How Opera Queensland conquered the outback
There are no shortage of hazards attached to performing in remote Australia, but crowds are flocking to the performances that ditch the constraints of an indoor stage, set to a backdrop of Insta-worthy sunsets.
Dusk is fast approaching at Camden Park Station, a 7300ha property about 1200km from Brisbane, and farmers on quad bikes are busy wrangling a herd of cattle. A couple of stragglers toss their large heads defiantly and threaten to wander off, but mostly, the herd moves slowly and obediently, nose to tail, across a flat, grassy plain.
With the setting sun forming a perfect blazing orb, the animals’ undulating backs seem to merge into a single silhouette as they inch across this vast pastoral station. Review is watching this spectacle unfold from Two Tree Hill – named for the only two trees in this paddock – and just metres away, some of the country’s best-known opera singers are putting the final touches to their hair, make-up and gowns, while classical musicians are tuning their instruments.
The artists – from Opera Queensland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra and University of Queensland’s Pulse Chamber Orchestra – are performing at Camden Park, an outback cattle and sheep station near Longreach, Queensland, which Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited in 1970. But first, the audience’s attention – and phone cameras – are drawn to the dazzling, wraparound sunset that is characteristic of these broad, open plains: look west and the sky turns an unearthly, sulfuric yellow, then a deep burnished gold and finally, a pinky-orange. Look in the opposite direction, and the relentless blue of a perfect autumn day gives way to a baby blue-tinted sky with soft pink accents.
Tonight, the Insta-worthy outback dusk – and star-pierced night sky that follows – share top billing with Opera Queensland’s Singing in the Night concert at Two Tree Hill. Leading singers Emma Matthews, Milijana Nikolic, Jud Arthur, Carlos Barcenas, Jose Carbo and Katie Stenzel have travelled hundreds of kilometres to perform highlights from Cleopatra, The Pearl Fishers and Marriage of Figaro, along with songs from The King and I and Sunday in the Park with George.
Despite the onerous performing conditions – daytime fly hordes, chilly night temperatures and tents doubling as dressing rooms – Matthews, who has performed at Covent Garden and is a seven-time Helpmann Award winner, considers it “an exciting opportunity to come and perform in the most beautiful place and revisit characters I have done before. I love these adventures – particularly to parts of Australia I might not have seen (otherwise).’’
Singing in the Night is a centrepiece of Opera Queensland’s 2023 Festival of Outback Opera, which has grown rapidly since its inception in 2021 and is focused on the remote towns, Longreach and Winton.
The flagship company certainly knows how to appeal to its regional audiences. Its outback opera galas include short compositions by Brisbane composer Robert Davidson set to Banjo Paterson poems, and rousing renditions of Paterson’s and Christina Macpherson’s famous bush ballad, Waltzing Matilda.
This song is an alternative national anthem in Winton and Longreach, where the main street houses a saddlery and the Royal Flying Doctor Service and where ex-stockman John Hawkes rides his white bullock, Ollie, into town. Hawkes and Ollie regularly call into Longreach’s pubs for a beer – for each of them. Hawkes tells Review his 900kg bullock “is placid and lovely”, is welcome at two local pubs and prefers his beer “Kimberley cool” (at room temperature). “He is much photographed and he doesn’t drink to excess,’’ insists the former stockman.
The Camden Park gala sold out – extra seats were added at the last minute – as locals, grey nomads, other tourists and dignitaries including Queensland Governor Jeannette Young and immunologist and former Australian of the Year, Ian Frazer, flocked to the event. For Young, who opened Singing in the Night, the opera festival is “a brave and bold idea’’ and an experience “to remember for a lifetime’’.
Opera Queensland chief executive and artistic director Patrick Nolan says bringing this high-end art form – and the crossover shows that are a hallmark of his tenure – to outback audiences is central to his company’s mission.
The understated opera chief tells Review: “We are the state’s opera company. If it can be sung and there’s a story, that fits into our artistic profile. My belief is that audiences wherever they are should have access to the finest quality artists and artistic experiences – that isn’t something that should be exclusive to metropolitan centres.’’
Nolan says singers who have performed nationally and internationally “jump at” the chance to take part in the festival. “The singers contact us,’’ he says.
