Music Love interviews Jacqueline Dark about what music means to her, the state of opera in Australia and much more.
Meet Jacqueline Dark. A mezzo soprano whose skills span opera, musical theatre, cabaret, theatre restaurant and concerts. She is a principal artist with Opera Australia, and has received very prestigious awards – The Helpmann and Green Room Awards, to name just a couple. She has performed with the Victorian Opera, The Melbourne Chorale, Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Sydney Philharmonia, The Australian National Academy of Music, The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Jacqueline has also appeared on television on Spicks and Specks and So You Think You Can Dance. In opera, Jacqueline has performed many roles including Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. The effort of learning these various operas is no small thing; one must learn another language and understand the impact of every word. And that’s before a performer prepares to hit those notes with technique and emotion in equal measure. Jacqueline has mastered this art and is invited for more and more roles year upon year. But she has also dominated roles in musical theatre such as Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music (alongside Cameron Daddo and Marina Prior in 2015) of which one reviewer said, “Much loved on the opera stage, mezzo-soprano Dark makes an effortless crossover to music theatre… the act one finale Climb Ev’ry Mountain threatens to blow the roof right off the theatre.”