Opera Australian?

AS Lyndon Terracini takes over the artistic reins at the national opera company, experts and aficionados are asked for their take on where he, and the organisation, should be headin.

LAST week Lyndon Terracini, Opera Australia's new artistic director, gave a provocative speech in which he signalled he wants a new path for the company, one that challenges the status quo about making art.

Terracini, most recently artistic director of the Brisbane Festival, follows Richard Hickox, who died suddenly a year ago on Monday after five years as OA's music director.

In the months leading up to his death from a heart attack, he had fended off complaints that his choices were too British, that he had frozen out mid-career local singers, that standards were declining and that he put 20th-century work ahead of the "high opera" of the Richard Bonynge days and the intellectually driven offerings of star conductor Simone Young. Expectations are high that Terracini - who has had a long career here and overseas as an opera singer and innovative theatre director - will bring a particularly Australian dimension to the company. What does that mean?

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THE COMPOSER
ANDREW FORD's latest opera, Rembrandt's Wife, premiered at Victorian Opera in April. He presents The Music Show on ABC Radio National on Saturday mornings.

IT is very important that we begin to establish an Australian repertory. One of the things to do would be a new production of Voss [the Richard Meale opera based on Patrick White's novel]. If you ask what are the great Australian operas, you might mention Voss, but when was the last time it was performed? We need a new production. The Jim Sharman production in 1987 was fine but it is a mark of maturity that someone else should have a look at it. And it is Richard Meale's 80th birthday in 2012, which would make it appropriate timing.

An Australian style - if that's what we want - will either come of its own accord or not at all. You can't force it. There's an OA production of Hansel and Gretel that features a jar of Vegemite; but that's just reaching for a cliche and giving people a laugh. I think in fact you do the opposite. You find the best people and if there is a national style, it will emerge. It can't be imposed.

 There is a lot of talk about how we must all tell Australian stories, but I think we have to tell the best stories, and if they are told by people in Australia, they will become Australian stories. It's worth remembering that Verdi's most famous opera was set in Egypt [Aida] and that his last two operas [Otello and Falstaff] were based on plays by Shakespeare. Benjamin Britten adapted Guy de Maupassant and Thomas Mann and American authors such as Henry James, yet no one would suggest that the work is not quintessentially English.

Lyndon is a fantastic appointment. If you look at his career, he has done a lot of new music and a great deal of commissioning. Commissioning is not a tendency with him, it's a habit. At the same time he is inheriting the company at a time when a lot of things seem to be going right. In the past fortnight I have seen Jim Sharman's Cosi fan tutte and Neil Armfield's Peter Grimes, both of which are very successful, and in the case of Grimes possibly the best production of any opera I have ever seen. And waiting in the wings is Bliss [Brett Dean's new work, based on the Peter Carey novel, which will be directed by Armfield next year], which is the most hotly anticipated Australian work since Voss.

So this is a good moment for anybody to be taking over, and particularly anyone who will want to place an emphasis on new works, whether completely new or a new production. As for bringing back the Italian repertoire, you get a change of direction when you get a different leader. You could argue equally that in recent years OA has been famous for doing Janacek and Britten and that building on those strengths is sensible. As for criticism of Richard Hickox, of course he kept some people out: that's what directors do, they make choices. But I wasn't aware of any dropping off in standards or of any absence of Australian singers. You need to encourage local artists because, apart from anything else, they are cheaper because they live here. The same goes for local composers and conductors.

I think it is a bit of a furphy to worry about pulling in younger audiences. OA needs to fill the place and I don't think it matters how old they are. People say they go to Musica Viva and notice everyone has grey hair. Well, audiences at Musica Viva concerts have always had grey hair but they are not the same people who were there 40 years ago. You have to be very careful about the kind of marketing that says, well, you know, it's not really opera. Call it what it is. Audiences are like dogs, they sniff when you are afraid and they will turn on you.

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THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
RICHARD MILLS is artistic director of West Australian Opera and a distinguished composer and conductor.

I AM not sure what an Australian style means when it is applied to opera. If you mean the things that have made the company what it is at its best, like this Peter Grimes - good production, fine singing, tremendous depth of company, a chorus that would be the envy of any opera house in the world, and a fine orchestra - let's have more of this Australian style because it can benchmark comfortably with pretty well anything that goes on in the world.

Of course, there will always be the big, specialised roles - Wagner, Verdi, Puccini - that the company has to cast internationally. Any company has to do that. There are probably only about 10 Tristans in the world at any one time, probably only about six Brunnhildes.