In a casting coup, Matthews performed in the 2023 festival’s two key concerts – the first, Dark Sky Serenade, was staged at Winton’s Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum.
This imposing museum is the repository of the world’s largest collection of antipodean dinosaur fossils, and the concert was performed above a spectacular rock platform known as the “Jump Up”.
Matthews says “I have done a fair bit of outdoor stuff’’ – including for Opera Australia on Sydney Harbour – and “there is something very exhilarating about the freedom you feel without the constraints of an indoor stage’’. The acclaimed soprano, who is head of classical voice at the West Australian Performing Arts Academy, adds: “To have that canopy of sky is just so beautiful.’’
This year, Opera Queensland secured additional funding from the state’s arts and outback tourism departments to expand the festival. The line-up included two gala concerts, a “boots and ball gowns” ball, operatic long lunch, pub choir singalongs, pop-up performances and a schools program. Then there is Lady Sings the Maroons, a “deep dive into the Queensland songbook’’ which celebrates household-name performers from the sunshine state, from Aboriginal opera singer Harold Blair to The Saints, The Go Betweens and Megan Washington.
In Winton, this low-tech, high-wattage show is performed by the young powerhouse quartet Irena Lysiuk, Marcus Corowa, Luke Volker and Jess Hitchcock (who regularly performs with Paul Kelly) at the local football oval. Some of the pop and rock covers are given clever, operatic twists and the show – which is still touring Queensland – earns two standing ovations.
As the festival expanded, audience demand for air tickets and hotel beds outstripped supply, particularly in Winton, a town of less than 1000 people: “More people have wanted to come than we’ve been able to put into hotel beds,’’ says Nolan. “It’s a great problem to have – that kind of demand.’’
Still, the Opera Queensland boss hopes the beds shortage can be resolved, as does Winton mayor Gavin Baskett, who is pushing for more motel development in his town.
Baskett says he “had never been to opera until Opera Queensland came here” but now considers himself a convert. He believes Winton locals are also “coming on board” although it’s “baby steps” with some residents.
He says the opera festival is “phenomenal for the local economy” with local shops, hotels and cafes seeing a big uptick in demand. This underlines how cultural tourism is increasingly important to the economic survival of outback towns. “That is why council is so supportive of this festival,” Baskett says, pointing out that Winton also hosts an Australian film festival in its outdoor heritage cinema and a writers’ festival.
While some audience members fly in for the opera concerts, others put in marathon road trips: In Longreach, I meet a couple from northern NSW who have driven for three days to be here.
High-profile conductor Vanessa Scammell, who considers herself “a country girl”, has conducted Phantom of the Opera in Beijing, Athens and Australia and has been a regular with Opera Australia. She conducted the 2021 Festival of Outback Opera and reprised her role this year. “What this provides is a holistic experience,’’ she says.
Opera gala concerts are rare these days, and “not only do you go to an incredible outback setting with some of the top performers in Australian opera … (you) connect with the country and its people.’’
However, there is no shortage of hazards attached to performing in Australia’s remote backyard. This year, says Scammell, the performers needed to wear fly nets when rehearsing in the afternoon. Nolan recalls how, in 2021, a concert was interrupted by a medical emergency at Longreach Airport: a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane needed to take off, but the audience was seated on the tarmac.
Opera Queensland had been assured, Nolan says, that “no one comes on a Sunday night. Sure enough, we were halfway through the first act and sirens started going off, so we just took an early interval. It kind of captured the spirit of the festival. It’s about coming and being part of these communities. We took the risk, and the audience was totally cool.’’
He reveals that in 2022, late rains brought an infestation of moths and grasshoppers, with the former being fatally attracted to stage lights at Winton’s Jump Up. He jokes: “People thought it was some kind of sparkly effects we had created, but it was just thousands of moths being attracted to the light. There was a sense of Armageddon about that for a minute,’’ he says with a grin – the insects were drawn to the stage lights and died. “It was very operatic in that respect.’’
According to Nolan, logistics are the most challenging aspect of staging a week-long opera festival in the outback. This year’s program, which concluded on May 22, involved 82 singers and musicians, 14 cars, vans and trucks, nine buses and 20 venues. Most of Opera Queensland’s 28 staff were on the ground, taking on jobs from directing performances to driving artists to isolated venues to serving drinks at an operatic lunch at Winton’s Waltzing Matilda Centre, a museum focused on outback history and the creation of the legendary bush ballad.
