have been able to build up familiarity with people in our neighbourhood in Paris. It’s nice to sort of walk to your local butcher or your boulangerie, those sorts of things and have a little bit of a chat with the person there. But I can’t say it is the same thing.
No, it’s culturally quite different. Coming back to The Magic Flute, has your perspective on The Magic Flute changed as you’ve matured, or as you’ve sung it for other operas or in different places?
When I was younger my first introduction to performing The Magic Flute, whether it’s little snippets when I was at university or having been involved in different stage performances, I was more perhaps frustrated is the wrong word, but I wanted more from the story in terms of exposition and, answers to various questions. And part of that speaks to, as we were discussing earlier, that The Magic Flute, unlike some other Mozart operas, is more magical, it’s more fantastical, it’s more mystically inclined. You are thrown into a place where you’re not given a lot of explanation for what’s going on. There are two priests who enter. And what are they priests of? Is it a church? Who knows? The kingdom of Sarastro. Where is it? Is it a literal kingdom, or do they mean kingdom in the sense of being a broader land or something? It’s one of those operas that I think, particularly if you’re an inquisitive young upstart who is trying to perform it, and you’re looking for answers of what’s my backstory? “Who is he the prince of? What country does he come from?” and all that business, when I was younger, I think I found that frustrating, because I felt like I had to fill in the gaps.
And now I think I find it more beguiling. I find it more charming, and perhaps more freeing that you don’t need perhaps to go into such a level of detail. And I know that I’m normally the sort of performer who loves to deep dive into character and that sort of thing, find the physicality and think about where I’ve gone between scenes. But because The Magic Flute is such a charmingly direct piece, as Tamino who SPOILER ALERT falls in love with Pamina when he’s on stage and she walks in, finally allowed to see him and be alone with him but he’s been told that on pain of death, he cannot speak to her or anyone else, all that you need to know in that moment is that you’re going to have to break this person’s heart. For something like that, it doesn’t matter exactly what journey you had between the last scene and this one: it’s more about big emotions.
What do you hope audiences in Adelaide who might be experiencing opera this opera for the first time will take away from the production?
I hope that they will primarily just enjoy the music because, maybe I’ll upset my director by saying this, but I think that a work like The Magic Flute has the potential to be so satisfying musically for the audience. And State Opera of South Australia has assembled a truly fantastic standard of cast that is a rarity for people to be able to hear it. And the score is full of so much interest and charm and so many enjoyable musical moments that I think people who know the work well, and people who are hearing it for the first time, will hopefully equally find as much a level of enjoyment in the music.
And I think also that that will support what will be a new staging, which is another thing that is so rare to see in Australia, to see a new staging created and presented for a work that is well known. Sometimes, we get used to the same staging many times over. Audiences can trust that we as performers are revelling in the enjoyment and the challenge of presenting something that’s entirely new.
—
We thank Nicholas Jones for this interview and look forward to seeing him perform in The Magic Flute this week.
—
KEY INFO FOR THE MAGIC FLUTE
WHAT: Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a collaboration between State Opera South Australia, Opera Hong Kong and the Beijing Music Festival.
WHERE: Her Majesty’s Theatre, 58 Grote St, Adelaide SA 5000
WHEN: 4 performances only:
- Thursday 28 August, 2025, 7:30PM
- Saturday 30 August, 2025, 7:30PM
- Thursday 4 September, 2025, 7:30PM
- Saturday 6 September, 2025, 2:00PM
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices are as follows:
- Premium: $189
- A Reserve: Adult $149, Concession $134
- B Reserve: Adult $119, Concession $107
- C Reserve: Adult $79, Concession $71
- Under 30: $35
HOW: Purchase your tickets here
—
You may also like to read our interview with State Opera South Australia Executive Director Mark Taylor and our interview with Artistic Director and conductor, Dane Lam.
