Jessica O’Donoghue and Jack Symonds | ‘Undead’ album launch
November 7, 2025, The Church, Alexandria, NSW
Opera isn’t dead. It isn’t even sleeping. It’s right in front of us in tiger-striped elbow length gloves, thigh-high silver stiletto boots, a plunging neckline and a voice that could summon gods (or ghosts) depending on the need I guess.
This was Undead: the live launch of Jessica O’Donoghue and Jack Symonds’ new album of contemporary operatic arias, presented at The Church in Alexandria, a modern architecturally transformed inner-city sanctuary under Judith Neilson’s Phoenix umbrella. A recital that reminded us that Australia’s operatic present is not only alive but kicking, weeping, and even whispering in tongues.
The premise of the album is compelling: arias pulled from new Australian operas, works mostly premiered by Sydney Chamber Opera over the last decade, many written for O’Donoghue herself, and all composed by living, breathing artists for living, breathing audiences. Some of these operas had a season or two in the sun. Others flickered briefly before vanishing into the shadows. But Undead revives them, preserving their songs, channelled through the incandescent voice of a singer who is a superb dramatic interpreter as well as a master vocal technician.
“She shines more brightly than the stars”
The opening work, Dusk is Near by Mary Finsterer (from Biographica), gave us elegance, restraint and that sudden catch-your-breath shimmer as O’Donoghue’s voice floated above Jack Symonds’ sensitive pianism. The text, “you shine more brightly than the stars”, was apt in describing these performers. Projected surtitles flickered out one word at a time, and the effect was ghostly.
Symonds’ The Flood from Gilgamesh followed: a prophecy aria sung by the character Anunkai, the Oracle. Here, Jack conjured eerie resonance from inside the piano using an e-bow, a magnetic device that sustains a single piano string in an endless, otherworldly hum. The effect was oceanic, like time swelling. O’Donoghue held impossibly long notes, balancing theatrics with ethereal stillness.
“Speak Our Names… We Refuse to Die.”
Andrée Greenwell’s Speak Our Names (from The Three Marys) was especially affecting. Inspired by a medieval legend, the opera reimagines three biblical Marys as intergenerational female refugees, cast adrift in an oarless boat. In O’Donoghue’s hands, the repeated lines “we refuse to die” and “speak our names” became a rebuke against erasure, sung against the churning of unseen waves. Symonds’ piano part didn’t just support the voice, it laid down the landscape, giving the character something to walk through. Stunning.
O’Donoghue’s own aria Witness from her developing opera The Running Man, may have been the most harrowing. Singing the roles of a child (the witness), a mental health clinician, and the ‘child as adult’ she embodied both vulnerability and control with terrifying clarity. Symonds shifted to a prepared piano, with its strings altered by inserted objects to create jagged, unsettling textures. The child’s refrain “I am not the one who suffers” rang out with emotional ambiguity. Opera that punches you in the gut. Can’t wait for this to be played out in full.
Finsterer returned with Eternal City from Antarctica, this time half-submerged in Latin and light – did I mention yet that 50% of the album is from female composers? This was performed in near darkness (intentional? not sure – but it was effective regardless). It was a moment of stillness that expanded glacially.
Statues, ghosts, and fingers of light
The next aria, Statues from Huw Belling’s Fumeblind Oracle, a response work to Janáček’s The diary of One Who Disappeared, brought myth to life. O’Donoghue played four women, mythical women Electra, Medea, Iphigenia, and Janáček’s objectified Gypsy character, and each one appeared fully formed, vocally and physically distinct. This was the work that I first heard Sydney Chamber Opera perform, and hearing it again in this intimate setting gave it surreal resonance. Bravo!
Peggy Polias’ Dawn (from Commute) offered hope after darkness. A final aria written just before the pandemic, it includes an Ancient Greek invocation of “rosy-fingered dawn.” Symonds’ piano played light in one hand and shadow in the other, gradually letting the light win. The piece was radiant and shimmering.
Men, rocks, and post-coital punchlines
O’Donoghue described her own operatic awakening during Kip Williams’ gender-reversed production of The Rape of Lucretia, a moment in which she realised she didn’t have to sing “dead women’s pain”. Now, she sees herself as a vessel. “I’m here to help others feel,” she said. With these arias she’s composing and performing the kind of roles she once craved.
In Hanging Rock, Paul Stanhope’s upcoming “horror opera,” O’Donoghue plays the young Englishman, characteristically obsessed with weather and geology, now overtaken by the mysticism of landscape. Her delivery of grotesque yet poetic lines such as “sloughed skins of snakes, scabby carbuncles” was mesmerising. If this aria is any indication, Hanging Rock might prove to be an evocative Victorian-Australian fever dream. Sign me up!
The recital closed with Thomas Adès’s Life Story, a post-coital duet between a man and a woman inspired by Billie Holiday and Tennessee Williams. According to O’Donoghue, it “sounds improvised, but is one of the hardest scores I’ve ever learned.” She nailed it. So did Symonds, whose playing was virtuosic all evening but especially here. Sexy, sharp and full of late-night tragicomedy, it was the perfect finale.
Buy. This. Album.
Let’s be honest: this whole project is a little self-indulgent – and thank god for that. It’s indulgent in the way that great art is: unafraid to take itself seriously, unafraid to demand something of the listener and totally committed to its vision.
This is not background music. These are contemporary arias that deserve a second life, and now, thanks to Jessica O’Donoghue and Jack Symonds, they have one. If you’ve ever despaired for the future of Australian opera, Undead will change your mind. Go out and buy this album. You’ll find it on ABC Classic.
Photo credit: Bronte Godden
