Oz Opera visits Marysville

The cast of Oz Opera's Don Giovanni at Marysville Community Centre

Bumping in

By Bryce Hallett

When the Black Saturday bushfires tore through the historic town of Marysville in

Victoria, they destroyed almost the entire town.

The February 2009 inferno claimed 40 lives and destroyed 536 homes. More than three years after the tragedy, residents are looking to the future as new accommodation, schools and houses are built. Most prominent of all is the new $9.3 million Marysville Community Centre.

In recent months, the Community Centre has hosted concerts and comedy festivals,

and, most recently, an ambitious performance of Michael Gow's entertaining

version of Don Giovanni by Oz Opera, the touring and access arm of Opera Australia.

For one night only, the centre was transformed from a utilitarian and austere space into an elegant banquet hall befitting a Mozart opera. It was the result of a year of planning by the General Manager of Oz Opera, Sandra Willis, and her production team. “From the outset, there was an overriding desire to make the event happen, come what may.” said Willis.

"When I came up to Marysville a year ago to look at the site and meet with Graham Taylor, [a member of the Lions Club and Operations Manager for Rochford Estate] he was excited by the prospect of Oz Opera performing in Marysville,” said Willis. “He was determined that it should happen and facilitated our visit... In talking to Graham, I was moved by the personal stories."

Marysville lighting rig

It was decided that Oz Opera would conclude its extensive 2012 national tour in Marysville. It didn't matter that the population of the town numbered little more than 200 or that Oz Opera would not only be bringing its scenery, costumes, props and lighting rig but also its own purpose‐built stage.

Graham Taylor is proud to have Oz Opera in the town's midst and has no doubt that the performers and musicians will have an impact. "Now is the time for people to be supporting the community and to realise that we are still on the map," he said. "It's a vulnerable time and [it's] vital that everyone pitches in... Having the opera here means a lot and we hope it won't be the first or the last [time]."

Oz Opera tours widely. This year alone it has been to Newcastle, Orange, Tamworth, Mt Gambier and Bendigo, among many other suburbs and towns, where its scaled‐ down yet lovingly staged production of Don Giovanni has seduced audiences, many who have not experienced opera before.

Oz Opera veteran, Eddie Muliaumaseali'i, has toured 10 times with the company. He said, "'I'm very fortunate because I enjoy the pressures and the lifestyle. It's an exhausting schedule; it makes you fit and prepared. In terms of developing the art form and audience reach, the touring arm of the company is fundamental to the future of opera.”

Setting up in Marysville

Gow locates the action in the main square of a small 1950’s Italian village ‐ a

versatile and handsome design by Roger Kemp, lit by Matt Scott ‐ which manages to look convivial one moment and foreboding the next as the story progresses. The cast assembled are at varying rungs of the ladder but most are experienced company singers who offer confident, intelligent and brightly acted characterisations. Among them are Luke Gabbedy, Adrian Tamburini, Eddie Muliaumaseali'í, Emma Castelli, Sam Roberts‐Smith, Katherine Wiles and Samuel Dundas. They are well supported by a fine orchestra reduction by Andrew Greene and, for this performance, conducted by Tahu Matheson with insight and verve. The nine‐piece orchestra is highly accomplished and brings not only a lightness of touch but also gravity and majesty to the comedy and drama.

It is the first time that an Oz Opera audience has been seated at round tables with the musicians at ground level and in close proximity to the audience.

 The performance was funded by both the Australia Council for the Arts and Playing Australia.

Edwards’ dangerous dance with Strauss

Gale Edwards on the set of La bohème

Herod and Herodias in Salome rehearsals

Gale Edwards has directed some of Opera Australia’s most memorable productions, including the Company’s 2011 production of Puccini’s La bohème and its 2001 production of  Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. And yet, says the woman whose production of Strauss’ Salome opens at the Sydney Opera Housethis month (before visiting Arts Centre Melbourne in December), there is no formula for a successful production.

“Every time I direct a new show, it’s as if I’m directing for the first time in my life,” she says, with a laugh. “I open the score for the first play-through, alone in my home, and every time I think, oh my God I have no idea how to do this.”

It helps that she’s been directing opera and spoken theatre for 30 years. “Experience has taught me that if I do the research – read the right books, look at the paintings, play the music while I’m washing the dishes, live with it for 18 months, the right concept will come.”