The company needs to re-engage with the Italian repertoire, which is the basis of all singing and the basis of the practice of opera. There is a tremendous legacy in that repertoire for Opera Australia from the Cillario years. [Carlo Felice Cillario was guest conductor at OA from 1975 to 2003]. This is what tradition and history mean: a legacy of musical intelligence such as Cillario's, which should remain part of the company's heritage.

As an artistic director you need a warm heart but a shrewd head, and the head has to rule the heart. At the end of the day, even if something has been a success it doesn't help that empty feeling around a boardroom when there is a serious hole in the budget and no one knows where to find the money. It has always been important to balance the books. It was important to Offenbach, it was important for all the 19th-century impresarios of Italy. That is why Handel stopped writing Italian operas: because people got sick of them. Art is created in a milieu and unless that milieu is rich and has genuine aspects of engagement with a substantial quantity of people, it will die.

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THE SINGER
LISA GASTEEN is a Brisbane-based internationally acclaimed Australian soprano, best known for her performances of Wagner.

AS long as arts organisations look outside Australia for approval we will not develop our own identity or anything that is really important for us. However companies proceed, it should be for us. We need our own style. In my experience there have been only two times when anyone overseas took any notice of Opera Australia: when Richard Bonynge was in charge [1975-86] and then when Simone Young was in charge [2001-2003]. So I don't think overseas attention should be the focus. The company needs to look at the singers they have and decide what they can put on using the best Australian singers. They need some international stars, of course, to stimulate interest and buzz and make it more stimulating for local performers. As to future productions, of course my bent is [Richard] Strauss and Wagner and Verdi. I'm not a big Mozart fan or a big Rossini fan. In fact, I am not a fan of Rossini at all. But I think in the end it depends on who they have to use.

Lyndon will invigorate the company and will promote a more innovative and non-traditional way. He will bring a new respect for the singers because he was a singer and that will boost morale. I think he might be more innovative, too, in terms of programming and venues. The company is so locked into performing at the Opera House but it is not always the best venue. OA needs to build up younger audiences and to attract and hold its normal traditional audience. It's a huge task to appeal to such a broad spectrum but it comes down to the quality of performance. Lazy people use the elitist tag about opera but the stories are not elite; they are something everyone can relate to.

We are in a very visual age where we are filmed, so performers need to be easy on the eye. But even lovers come in different shapes. They are not all tall and slim. You can have squat lovers and fat lovers and lanky lovers, because people are people.

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THE SUPPORTER
IAN DICKSON is a long-time patron of Opera Australia. He lives in Sydney.

ONE of the great strengths of OA is that because of our distance from the rest of the world we have built up a real ensemble. It's a reason why we are so strong on the Janaceks and the Brittens. But we are in something of a transitional period. A lot of stalwarts have retired in the past few years and the ensemble could do with some beefing up. You have some very good young people and people at the end of their careers but you have to find some versatile mid-career singers, and not necessarily from overseas. There are some good mid-career singers here who have not been used.

The company needs to also get out of that awful theatre [the Opera Theatre in the Sydney Opera House] as much as they possibly can. The main repertoire has to be done there, but it's a problem theatre and it seems to deter a lot of people who are daunted by the Opera House.

 I would like to see them doing at least one or two smaller-scale things [outside the Opera House]. Why not think in terms of Angel Place [the recital hall in Sydney's business district] and do a series of partly staged one-act operas, starting at 6.30pm, out by 8pm, time for dinner.

It's difficult to get Australian works up but even more difficult to get a second production. There are quite a few works that would be worthwhile investigating again. Malcolm Williamson wrote some quite successful operas in the 1950s. I'll pick one: Our Man in Havana, based on the Graham Greene novel. Greene himself said he liked it more than the book. Or something from Peggy Glanville-Hicks?

 I love the core Italian repertoire but if you are talking about doing things that are distinctive and right for the company, then 20th-century work and Australian work is the way to go. A problem with the Italian repertoire is finding the right voices. It's a problem around the world. Where are the really good Verdi voices? Nowadays you can sing quite a range of stuff and you don't have to develop quite that size of voice. And of course people are now looking for glamorous singers. We are a much more visual culture but the worry is that you will lose the singers and voices. The recent Cosi was inventive and funny but was it the best Mozart singing you would hear?

