Vienna waltzes into Brisbane with Southern Cross Soloists

Viennese music, including the waltzes of Johann Strauss II, features in Southern Cross Soloists’ first concert for the year, starring Vienna-based Australian soprano Alexandra Flood.

Jan 21, 2025, updated Jan 21, 2025
Soprano Alexandra Flood in full flight with Southern Cross Soloists. Photo: Darren Thomas
Soprano Alexandra Flood in full flight with Southern Cross Soloists. Photo: Darren Thomas

She has taught an audience to do the can-can sitting down, so soprano Alexandra Flood could have some success doing the same with waltzing.

Waltzing sitting down? It’s possible, the Australian singer tells me when we chat ahead of her forthcoming star turn at Southern Cross Soloists’ first concert for 2025 on February 23 in the Concert Hall at QPAC.

It’s called Celebrate! – namely the Viennese Waltz King, Johann Strauss II – with beautiful music by him, along with Mozart and Beethoven.

The concert will also feature a new composition by Hollywood-based award-winning Australian composer Leah Curtis, who has worked with SXS didgeridoo master Chris Williams to create a new work for didgeridoo and the ensemble. That’s a world premiere and a little treat in addition to the Viennese music that will make up the rest of the concert.

SXS is encouraging everyone to dress up for this concert, as if they are going to a Viennese ball. Flood will lead the way. In fact, she will be going to a Viennese ball not long after this concert, because the talented singer, who is no stranger to Brisbane audiences, happens to live in the Austrian capital where she performs with Vienna Volksoper.

Originally from Victoria, Flood has performed widely in Europe and lived in Paris before Vienna, where it is -3C when we chat. She is, she tells me, attending that ball in Vienna after Brisbane.

“I will be attending my first Viennese ball on March 3,” Flood says. “It’s a masquerade ball. I am now in the market for a new ball gown and I might give it a dress rehearsal in Brisbane before Vienna.”

Flood says when SXS co-artistic director Ashley Smith rang her to chat about performing at the chamber music ensemble’s first concert this year she was thrilled with the idea of a salute to Viennese music and, in particular, the waltzes of Johann Strauss II.

“So, I suppose they are waltzing in the street in Vienna,” I say, joking, not expecting the answer I get.

“Well, yes, they are,” Flood replies. “This year celebrates the bicentenary of Johann Strauss II’s birth and on New Year’s Eve they played the Blue Danube. People were literally waltzing though the streets. There’s nothing kitsch about waltzing. It’s part of the culture here in Vienna.”

And while the SXS concert won’t be like an Andre Rieu concert, Flood says she understands that people may have the urge to dance, which could be tricky in the Concert Hall at QPAC.

“Maybe we can invent a new seated waltz,” she suggests. “One where we encourage people to wiggle around in their chairs. I taught an audience in Munich once to can-can in their chairs.”

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So, anything is possible.

Flood has been working with SXS since 2015 when she was called on to fill in for acclaimed soprano Greta Bradman at the Bangalow Music Festival, SXS’s flagship event for many years. (It has since moved back across the Queensland border, rebranded as the SXS Chamber Music Festival, which will be held on Tamborine Mountain in August.)

“I hadn’t had any professional exposure until then. Then there I was singing to accompaniment by Piers Lane,” she says. “It was my first time doing chamber music.”

Flood became a regular at Bangalow, then a couple of years ago she performed there with her beau, now husband, the American baritone Alexander York. They were billed as “Alex and Alex” and were a sensation. The couple recently married in Tuscany and call Vienna home, although both travel widely for work.

Trained as an opera singer, Flood has performed extensively in Europe and Australia where she has appeared with Opera Queensland, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Queensland Ballet in their runaway hit Strictly Gershwin.

She is also the artistic director of the Queensland Art Song Festival, which is on again in August in collaboration with the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University and Voxalis Opera.

For Celebrate!, Flood will be singing pieces from Mozart, including Un moto di gioia from The Marriage of Figaro and also works by Johann Strauss II, including a piece from the opera Die Fledermaus.

Flood says the concert will be “joyful”. We have no reason to doubt that. The challenge will be keeping the audience in their seats.

Southern Cross Soloists’ Celebrate!, Concert Hall, QPAC, February 23, 3pm; qpac.com.au; southernxsoloists.com

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