As the weeks went by, Edwards became convinced that the piece needed very strong imagery. “The world of the piece is brutal – Herod is a corrupt, violent ruler who chops off people’s heads; John the Baptist is kept in a hole in the ground like an animal, and executioners come and go all the time. The idea of setting the piece in Biblical times didn’t interest me, so I decided to set it in a slaughterhouse. Herod is having a feast, after all.” 

Herodias and religious figures in Salome rehearsals

Collaborating with her on the design of the production was long-time colleague Brian Thomson. Edwards says working with him is always challenging and stimulating. “Every time it’s a different process. We’ve done shows where he gave the concept to me on a platter, and we’ve done shows where we sat together at the model box for many hours and developed it together. We still feed off each other. The minute that stops, you have to stop working together.”

Knowledge of who the principal artists are going to be strongly influences the way in which a director conceives of a piece, she says. “In Salome in particular, the dance of the seven veils is the pivotal scene of the piece, and knowing the artist who is performing it has deeply influenced my approach to it.”

As Edwards is friendly with Cheryl Barker, this production’s Salome, she invited the singer to her house for a cup of tea and a chat about the piece. “We discussed the dance of the seven veils, where a nubile teenager, Salome, is going to take off seven veils and stand in front of a lecherous paedophile – Herod – stark naked. Cheryl said, ‘Darling, I’m quite prepared to do anything you require; I’ll take off the seven veils and be stark naked, but I’m a mother and a mature woman, and I’m worried that if I take off everything the audience will say, Oh my God where’s the nubile 17-year-old?’ We laughed and I loved her for that.”

Gale Edwards in the Opera Australia paint dock

Barker and Edwards did not come up with a solution, but the director went away and thought about the piece some more. “I realised that I couldn’t do a show where a woman takes off seven veils and stands naked on stage anyway,” she says. “Part of me objects to that.” Instead, she began to play with the idea of taking off a veil. “I became very interested in the way in which women wear veils to attract, arouse and seduce men. Marilyn Monroe standing over the grill with her dress blown up around her and throwing her head back and laughing for the photographers – men in suits with cameras – there’s an image of a woman wearing a veil. Similarly, one could argue that in the Miss World Competition, when the women walk out in those bikinis, the sash across their bodies which they wear with such pride, is a veil imposed on them by men.”

Finding a way to present the dance of the seven veils took a great deal of thought, and so did establishing how to present the offensive circumstances surrounding the dance. But audience members are likely to find Edwards’ solutions interesting. “As director my responsibility is to the audience,” she says. “To have a singer do a provocative dance, then cut off someone’s head and make love to it, that’s confronting. Which is not a problem, as long as, as director, I try to find a way to make some sense of it.”

Ultimately, Salome audiences will decide whether Edwards has been successful in that endeavour. They are unlikely to be disappointed.

Salome shows at Sydney Opera House until 3 November and Arts Centre Melbourne 1  - 15 December. Click here for more details, casting information and to buy tickets online.

Corsets and coins no more

Set designer Brian Thomson and director Gale Edwards with a set model of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour 2013 - Carmen

Poster image for Carmen

2013 Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour CARMEN a breathtaking extravaganza set in Franco’s Spain

At the opening night of Francesca Zambello’s production of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour (HOSH) La Traviata earlier this year, fellow director Gale Edwards felt intensely proud. “It was a fabulous production and I was absolutely thrilled that I’d have the opportunity to do HOSH the following year,” says the woman responsible for 2013 HOSH Carmen, launched in Sydney late last month.

Staging a popular masterpiece such as Carmen is daunting. As Edwards says: “The challenge is to avoid regurgitating what’s been done before.” Every Carmen director tries to interpret the work in a unique way, and Edwards is no exception, yet she steers clear of imposing what she refers to as ‘gimmicks’. “I work from the inside out,” she says.

Telling the Carmen story from the inside out meant studying the libretto and the music, watching videos of previous productions (“good and bad, and you learn more from the bad”), looking at relevant photographs and art, reading (“I did a lot of research on Franco’s Spain), and watching films, especially Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. “It’s hard to pinpoint the creative process, but eventually, unconsciously, the elements begin to come together and images begin to form in my mind. And suddenly there’s a moment when I think, This is the right way to do it.”

