Opera Australia’s Carmen shows way to Uluru’s post-climb future
Uluru may be closed to climbers but the sacred monolith in the Red Centre was the backdrop for some operatic magic.
As our tour bus draws close to Uluru, two figures can be seen silhouetted against the early morning sky. They are on the steep slope above Chicken Rock, the tumble of boulders that, until recently, was a litmus test of people’s ability to climb higher.
It’s only seven days since the ban on scaling the Anangu people’s beloved red monolith came into play. Could these bozos really be defying the traditional owners’ wishes, and the law, risking a fine of up to $10,000?
Then the sun’s rays highlight their fluoro tradie shirts. These men aren’t climbing the rock; they are dismantling the chain that enabled so many visitors to make a last-ditch scramble up the landmark before the climb closed.
To see those links being removed feels like the closing of a book, one with a plot that stretches back to October 26, 1985, when the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Land Trust was granted inalienable freehold title to the national park of which Uluru is the centrepiece. Back further to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976, and to the 1950s, when an airstrip and motels were built, outrageously, right next to the rock. Back to the 1870s when explorers Ernest Giles and William Gosse became the first white men to see Uluru. And back tens of thousands of years.
The climb may be closed but the rock is very much open. Families pedal bicycles around the base, and small groups of Segway riders zoom along the dusty trails. Walkers wander up to rock faces where centuries’ worth of indigenous teachings are painted on sandstone walls like classroom blackboards. On a distant sandy ridge we see a string of riders astride camels.
Opera Australia is making its debut performance at Uluru on the Saturday evening of my visit, showcasing its talent pool in a spectacular outback setting. The event adds yet another string to this iconic destination’s bow, but right now, we’re here for the rock.
Grant Hunt, chief executive of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia, which manages Ayers Rock Resort, has no concerns about Uluru’s future in the post-climb landscape. He believes the destination is more compelling than ever, thanks largely to the authentic nature of its indigenous cultural activities. This month has seen a record number of reservations, he says, and bookings beyond summer look strong.
“We know that when Australians visit us they connect with a very special part of our country,” he says.
I am midway through a Desert Awakenings tour that saw me and my companions up before dawn to watch the sunrise paint a pastel canvas behind Uluru and, in the opposite direction, bathe Kata Tjuta, formerly the Olgas, in a golden glow.
At a private viewing platform, we munched bacon and egg rolls, fruit and freshly baked damper, sipping tea and coffee while Australia’s Red Centre put on a magnificent light show.
Guide Toby Wright has been entertaining and educating us in equal measure.
The former bank employee came to Uluru three years ago and decided to tackle two things that frightened him: public speaking and driving big trucks. He appears to have mastered these tasks, so much so he can recite Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country flawlessly while steering an enormous 4WD bus along dirt roads. As we travel under the poet’s “pitiless blue sky”, Toby introduces us to the concept of tjukurpa, the stories, songs and dances at the heart of the Anangu people’s social, spiritual and ethical beliefs.
Uluru creation stories tell of a nasty shapeshifting dog called Kurpany, a vengeful python known as Kuniya, and Lungkata, a deceitful blue-tongue lizard. Just like Grimm fairytales, each of the stories has a moral — tell the truth, heed warnings, and so on.
Toby points out the geological features of Uluru that Anangu cite as proof of their tjukurpa: deep cracks (caused by blows from a digging stick); a series of holes (from spears); caves (used as hiding places).
Toby’s tour builds on insights gained from a dot-painting workshop the day before.
Sitting in the town square of Ayers Rock Resort, indigenous artist Sarah, her Pitjantjatjara translated by host Kara, deftly draws in the red dirt. Her fingers create the tracks of emu and kangaroo and the symbols for a meeting place and men’s and women’s tools. Then we’re given paints and a canvas with which to create our own stories using the same motifs. Our efforts pale in comparison to Sarah’s; she sits in the shade, placing dots on a canvas with remarkable speed and skill.
We retreat to the airconditioned comfort of Sails in the Desert resort, where executive chef Christian Meinhardt plates up dishes made with ingredients that would rarely be seen in his native Germany: wattle seed, warrigal leaves, bush tomatoes and desert limes.
