By Joel Meares
Dear John,
Thank you for letting Sydney know that there are problems with the acoustics at the Sydney Opera House.
We hadn't noticed.
But "hideous", John? Only suitable for a circus? Really? Your attack today on the building that has spawned some of the most rewarding Lego puzzles of our time feels, frankly, a bit harsh.
John Malkovich in rehearsal for The Giacomo Variations. Credit: Reuters
"It's lovely to drive by on a motor boat and it has a very nice crew and very capable, but the acoustics are hideous," you told The Daily Telegraph. "I mean, I have only played in about 200 opera houses, and it certainly has acoustics that would do an airplane hangar disservice. For a catholicity of reasons, it's not the wisest place to put on anything... with the exception of maybe a circus."
The problem, you explained, is to do with the scale of the Concert Hall stage and the Joan Sutherland Theatre, where most opera is staged. They're too cavernous. "If I can't be hit by a tomato, that tells me the stage is too big."
Utzon's masterpiece is an airhead then: fun to look out, but a lot of vast-emptiness-related issues on the inside.
You're not the first to say this (that "we hadn't noticed" thing was a bit of Australian facetiousness. Sorry). Since QEII first opened the thing in 1973, in fact, it's been a pretty dependable discussion starter over house bubbly at openings and on the pages of newspapers like ours.
(Editor to lowly arts writer: Got a story? Arts editor to editor: Oh, yeah, someone said something about the House. Editor: To the printers!).
Most recently, acclaimed Opera director David McVicar had a dig to one of our own reporters. "The problems of the Joan Sutherland are extreme," he said. "It’s a very quirky space, it is inadequate for opera, it just simply is." He added that it was suitable for Mozart, handily the composer of Don Giovanni, which McVicar is staging for Opera Australia this month.
And your vegetable analogy is on point: size has always mattered in this debate. The Concert Hall, where your show The Giacomo Variations played, is huge, sound can bounce around and it is not frequently used for opera. Backstage at the Joan Sutherland and the wings are said to be too cramped, meaning some sets are almost impossible to get on stage, while the orchestra pit is tiny and can be hard to hear, especially for performers on stage. Stage designer Brian Thomson told Time Out magazine recently it was time to scrap the whole thing and build a new theatre into the sandstone wall across from the Sydney Opera House's stairs.
So, you're not the first - but you could be the most sour-grapey. We, as a city, are sorry you had to read our reviews of your 2011 'opera play' The Giacomo Variations, but I am not sure we agree with your assessment that "to a great extent the fault was... in the venue because more or less the same piece had a great deal more success in other places."
Our opera critic, Peter McCallum did agree that a more intimate venue might have suited the show, but he also suggested that the show - which mixes the words of Casanova with love stories from Mozart operas - suffered because "John Malkovich's dry and droll Casanova became as weary, flat and unprofitable as the ennui he bemoaned".
The New York Times, reviewing you in one of those other 200 opera houses you've performed in, Lincoln Centre, described the show as a "haphazard hybrid", reviewer Ben Brantley writing that being able to describe it as "Mozart meets Mamma Mia ... I'm afraid, accounts for most of the pleasure I derived from the The Giacomo Variations."
The problem with creatives blaming the Opera House for the failure of their creations is that there are too many excellent shows produced there for the argument to hold water. Witness in the Joan Sutherland John Bell's Tosca, in which guest tenor Yonghoon Lee blew that quirky, sound-distorting roof right off. Or this year's Rigoletto, when the orchestra, under conductor Renato Palumbo, produced exceptional sound. Or Neil Armfield's Billy Budd. The Sydney Symphony this year has made wonderful noise in the Concert Hall too, especially in concerts with Emanuel Ax.
You can't blame the cinema projector for the problems with Red 2 when 12 Years A Slave played on the same equipment the week before.
This is a hard letter to write, John, because (and I am sure all the critical journalists tell you this), I may be your biggest fan. My favourite film of all time is Being John Malkovich, a movie in which we spend most of our time in your head watching you do things like order from catalogues and talk to Charlie Sheen. And my favourite scene is a scene in which you enter your own head via a portal and find yourself in a restaurant full of John Malkoviches.
That's my favourite scene in all of cinema: dozens of Malkoviches in a movie called Malkovich who can only say the word Malkovich - that's how much I like you. And yet, much as I want to take your side, I can't shake what they say about craftsmen and their tools.
The Opera House's problems are many and widely acknowledged, even by those who work within its constraints. And in a perfect world a fat truck of money would roll down to Bennelong Point at dusk one day and dump a load of "fix it" money at the bottom of the steps. But those same people who've noted the venue's problems still manage to produce some of the finest works you'll see, and hear, on this country's stages. And possibly the world's.
Sincerely, Sydney.
PS: Just looked up "catholicity". Good word - I'm pinching it.