Convinced that she did not want to do “the little coins on the scarves; the little corsets with the puffed sleeves; all those images associated with Carmen that are now very dated”, Edwards nevertheless did not want to destroy the opera’s essential elements. “It’s a piece set in Spain and it’s partly about poverty and elevation from poverty. It’s also about a woman who is an explosive, dynamic force in a stagnant world, and who is destroyed for that.”

For Edwards, the period most suited to telling that story turned out to be Franco’s Spain. “I thought if we set our Carmen in Spain at around 1930-50, it would free us from the corsets and the coins. You could still have the Flamenco dancing and the café scene and the cigarette girls, but you’d be able to take a fresh look at the piece.”

Director Gale Edwards

Once she had that basic idea, Edwards consulted set designer Brian Thomson and costume designer Julie Lynch, long-time colleagues with whom she worked on OA’s 2011 hit production of La bohème, and who also collaborated with her on Strauss’ Salome, which opens at the Sydney Opera House this month. 

Costume design is necessarily influenced by the fact that HOSH is an open-air production. Julie Lynch points out that “60 people on stage, all dressed in a different colour, would look hideous, which is why you have to think in terms of blocks of colour”. The Carmen costumes are thus designed to create mass imagery and to counter the distractions inherent in an outdoor production: city lights and stars twinkling in the sky, boats sailing past and the opera house beckoning on the horizon.

HOSH is a gigantic challenge for any director, but like so many of her colleagues, Edwards thrives on the obstacles presented by staging opera. “This is an art form that deals with huge themes like ambition, love, betrayal – these great, passionate, fearless stories insist that you be fearless too; you’re not directing a little drawing room piece with two sofas and a cocktail cabinet where you mix the drinks.”

She feels ready to tackle opera’s giants. “As a director, you believe that you’re going to end up with a result that the audience will like, but you never quite know how it’s going to turn out; there’s no recipe. I’ve done this for 30 years, and it’s still wonderfully...frightening.”

Tickets to Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour - Carmen are now available. Visit operaonsydneyharbour.com.au to book online. Watch the clip below to see what Gale Edwards says about this production.

“Destiny kept opening doors for me”

The Operative Word with Cheryl Barker

Why do you do the job that you do? Because destiny kept opening doors for me to walk through.

Who has influenced you most professionally? Peter Coleman-Wright, my husband.  Had I not met him at High School I would definitely not be doing what I am now.

Is there any other profession that you would have liked to have followed? I was always interested in History and think I would have the patience for digging around as an archaeologist.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Snuggled up on the sofa watching a great movie and eating a box of hard-centre Darrell Lea chocolates while it’s bucketing down outside.

If you could have dinner with a historical figure, who would it be? Oscar Wilde.  He absolutely fascinates me.

What is your greatest extravagance? Without a doubt, perfume.

One thing you regret is… Not going through with the purchase of a great flat in Toorak in Melbourne years ago – it was about $30,000 and huge!

If you could have any opera character as a friend, who would it be, and why? Musetta from La bohème. She is kind and fun.  Even sells her earrings to buy medicine for Mimì.

Who or what is the love of your life? My husband Peter and my son Gabriel.

What are you optimistic about? Not much these days.  Everything we hear is doom and gloom. I have stopped reading the paper or listening to the news.

You would like to devote more time to… My friends.

What is your favourite food? Anything from Bar Zini in Harris St Pyrmont.

What is your most treasured possession? My Grandmother’s engagement ring.

Which is the opera that got you hooked? Eugene Onegin.  Even the first few bars of the overture make my heart pound.

Which opera do you never need to hear again? To be honest I rarely listen to opera, but probably The Magic Flute. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. 

If there’s one quote that really speaks to you it’s… "Rooster today feather duster tomorrow" (my Dad told me that one).

What is your idea of misery? Boiling hot summer days with no air-conditioning.

You still hope to… Revisit Egypt.  (As long as my hotel has air-conditioning)

Which characteristics do you most admire in others? A sense of humour.

You feel guilty when you think about… Leaving my parents for 20 years when I moved to London.

What type of holiday do you most enjoy? A luxurious hotel, massages and no music to learn.  I can’t remember the last one of those.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My legs.  Six inches longer would have been nice.

Who is your favourite band? The Cure. I saw them last year and they were amazing.

You spend too much money on… Perfume.

Your greatest achievement has been…Giving birth to Gabriel.  It outstrips any opera performance.

The book everyone loved but you could not finish was... Watership Down.

