Opera on Ice - a review

By Angelina

So they had me at the promo: welling up around the 30-second mark and free-flowing tears by 1 minute 27 seconds. Admittedly, figure skating is a sport I am very passionate about. I acknowledge that makes me an odd Australian - but you have to be hard of heart not to appreciate the beauty of this scene alone:

The Arena di Verona - it’s a warm Italian night. Below is a magnificent, glistening ice stage and on it, some of the finest, most powerful figure skaters in the world. Rousing arias from the world’s most beloved operas: 'Don Giovanni', 'Aida', 'Carmen', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Turandot', 'Tosca' and 'La Traviata'. All performed live by international opera stars and a 200-strong Verona Arena Orchestra and Choir.

The skating ‘tricks’ are flying spectacularly thick and fast. Seemingly impossible lifts and throws: at one point Qing Pang is lying horizontally above her husband’s, (partner Jian Tong), head performing a triple twist. Two-time World Champion and Olympic silver medallist, Stéphane Lambiel, thrills the audience with his hamming up of Rigoletto’s La Donna e Mobile and his incomparable headless ‘blur’ spin. 2012 World Champion, Carolina Kostner plays a strong and stunning fair-headed Carmen in her home country.

Pang & Tong's triple twist

Stephane Lambiel's Headless Spin

Given that this is the movie version of the 2011 performance of Opera on Ice, the clever editors have put in place some wonderful slow motion tricks so that viewers can take in highlighted spins, jumps, lifts and throws in accentuated and prolonged glory.  I thoroughly appreciated this, (any figure skating aficionado who says they can always pick a triple from a double is probably not being very truthful …), but my skating friend found these tricks distracting from the flow of the performance.

Second time around I decided to share this glorious experience with my ice hockey playing husband and my seven-year-old daughter. I had high hopes for this cultural family outing. My daughter sat with her fingers in her ears yelling, “Why are they ruining the skating with this horrible loud music!” And whilst decimating his coffee flavoured choc top my husband whispers, “That Stéphane’s a man I could turn for!”

When it returns next year, I’ll be going with my skating and opera loving girlfriends.

77 mins, showing at Palace Cinemas around Australia (as part of the Lavazza Italian Film Festival). The international who’s who of figure skating also includes Canadian Emanuel Sandhu, Russian pair team Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin; Italian dance team, Anna Cappellini & Luca Lanotte and French dance team Isabelle Delobel & Olivier Shoenfelder, and Hot Shivers, the Italian National Synchronised Skating Team.