An opening performance, in the middle section more hair-raising than curtain-raising, of Verdi’s sinfonia to I vespri siciliani. WASO Principal Conductor Asher Fisch turns to the audience, encouraging them to think of this and the following three Verdi overtures as comprising a symphony of sorts.

He talks about his twin (musical) gods being Verdi and Wagner. And of giving 20 young musicians from the Australian Academy of Music the rare opportunity to take part in a performance of an entire act from a Wagner opera: Act I of Die Walküre.

Thus the stage was set for a rare opportunity for us, too, to witness a unique exercise in unity and diversity: the music of two operatic giants presented in a single program as though it were a five-movement symphony whose twin presiding gods and unifying powers were Mars and Venus.

Asher Fisch conducts Die Walküre. Photo © Rebecca Mansell

Exact contemporaries, Verdi and Wagner were very different composers whose dramatic instincts led them in very different directions. But they were driven by the same basic human emotions. Thanks to Fisch’s extraordinary fluency in the musical language of both composers, he was able...