APOCRYPHA WATCH: Vivaldi's Judith opera will be playing in Australia.

Heads will roll

Vivaldi's take on the gory biblical story of Judith and Holofernes is about to be revived by a small but ambitious opera company, writes Matthew Westwood | December 01, 2007 (The Australian)

REHEARSING an opera under a flight path may not be ideal, but aiming high in difficult circumstances is the aptly named Pinchgut Opera's way.

The company is in the second week of rehearsals for its production of Antonio Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha Triumphans. On the rehearsal floor, Sally-Anne Russell as Judith is beguiling her enemy Holofernes (David Walker) with sweet and tender music. Then another passenger jet flies overhead, shaking butnot completely shattering the tense and erotic mood.

The visiting Italian conductor Attilio Cremonesi rolls his eyes. "Sometimes it's a little bit too much," he says.

Pinchgut, a part-time Sydney company, has made a virtue of creative belt-tightening. The rehearsal space in the city's inner west is a disused clothing factory that has been made available by one of the chorus members: there are, incongruously, racks of men's ties in gold, blue and maroon on the floor. The atmosphere is one of intense concentration, however, as words and music are knitted into a dramatic whole.

Juditha Triumphans is the story from biblical times of the beautiful widow Judith, who charms the Assyrian enemy Holofernes so that she can decapitate him. The source of the legend is the Book of Judith, one of the apocrypha or deuterocanonical books that are part of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but omitted from Protestant versions.

The figure of the chaste and avenging woman inspired musicians and artists. The spectacular end to Holofernes was a scene that painters of the baroque period -- from Caravaggio to Artemisia Gentileschi, the best-known woman artist of the time -- would depict with grisly verisimilitude. Judith was the subject of more than 20 oratorios between 1621 and 1716, when Vivaldi's version was first performed in Venice.

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