Two international opera stars, Simon O’Neill and Orla Boylan, stopped in Ashburton this week, making the most of a reprieve from their hefty rehearsal schedules. Photos Susan SandysInternational opera star Simon O’Neill is aiming to put on his best performing voice when he stars in Tosca next week.

Ashburton is O’Neill’s home town and he visited with fellow international opera star Orla Boylan this week.

The pair play lead roles in New Zealand Opera’s Tosca, which will stage at the Theatre Royal in Christchurch on March 8, 10, 14 and 16.

O’Neill said the Tosca performance was particularly important to him, as he wanted to make it up to Mid Cantabrians after not being able to sing at a local fundraiser due to laryngitis last year.

“It was really upsetting not being able to sing for Ashburton people,” O’Neill said, referring to Night of the Southern Stars at the Ashburton Trust Event Centre.

Performing for a home audience was highly important to him.

“I get more nervous performing here in Ashburton or Christchurch than I do in New York or Milan,” he said.

And the distress had not stopped at Night of the Southern Stars, as his voice did not return for a whole month.

“I thought ‘it’s over’, I had nothing for one month.”

The illness had come on the back of a gruelling schedule including the Edinburgh International Festival and The Proms in London, and O’Neill reflected it had perhaps been his body telling him enough.

However, O’Neill is more than back into the swing of things again.

His last production was in New York City at the weekend, singing with the New York Philharmonic, and the weekend before he was in Sweden.

Based in Auckland, he is generally on a plane for 20 or so trips to England and America per year.

He travels business class and generally has a couple of glasses of champagne each flight.

Last weekend when travelling between Los Angeles and New York, he was talking to the “tall and gorgeous” Iman, former wife of the late David Bowie, as he happened to be sitting next to her.

As lucky as O’Neill was to be able to pick and choose roles and sing in wonderful places around the world, nothing quite beat returning home.

He enjoyed showing Boylan, from Ireland, around Mid Canterbury when they visited on Wednesday, after having a break in their rehearsal schedule in Christchurch.

The pair came across a New Zealand traffic jam in the high country – a thousand sheep being shephered down the road, indulged in some good Kiwi tucker such as steak pies and dinner at Simon’s family home.

Boylan and O’Neill are big Italian and German opera specialists, Boylan soprano and O’Neill tenor, and often star together in productions throughout the world.

The pair starred in the big Italian opera of Tosca when it was last staged by New Zealand Opera in 2015, and were looking forward to bringing it to the stage in Christchurch again.

By Susan Sandys © The Ashburton Guardian - 2 March 2018

Former local Daniel Pearce will line up against a strong field today on the first day of the New Zealand Open in Queenstown. Photo Bob EnglebrightThe best golfers in New Zealand, including Ashburton’s Daniel Pearce, along with a vast array of international names will tackle the New Zealand Open, which begins in Queenstown today.

Former Ashburton College student Pearce will sit alongside fellow Kiwis Michael Hendry, Ryan Fox and Ben Campbell in the elite event which is played across both Millbrook Resort and The Hills.

It’s a hot field, with strong form and there’s no hiding from that fact and Pearce, who is incidentally playing in the tournament as an Australian, will need to produce his known skill set to keep pace with the high-flyers.

Of the leading Kiwis, Campbell comes off his breakthrough professional win at the NZPGA Championship at the weekend, while Fox has taken time out to refresh and re-focus following his tie for third in his European Tour event in Malaysia.

Hendry, the defending champion, may not have been in his best form this year, but the 2017 winner is pleased that his hard work is starting to pay off.

“My form hasn’t been great but I feel I have played better than my results. I have been working particularly hard,” he said.

“Confidence levels and expectations are always changing but it takes a certain amount of pressure off. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone that I can win it because I’ve done it.

“That said I would love anything in the world to win it again and I have done pretty well defending golf tournaments.”

Fox said his run of top finishes in three big tournaments in a row in France, Ireland and Scotland last year, has given him belief.

“I believe I can compete out there and after those three weeks. I was competing against the best players in the world and playing with the likes of Jon Rahm and Justin Rose,” Fox said.

“Sometimes belief is hard without the results and thankfully I’ve got results to back it up now and I’m starting to believe. At the start of last year, I was a little bit of an unknown and I probably didn’t believe as much as I should of.

“The best players in the world believe that they are the best players in the world. There are guys that have got that far almost on confidence alone. It’s the mental side of the game, the belief and the confidence which is the big part of it.”

Campbell is full of confidence after his resounding victory in the NZPGA Championship, and has the benefit of returning to his home course; Millbrook Resort.

“It’s always nice I suppose getting the monkey off your back and I played pretty solid last week,” Campbell said.

“I learned quite a bit in the Open and it gave me more confidence and that I felt like I should be here.”

He will be hoping once again that the support from his local Queenstown friends and family will help boost his confidence.

One hundred and forty-four professionals will contest the $1.2 million tournament at Millbrook Resort and The Hills tomorrow. There is a cut to the top-60 players plus ties to contest the final two rounds at Millbrook Resort.

© The Ashburton Guardian - 1 March 2018

Caitlin Adlam. Photo suppliedA summer student working for Environment Canterbury discovered 80 new springs near the Ashburton River … as well as the carcasses of three dead cats hung on a gate and a “body” buried in bush.

Caitlin Adlam recorded the latter as strange sightings, though they gave her a fright at the time.

Adlam presented the preliminary findings of her summer’s work to the Ashburton Water Zone committee this week and her formal report will also be sent to landowners who allowed her onto their properties near the Ashburton River to look for springs or streams.

Over the three months, she mapped 56km of streams, climbing over electric fences and fighting her way through dense vegetation to locate the origins of water sources. She was crawling through bush one day when she came across “a body” wrapped in a blanket.

The night before she had watched a television programme where the same sort of blanket had been used to conceal a dead body.

She bolted from the riverbed and called for workmate Donna Field, who kicked the blanket and found, to everyone’s relief, it contained a bag of rubbish.

Aside from that scary moment, Adlam said her job and interactions with landowners had been positive and farmers had been keen to know more about springs on their properties and how to look after them.

The University of Canterbury science graduate said mapping the streams and springs along the river would help scientists better understand flows in the river. It will link to another study looking at the interaction of groundwater and river water close to the river margins.

Adlam was working from a 1999 database of springs and streams and she updated or added new locations as she discovered them. She visited 51 of the 146 points on the database and found 43 still present.

“I have also mapped just under 80 new springs and added them to the database.”

She also recorded the most common plants in the streams were water cress, forget-me-not and the weed monkey mask.

Adlam said the environment would continue to change, so updating the database should be seen as a work in progress.

“I have learned so much talking with farmers and thank everyone. I really enjoyed my summer.”

By Linda Clarke © The Ashburton Guardian - 1 March 2018