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THE DIRECTOR
BENEDICT ANDREWS is an Australian theatre director now based in Berlin. He will direct a new production of The Marriage of Figaro for OA next year.

WE need programming that unsettles opera and reinvigorates the canon. You need to open up a greater dialogue with other art forms and invite artists from other mediums to engage with opera. There also needs to be very active commissioning; for example, an engagement with lyric poets like Luke Davies and L.K. Holt. Why not commission Nick Cave to do something?

The temptation with opera is to only see it in the past and not look for ways to encourage it to be in a dynamic relationship with the present. But that doesn't mean adopting a Gilbert and Sullivan approach. It is too easy to do that and I would want to see it go in the opposite direction.

 You need to be very aggressive in your pairing of directors and repertoire opera so that you get the most dynamic and surprising mix possible, even at the risk of being shocked with what comes out at the other end. Otherwise, you end up with the status quo, which is often productions that are conceputally and aesthetically well behaved and where there is a false idea of historical fidelity to a period. You end up with costume drama. It is like an old-fashioned idea of a museum.

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THE STUDENT
BENEDICT COXON has reviewed more than 20 OA productions for On Dit, the University of Adelaide's student newspaper. He is South Australian Rhodes scholar for 2009 and is studying at Oxford.

AS a South Australian, I think what we want from the national company are productions that people who live outside Melbourne and Sydney can't get at home. The other states have small companies with fewer opportunities to put on operas that might not be commercially successful. For example, I would love to see John Adams's Doctor Atomic in Australia.

I don't think it makes sense to try to stage productions that need a lot of international artists. When you are as geographically isolated as we are, it makes sense to have a really strong ensemble company. You keep seeing the same faces at OA and mostly you are delighted to see them again and again. In the end, it has to be about working with who you have got, not about trying to compete with overseas companies. Richard Hickox showed that co-productions, such as Rusalka, presented with Opera North, and Lakme, co-produced with L'Opera de Montreal, could be a commercially feasible way to offer Australian audiences some new productions of lesser-known works.

From a young person's point of view, price is a big problem. One of the best ways to market opera to younger people might be as a glamorous, dress-up occasion which will cost money. But this sort of marketing is a stopgap: if we want audiences, we need to expose people to opera as part of their music education. It would be great if Melbourne could have as many OA performances as Sydney, but I wonder if it is feasible. The Opera House must play a big role in Sydney, as a destination for tourists, with the opera sometimes being secondary to attending a performance there.

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LYNDON TERRACINI
Selected highlights

• A principal baritone with Australian Opera, 1975-80. Lived in Italy, 1980-88
• Singing engagements in Australia and Europe, 1989-2005, include El Cimarron in Perth, Melbourne and Barossa Music Festival; 8 Songs for a Mad King, Copenhagen, Berlin, Brisbane, Barossa and Sydney; Rosa, A Horse Drama, by Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway, Amsterdam, and film and CD recording
• Founder and chief executive of Northern River Performing Arts, 1993-2003, where he wrote text and music for several productions, and directed and performed
• Artistic director and chief executive of Queensland Music Festival 2000-05
• Artistic director and chief executive of Major Brisbane Festivals, 2006-09
• Winner of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Award for Cultural Leadership, 2005
• Took up post as artistic director of Opera Australia on October 26 this year
   

What they say about Terracini:
 

"Lyndon has been an amazing performer. In the early 1990s he starred in a production of Rosa in Amsterdam, his then comely - and naked - form beamed into the lounge rooms of Europe in a live telecast. He knows the business of opera from the inside out."  Richard Mills, November

"It helps immeasurably if a festival director is the kind of person who seriously enjoys a good time. While Terracini has placed quality high on the list of essentials for festival events, there has always been a messy, slightly risque and raucous quality within his programming. Genteel is not a word that can be applied to either the man or his arts festival." Rosemary Sorensen, The Australian, October

 "Terracini is a charismatic performer at any time, but he positively sizzles in Casanova Confined, an all-too-brief solo chamber work in which the legendary lover rages around his prison under the roof of the Doge's Palace in Venice before escaping to Paris."  Deborah Jones, The Australian, September 1995

"As the smouldering, explosive, shrieking, whispering, singing, expansive, fierce, suddenly sly runaway slave [in Hans Werner Henze's El Cimarron] he was tremendous. It might be glib, but it also is irresistible to see in Terracini ... that honest, open vitality and naturalness which make Australian art, and Australians, so invigorating to encounter." Andrew Porter, The New Yorker, April 1976.