Lunch share platters are delivered with clearly labelled samples of the raw produce alongside the likes of kangaroo tartare, soft-shelled crab and falafel.
Outside at the swimming pool, which sits beside a grove of smooth-barked ghost gums, guests are seeking relief from the soporific afternoon heat.
The resort is at capacity, with many here for Opera Australia’s landmark first performance. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation for the event.
When the time comes, buses deliver us to a picture-perfect outback venue; chairs are arranged in rust-coloured sand, the area is strung with fairy lights and Uluru stands sentinel in the distance.
As the sun sinks low, the globes in Bruce Munro’s adjacent Field of Light begin their meditative rainbow dance. A slow-moving grass fire, sparked by a dry lightning storm the previous night, presents an ominous glow a disconcertingly short distance away.
The performers — sopranos Natalie Aroyan, Lorina Gore and Angela Hogan, tenor Simon Kim and baritone Haotian Qi — and musicians from the Opera Australia Orchestra have been stoically rehearsing in conditions only Central Australia can deliver: searing heat and a relentless gritty gale. Mercifully, the wind and temperature have eased.
Young gun Qi takes a pew at the end of our row of seats and, before we know it, the Chinese-born singer has been cheekily introduced to the audience as the Barber of Seville.
Taking the stage, he transforms into the garrulous Figaro and launches into Largo al factotum. There follows a parade of opera’s greatest hits: 13 more arias from Carmen, La Boheme, Aida, The Pearlfishers, La Traviata, Faust, Tosca, the beautiful Flower Duet from Lakme and, of course, Nessun Dorma from Turandot.
When Hogan glides seductively across the stage in a glamorous scarlet gown to take the microphone as Carmen, red dust rises in a backlit cloud in her wake.
The music is magnificent but the desert setting almost steals the show.
Penny Hunter was a guest of Voyages Ayers Rock Resort.
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No other place like Uluru: Terracini
Speaking just hours before Opera Australia’s inaugural performance at Uluru, artistic director Lyndon Terracini is effusive in his enthusiasm for the destination, a place he has wanted to perform at for years.
He first visited the rock in 2017 and recalls feeling an “incredible presence and spirituality”.
He sees the Uluru concerts as an opportunity to further democratise the opera art form. The artists, who were all visiting the rock for the first time, conducted workshops at the local school and performed for students at the concert venue. They sang in 40C heat as a gale “blew red dust over the musicians’ instruments and down the singers’ throats … but they really wanted to do it and they thought it was important to do”, he says.
This year’s concert was a celebration of some of the most beautiful music ever written. Next year, Terracini says, it will be about reconciliation and forgiveness; bringing an overwhelmingly European art form to the heart of Australia, “this temple to indigenous culture”, and marrying the two.
“It’s not about being separate, it’s about finding bridges so we can connect with each other,” he says.
“There is no other place like it on the planet. And I think for us as Australians it’s vitally important that we genuinely understand what that means to us,” Terracini says, adding: “It’s easy to have a bucket list of places to visit around the world but if people allow themselves the time to come here and experience this place, and just sit in front of that extraordinary monolith, it’s an amazing experience.”
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Marriage of Figaro on next year’s Red Centre program
Opera Australia announced last week that it would return to Uluru next year with an expanded program of four performances running from December 11-13.
This year’s event sold out in five days. Packages for the 2020 shows went on sale on Friday and start from $725 a person, including twin-share accommodation at Desert Gardens Hotel plus entry to the Opera at Uluru Gala Concert.
In addition to that event, the program will feature an outdoor performance of the final act of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at Sails in the Desert, a sunrise recital of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes, and a dawn concert by soprano Taryn Fiebig with cello.
Entry to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park costs $25 a person for a three-day pass.
The Maraku Arts Dot Painting Workshop goes for 1½ hours; from $72 a person.
The Desert Awakenings tour goes for about six hours and includes pick-up and drop-off, breakfast and guide; from $185 a person.
Jetstar operates 14 weekly flights to Ayers Rock Airport from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with additional flights from Darwin.
opera.org.au; parksaustralia.gov. au/uluru; ayersrockresort.com.au; jetstar.com/au
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