Richard A. Betts's profile photo

Richard A. Betts

Auckland

Writer and Editor at Freelance

Nasty, brutish and short. Columnist, @nzlistener, other words elsewhere. Now mostly to be found @ https://t.co/auh2pjHxvs

Articles

  • 1 week ago | nzherald.co.nz | Richard A. Betts

    Dame Gillian Whitehead will be in the audiences to hear her own music. Photo / Daniel BeltonMataatua wharenui, in Whakatāne, has quite the history. The meeting house was erected by Ngāti Awa in 1875 as a way of proclaiming the iwi was still a force in the aftermath of raupatu (land confiscations). Four years later, the wharenui was pulled down and sent to an exhibition in Australia.

  • 1 month ago | nzherald.co.nz | Richard A. Betts

    Samuel Dundas: Wandering minstrel. Photo / David Noles Good old Puccini, he knew how to write for his musicians. Take, for example, La bohème, which NZ Opera brings to the stage for the first time since 2018. Casting a bunch of opera singers as impoverished artists isn’t exactly a stretch, is it, especially in this part of the world? “I think it’s typecasting to be honest,” deadpans Australian baritone Samuel Dundas, who takes the role of Marcello.

  • 1 month ago | clintonherald.com | Richard A. Betts

    At the April 23 Easton Valley Board meeting, Superintendent Chris Fee proposed adding two more shared administrators — a Special Education Director and a Curriculum Coordinator — to a growing list of six already shared employees across Easton Valley, Delwood, and Andrew districts. The public must pay attention. These six shared employees include the superintendent, business manager, HR director, transportation director, nutrition director, and technology director.

  • 2 months ago | nzherald.co.nz | Richard A. Betts

    Kaitāia Community Voices at the 2024 World Choir Games. Photo / Ihaka Korewha “He’s a cocky little shit,” says Dr Opeloge Ah Sam affectionately in episode one of Choir Games. Ah Sam’s mild opprobrium is directed at Kees, a 17-year-old mechanic who happens to have an attractive tenor voice that the choir director, known to all as Ope, is trying to slip into the Kaitāia Community Voices.

  • 2 months ago | nzherald.co.nz | Richard A. Betts

    As birthdays go, Reuben Brown’s 25th was pretty good. It was the day he was named New Zealand assistant conductor-in-residence 2025, which means he’s working with Auckland Philharmonia, Christchurch Symphony and Dunedin Symphony Orchestras, and shadowing Auckland Phil’s music director, Giordano Bellincampi. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” Brown recalls.

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