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	Shrieks and cackles as Galas shows her lighter side DIAMANDA GALAS Sydney Opera House, January 17 Diamanda Galas ... bubbles of humour and gashes of irony. Reviewed by John Shand In the wake of stunned reactions to Monday's Defixiones, Will and Testament, Diamanda Galas gave a sold-out performance of her, er, lighter side, La Serpenta Canta. The songs, once again drawn from far-flung sources and sung in a multitude of tongues, were hardly a musical-comedy routine, but they were aerated with bubbles of humour and gashes of irony. Galas opened with My World is Empty Without You. Taken as far from the Supremes as Jacques Brel is from Liberace, it became more suicide note than lover's plea. Screaming Jay Hawkins's I Put a Spell on You could have referred to the scary one she put on the audience, with her poltergeist shrieks and sadistic cackles. But this was also about ownership in love, her voice rushing from shades of Janis Joplin to echoes of Victoria de los Angeles in the space of a bar. One of the wonders of Galas is this ability to completely change her voice, most notably from song to song and language to language. Many singers inhabit a lyric so they become the protagonist, but Galas actually becomes a different singer to achieve the specific effects she is after, to etch a scar on our memories. Her wordless vocal on Ornette Coleman's haunting Lonely Woman took loneliness to the barren land of rejection. Tampa Red's Dead Cat on the Line provided further evidence of her affinity for the blues tradition, with splendidly lewd sexual references and crazed caterwauling. In fact, her convolutions were much truer to the original spirit of the form than so many sanitised imitations. Some lyrics were spat out like accusations at a divorce hearing; others were desolate laments, or expressions of a crucifying personal anguish. Her technical wizardry was never an end in itself: multiphonics were used to scarifying emotional effect, while one protracted note wailed like feedback from Jimi Hendrix's guitar. Somehow she achieved an electric charge between herself and the audience, without the slightest acknowledgment of the latter's existence until the curtain calls. This audience was a show in itself, with black clothing dripping from Goths and alarming physical processes allowing loud-wigged trans- vestites to squeeze into little frocks, while the same folk who have been attending the Beethoven sonatas mingled in wide-eyed wonder. It helped in triggering the charge that both lighting and sound were exceptional. The former was a simple, subtle adjunct to a theatricality that was as crucial as it was muted. She closed with 25 Minutes to Go, the song Johnny Cash made famous about a man about to be hanged. Pure nihilism - then three encores. Galas is a model of what the festival can present that we might otherwise miss out on.

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la serpenta canta reviews

Shrieks and cackles as Galas shows her lighter side

DIAMANDA GALAS
Sydney Opera House, January 17

Diamanda Galas ... bubbles of humour and gashes of irony.

Reviewed by John Shand

In the wake of stunned reactions to Monday's Defixiones, Will and Testament, Diamanda Galas gave a sold-out performance of her, er, lighter side, La Serpenta Canta.

The songs, once again drawn from far-flung sources and sung in a multitude of tongues, were hardly a musical-comedy routine, but they were aerated with bubbles of humour and gashes of irony.

Galas opened with My World is Empty Without You. Taken as far from the Supremes as Jacques Brel is from Liberace, it became more suicide note than lover's plea.

Screaming Jay Hawkins's I Put a Spell on You could have referred to the scary one she put on the audience, with her poltergeist shrieks and sadistic cackles.

But this was also about ownership in love, her voice rushing from shades of Janis Joplin to echoes of Victoria de los Angeles in the space of a bar.

One of the wonders of Galas is this ability to completely change her voice, most notably from song to song and language to language.

Many singers inhabit a lyric so they become the protagonist, but Galas actually becomes a different singer to achieve the specific effects she is after, to etch a scar on our memories.

Her wordless vocal on Ornette Coleman's haunting Lonely Woman took loneliness to the barren land of rejection. Tampa Red's Dead Cat on the Line provided further evidence of her affinity for the blues tradition, with splendidly lewd sexual references and crazed caterwauling. In fact, her convolutions were much truer to the original spirit of the form than so many sanitised imitations.

Some lyrics were spat out like accusations at a divorce hearing; others were desolate laments, or expressions of a crucifying personal anguish. Her technical wizardry was never an end in itself: multiphonics were used to scarifying emotional effect, while one protracted note wailed like feedback from Jimi Hendrix's guitar.

Somehow she achieved an electric charge between herself and the audience, without the slightest acknowledgment of the latter's existence until the curtain calls. This audience was a show in itself, with black clothing dripping from Goths and alarming physical processes allowing loud-wigged trans- vestites to squeeze into little frocks, while the same folk who have been attending the Beethoven sonatas mingled in wide-eyed wonder. It helped in triggering the charge that both lighting and sound were exceptional. The former was a simple, subtle adjunct to a theatricality that was as crucial as it was muted.

She closed with 25 Minutes to Go, the song Johnny Cash made famous about a man about to be hanged. Pure nihilism - then three encores. Galas is a model of what the festival can present that we might otherwise miss out on.