No Charm Equal
Music from Jane Austen’s Drawing Room
No Charm Equal
Mosman Art Gallery | July 11th, 2025, 7:00pm
Phillips Hall, Blackheath Community Centre | July 13th 2025, 4:30pmSynopsis
“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”
—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Step into the shades of Pemberley and celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth with performances of popular songs and arias from Georgian England.
Before the pianoforte keys were struck and the first note sung, music was already at the heart of Jane Austen’s world. In drawing rooms lit by candlelight, music was a shared language of love, longing, and polite rebellion.
No Charm Equal brings this world vividly to life, with a concert of songs and operatic excerpts beloved in Austen’s era. From the sentimental ballads copied by hand into family songbooks, to arias from the comic operas that swept through 18th-century England, this program recreates the musical soundscape of a Georgian parlour, where heroines once sang for guests and lovers.
Book Your Tickets
Nathaniel Kong — Pianist
Nathaniel Kong is a pianist, performer and teacher in Sydney. He was an award winner at the Australian Concerto & Vocal Competition in Townsville performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2. Performances have been with Operantics, Operabites, Sydney Fringe Festival, Canberra Enlighten Festival, The Cooperative, Cantorion Sydney Choir, Sydney Male Choir and the Mosman Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. He studied under Gerard Willems at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and with Zsuzsanna Giczy at the Australian Institute of Music.
He has performed and worked across various styles from Armenian vocal folk music under soprano Arax Mansourian, to recording piano works of Australian composer Peter Stannard, and working with vocalists from opera, theatre and jazz. As well as piano, he plays pipe organ regularly and was head cellist of the UNSW Orchestra. He is based at Sydney Girls High school and at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts.
Emily Turner — Soprano
As a Young Artist for Pacific Opera from 2017 to 2019, Emily participated in numerous performances including concerts at the Utzon Room of the Sydney Opera House and at the Concourse with Willoughby Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, she performed the role of Solveig in a new production of Ibsen’s musical play Peer Gynt by Grieg, presented by Endangered Productions in 2022.
Emily holds a Graduate Diploma of Music Studies (Opera) from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music Griffith University, where she studied with renowned voice teacher Joseph Ward OBE. In 2023 she joined Opera Queensland’s Young Artist Program, where her engagements included performing as a soloist in Opera at Jimbour’s Eastern Lawn Gala programs conducted by Peter Luff with Opera Queensland and Ensemble Q for QMF.
Elena Marcello — Mezzo Soprano
Elena Marcello is a mezzo-soprano who recently graduated with a Master of Music (Opera Performance) from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Elena holds a Bachelor of Music (Classical Voice) from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where she was awarded the 2019 Dame Mary Gilmore Award for a promising final-year vocalist.
During her studies, Elena performed the roles of La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi (2020), La Badessa and La Sorella Infermiera in Suor Angelica (2020), Second Lady in Die Zauberflte (2020), Nerone in L'incoronazione di Poppea (2021) and Oberon in Brittens A Midsummer Nights Dream (2022). In 2023, Elena performed the role of Mrs Nolan in Operantics’ production of Menotti’s The Medium. She is now based in Sydney where she is currently studying with Glenn Winslade.
Daniel Verschuer — Tenor
Daniel Verschuer is an operatic tenor, who has been described as “warmly lyrical” and having “a charismatic presence”, and who has performed leading roles in The Magic Flute, Albert Herring, The Marriage of Figaro, Fidelio, Die Fledermaus, The Gypsy Baron and Pirates of Penzance. He has worked with Opera Australia, QPAC, and was in the play Amadeus in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall in 2023, performing with leading Australian actors.
Daniel is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and an alumnus of Pacific Opera. He has previously featured at the Sydney Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and has also performed locally with Rockdale Opera and GSOS, among others.
In concert, Daniel has performed with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Jane Rutter, and the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra. He currently sings as a lay clerk at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.