What is your favourite kitchen appliance? The kettle. I love the sound of it boiling.

How do you stay up to date with new technology and trends? Word of mouth in the wig room wherever I am.  I am pretty hopeless generally but good at Angry Birds.

Who is your favourite heart throb? I would have to say my husband Peter, but if not him, Antonio Banderas.

Cheryl Barker stars in the title role of Salome at Sydney Opera House until 3 November and Arts Centre Melbourne 1 - 15 December. Click here for more details, casting information and to buy tickets online.

Competition the kick-start to many an opera career

Jeffrey Black as Count Danilo in The Merry Widow 2004

Jeffrey Black

When Allerta! tracks down Jeffrey Black at Sydney’s Opera Centre to chat about his role as national adjudicator for this year’s The Australian Singing Competition (finals at the Opera House on October 25), the baritone is so friendly and unassuming that it’s difficult to picture him as a judge of other singers.

Yet Black knows exactly what he’s looking for, and he’s acutely aware of what’s at stake. A teenager-finalist himself in 1982, and winner of the competition – then known as the Marianne Mathy Scholarship – in 1983, he says the exposure brought him to national prominence and advanced his career in many other ways. 

“No one had heard of me before I reached the finals. But the appearance of a teenager in such a prestigious competition generated newspaper interest and raised my profile, and the coach with whom I worked arranged for me to sing for then OA musical director Richard Bonynge,” he says. As a result of that meeting, Black was offered a contract with The Australian Opera. By the time he was 25 he’d made his Glyndebourne, Los Angeles and Covent Garden debuts. “The ball had begun to roll, and it was all due to getting my first professional contract here,” he says.

Even finalists who never won have gone on to have brilliant careers. Black says: “In that first year, when I didn’t win, another finalist who also didn’t win was Lisa Gasteen.” Yet another finalist who never won is Emma Matthews. “The aim of a competition like this is not just to win – although obviously you want to win – but the opportunities that come with being involved,” Black says.

Of course, not all winners end up having big careers. Or any careers. “It’s the luck of the draw,” Black says laconically. “You may be doing a series of brilliant performances, but if there’s no one from the Vienna Staatsoper or the Met in the house, they will go unnoticed. Or your agent may not have the ear of the top opera houses. Sometimes you hear outstanding talent and you think, this person is going to have the world at their feet, and then they go and study with the wrong person, and three years later they’re in worse shape than when they began.”

Jeffrey Black as Count Almaviva
in The Marriage of Figaro 2002

There are character traits that help singers to succeed though, and as an adjudicator, Black’s role is to identify them.  Above all he’s looking for a distinctive, charismatic voice. “I will always remember the time Margaret Thatcher brought Michael Gorbachev backstage after a Cenerentola performance at Covent Garden. He didn’t speak much English, yet there was something about him. You were drawn to him. As adjudicator you are looking for an artist who is able to grab your attention in this way. It’s subjective of course.”

A young singer also requires a demonstrable ability to perform in a variety of musical styles, even if he/she has not yet mastered them; any singer who aims for the world’s operatic stages needs the ability to engage dramatically, and for the first time this year, competition organisers have established workshops to enable adjudicators to gauge whether artists are able to be coached and directed. “Some singers have their party pieces that they sing very well, but when you put them in an unfamiliar environment that makes demands on them, they don’t respond well,” Black says. “You’re looking for someone who can take a conductor’s or director’s ideas and integrate them into what they’re doing.”

The pitfalls for young singers? He laughs. “How long have you got?” His most basic advice is to hasten slowly. “I would not necessarily advocate the path that I took,” he says. “In opera terms I started very young, which landed me with a Wunderkind tag. That puts a great deal of pressure on you; you’re always trying to avoid being a brilliant flash in the pan.”

Careers seldom develop in exactly the way they’re planned, and the ability to change gears and move on is crucial. “My agent thought that Don Giovanni would become an international calling card for me, but it never did,” Black says. He nevertheless bursts out laughing when remembering the 1991 première of Göran Järvevelt’s Don Giovanni production for OA. “The Don G leather shorts had a huge impact on opening night – I still remember the intake of breath as I scurried down the ladder leading from Donna Anna’s bed chamber…for years, those black leather shorts were my claim to fame.”

Now settled in London, where his wife’s career has taken root and his children have received the bulk of their education, Black is grateful for the opportunities that came with that first competition win and his 20-year Australian career.