At this museum, I talk to recently retired nurse and opera fan Georgina Dagg, who grew up in the tiny outback Queensland town, Mundubbera, and first encountered opera during a 1970s outback schools tour when she was 12.
“They performed The Barber of Seville and I fell in love with opera at that moment,’’ she says. The daughter of seed and produce merchants now lives in Brisbane, and organises group bookings to Opera Queensland seasons.
Her opera journey has come full circle, as she returns to the outback for the festival. “The big blue skies by day and big starry nights. To overlay that with the human voice is very special,’’ says Dagg.
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For 25-year-old soprano Nina Korbe, 2023 marked her first outback opera festival and “it has been absolutely splendid’’. A member of Opera Queensland’s young artists program, Korbe performed at venues including Winton’s Waltzing Matilda Centre and caravan park and a cultural tourism forum.
Korbe’s trip to remote Queensland was significant for another reason: through a successful native title claim spearheaded by her family, the Indigenous singer learned that her great-great -great-grandparents are buried at Winton’s cemetery. During the outback opera tour, she made her first pilgrimage to her ancestors’ country and Koa elders Michael Mace and Lance O’Chin accompanied her and performed a smoking ceremony.
“It was an incredibly special opportunity to come out here and perform and be on my lands for the first time,’’ says the singer, who trained at Queensland’s Conservatorium of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London.
“I have always been aware of my Indigenous heritage. My original tribe was Wakka Wakka … but we were also able to trace our history back out to Winton, which is Koa and we’ve just been given native title out here.
“My great-great-great-grandparents are buried here, Mary Ann Watson and Bill Watson.’’ This couple died in 1919 and both were from the Koa tribe. Their three daughters “were taken away from Winton and scattered”. Two daughters ended up at the Cherbourg mission, where Korbe’s grandmother was born. “It’s been incredibly overwhelming but in the best possible way,’’ this poised young woman says of visiting her traditional lands – and paying her respects at her ancestors’ graves.
Brisbane-based Korbe sang with Opera Queensland’s chorus while she was a student and says of performing for country audiences: “There is a misconception that opera is elitist and can only be seen in large theatres as quite a spectacle. Opera tells some of the truest stories about human emotion and it should be able to reach everybody, regardless of their geographic location.’’
Another outback festival singer with a moving story is Jud Arthur. Originally from New Zealand, Arthur has played professional rugby union in Italy. These days, the bass singer juggles opera roles with his job as a farrier, shoeing horses in the NSW Southern Highlands. During the festival, this imposing singer revelled in “the spectacle of the environment and the world class singing that is here’’.
Tragically, the singer’s wife Taryn Fiebig, a highly-regarded soprano, died from ovarian cancer in 2021. After his performance at the Jump-Up, Arthur said he felt as if he was singing to Taryn; an admission that almost brought the big man to tears.
In Winton, a pub choir was held at the North Gregory Hotel, an art deco gem that exudes a slightly faded grandeur, where it’s believed Waltzing Matilda was first publicly performed. In the same town where a toilet block offers facilities for “rams” and “ewes”, Opera Queensland’s Jason Barry Smith and Nick Kirkup managed to coax locals into singing Gilbert and Sullivan and a chorus from Madame Butterfly.
Soprano Katie Stenzel hosted and performed in the opera galas and at the opera ball. “Extraordinary is the only word I can use for it,’’ says the versatile singer.
“It’s been a real cup-filling experience – not only on an artistic level but also on a human level of connecting with people.’’
At one outdoor concert, Stenzel wore a beautiful silver gown with spaghetti straps, despite the mercury plummeting after sunset. “I had my trusty puffer jacket side stage,’’ she confesses, and she packed her thermal long johns in case of colder weather. “I think it’s so important that the arts are accessible,’’ says the coloratura soprano, who has worked with the country’s leading companies. “Opera has the stigma of elitism still attached to it, but it was originally written for the people, for rowdy crowds. I think touring opera to the regions is vital if we want it to continue as a major art form.’’
Opera Queensland’s Lady Sings the Maroons tours to Roma tonight and then to Kingaroy, Toowoomba, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Rosemary Neill travelled to Longreach courtesy of Opera Queensland.
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