Here’s HELEN MUSA’s latest mix of arts news featured in her weekly Arts in the City column.

National Opera has announced Caroline Stacey as director and Rowan Harvey-Martin as musical director for a July production in Albert Hall featuring a “reduction” (simplified version) of Richard Strauss’ opera, Der Rosenkavalier. Sarah Darnley-Stuart, who starred as Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow in 2024, will play the lead role of the aristocratic Marschallin, while Sonia Anfiloff, artistic director of the company, will play her 17-year-old lover, Octavian. 

Bert Whelan, the subject of our story earlier this year by Len Power about his collection of George Gershwin’s music and memorabilia donated to the ANU School of Music, has received an email from entertainer and Gershwin writer Michael Feinstein, who visited Whelan in the early 1970s. “I… thought it was a fitting tribute. You have created a legacy that will benefit so many through the years, and your collection will only become more valuable with the passing of time,” Feinstein wrote.

Canberra CityNews 2024 Artist of the Year Hilary Wardhaugh is among the 48 finalists in the $30,000 National Photographic Portrait Prize, to be announced and go on show on August 16 at the National Portrait Gallery. This year’s judges are writer and broadcaster Benjamin Law, senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery Serena Bentley and Leigh Robb, curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of SA.

Gomeroi man, rapper and storyteller Kobie Dee will headline a family-friendly event at Commonwealth Park to mark the ACT’s Reconciliation Day, June 2. 

Two Ukrainian musicians, bandura player and soprano Larissa Kovalchuk, and pianist Anna Dove, will perform a program of Ukrainian classical and traditional pieces by Skoryk, Havrylets, and Myaskov, along with works by Rossini, Gershwin and Bach/Gounod. Wesley Music Centre, Forrest, May 31.

St Edmund’s College has launched StageCraft, a new pilot program designed to prepare high school students for careers in live event production, in collaboration with Elite Event Technology and Lexi Sekuless Productions. The idea is to train a new generation of skilled, dedicated crew from the ground up.