Teddy Tahu Rhodes featured in Anzac Day concert

Teddy Tahu Rhodes (left) and and Australian soldier from Gallipoli in WWI (right)

The Melbourne Symphony announced their upcoming 2015 season this week and it includes a fascinating concert scheduled for April 23rd and 24th. The concerts lead up to Anzac Day on April 25, which honors the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

The concerts, which includes both Beethoven’s Egmont and the Ninth Symphony, commemorate the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli. The Ninth Symphony will include British soprano Susan Gritton, Australian mezzo Fiona James, New Zealand bass-barihunk Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Turkish hunkentenor Bülent Bezdüz who respectively represent the main combatant nations.

The Battle of Gallipoli was a campaign of World War I that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire between April 24, 1915 and January 9, 1916. The peninsula forms the northern bank of the Dardanelles, a strait that provides a sea route to what was then the Russian Empire, one of the Allied powers during the war. Intending to secure it, Russia's allies Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula with the eventual aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).

 

Turkish hunkentenor Bülent Bezdüz

The naval attack was repelled and, after eight months' fighting, with many casualties on both sides, the land campaign also failed and the invasion force was withdrawn to Egypt.  The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war and a major Allied failure. 

 

In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the nation's history: a final surge in the defense of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the founding of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who first rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli. 

 

Anzac Day remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in Australia and New Zealand, surpassing Remembrance Day.

Click HERE for tickets.

 

Don't forget to order your 2015 Barihunks Charity Calendar by clicking the Lulu.com button below. It features 19 of the hottest singers in opera, including Christiaan Smith-Kotlarek (featured above).