Strewth: Bob at the opera
Bob Dylan turned up at the Sydney Opera House to see Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Let’s start with jesters, assassins and acts of vengeance gone wrong — and how Bob Dylan went to check it out. No, he wasn’t in Canberra (boom tish, try the veal) but at the Sydney Opera House to see Verdi’s Rigoletto. Opera Australia bills it thus: “Royalty, loyalty, deformity, devotion, lust and revenge: this humdinger of an opera has everything.” (Chuck in that it features an assassin who goes about advertising his services to unhappy clowns, and you more or less have the precis of a Liberal partyroom debate on energy. But we digress.) Accompanied by his bass player and someone else, Dylan turned up at Friday night’s performance wearing a hoodie. (We saw someone in shorts at the opera once, so we’re relaxed about everything now.) They all went in via the stage door with Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini and took their seats. At intermission they didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity of a beer with a harbour view but stayed in position like a trio of Verdi fundamentalists. Once the opera had finished its beautiful journey to its unhappy end, Dylan lingered on, quizzing Terracini about the vocal techniques of opera singers and how on earth they managed to produce that sort of power without the aid of amplification, and so on. He left vowing to sing at one of his Sydney concerts for the Rigoletto singers.
Joining the dots
Terracini was, it would be fair to say, chuffed, telling Strewth: “It was extraordinary to host Bob Dylan at the Sydney Opera House, where we will do the new opera, Whiteley, as he knew Brett Whiteley and he is referenced in the opera.” Which is where this august organ’s arts editor, Ashleigh Wilson,comes in. Wilson, as undoubtedly you are aware, is the author of the marvellous biography Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing and is acting as a consultant on the Whiteley opera. “Bob and Brett were friends,” he told Strewth. “And while I was able to get in touch with a great number of high-profile friends of Brett — Mark Knopfler, Billy Connolly and so on — Bob Dylan proved elusive. He did agree to ‘look at some questions’ but unfortunately I never heard back. Anyway, Lyndon gave him a copy of my book. (Well, he gave it to Dylan’s bass player, but still.) I wrote him a note at the start, which felt exceptionally surreal. ‘Dear Bob …’ ”
Simon says
Maintaining our musical theme, we’ll mention that Labor frontbencher Mark Butler, who has traded his glasses for contact lenses, has been getting chipped by Christopher Pyne’s heckling calls of “You’re so vain”. Hearing this the other day, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack grabbed the Carly Simon theme and ran: “He probably thinks this parliament is all about him.” (While we’re talking about Nats, we gather one of their coal admirers made a small slip in a speech to the Nationals federal council at the weekend, with a rogue “on” accidentally replacing the “in” in the sentence “I went down in a coalmine”. An ardent expression of affection, but as it’s not musical we will move on.)
Punk not dead
Anthony Albanese also is keeping things tuneful, amping up his campaign for the ABC to acquire the broadcast rights to the documentary Descent into the Maelstrom: The Radio Birdman Story. Radio Birdman was one of Australia’s seminal punk bands, so there’s a good case to be made that the doco is a stronger part of our cultural history than, say, Midsomer Murders. (That said, your columnist did once compare watching Midsomer Murders to drowning in a bath of sweet tea. Yes, we understand these things are subjective.) Anyway, Albo’s quest has allowed him to get one of the rarer lines into Hansard: “A decision by the ABC to show this documentary will have all contemporary music fans singing ‘Yeah hup’.”
The brothers Blue
Albo’s looking more relaxed on the Nine Network’s Today now the energetic cycle of questions about Labor’s leadership has segued to an energetic cycle of questions about the Liberal leadership. Last Friday, Today host Karl Stefanovic’s first question to Albo’s sparring partner, Christopher Pyne,was: “Is Peter Dutton going to have a crack or not?” Not the case, Pyne insisted, while Albo clearly was back in his happy place dropping phrases such as “government in absolute chaos”. All well and good, but this item would have wrecked our musical theme were it not for Pyne’s mention of miscreant colleagues: “There’s a few people I think who are trying to put the band back together …” Yes, more than a hint of trouble at t’mill but, most important, a nod to the Blues Brothers. That’s the music box ticked.
strewth@theaustralian.com.au