One of those rare, electrically charged pin-drop silences preceded the opening bars of the new Inkinen-Armfield Ring cycle for Opera Australia at the Arts Centre in Melbourne last night. Then the low E flat almost imperceptibly reached our ears and the curtain rose to those velvety brass textures that enfold you like a womb revealing what? An image of the slowly rotating earth achieved through projection? No, it’s a sea of densely packed human bodies on a revolving stage reflected in a vast suspended mirror. Like a Spencer Tunick photograph. But hang on, they’re not naked, they are in bathing suits and it’s starting to look for all the world like a horizontal version of Charles Meere’s Australian Beach Pattern, that idyll of classless carefree humanity united by their love of sun and water and natural beauty that is part of every Australian’s view of what they are (or were). As the famous drone gathers momentum so does the crowd; surging and developing its own internal energy through subtle choreography ( the first example of  what is to be a crucial feature of this production: outstanding choric movement work by associate director Kate Champion).

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