‘Winds of change’ must be embraced at Opera Australia

Given the devastating impact of the pandemic on audiences and artists, and the pressure to remain financially sustainable, many artists and arts’ boards are so immersed in constantly changing schedules and crisis management that they have little time and no resources for anything other than survival.

Few leaders of arts organisations can find the optimism, and resources to imagine their company’s future, let alone strategise about it. So, it comes as welcome news that Opera Australia’s new chair, Professor Glyn Davis, assures us the company will “embrace the winds of change”.

Opera Australia’s recent production of Turandot was criticised for cultural appropriation and resorting to tired stereotypes.Credit: Oscar Colman

Major arts organisations throughout the world are interrogating new forms of cultural best practice, artistic vibrancy and innovative audience engagement. There are questions that need to be tabled, and perhaps the most pressing one for Opera Australia – following on from the Turandot controversy – is how does the company maintain its classical repertoire and build new audiences?

Ceasing to saddle timeless operas with revivals of productions frozen in time would be a good start. If the productions aren’t artistically vibrant and celebratory of our global status as a diverse country with innovative ideas, why would new audiences feel included or even interested in attending performances? Australia has a plethora of diverse, internationally acclaimed creatives. Why are we not seeing a proliferation of them emerge to direct and design Opera Australia’s productions, and, in turn engage new audiences?

Opera Australia seems to have made the “sensible” financial decision to invest in productions rather than ongoing relationships with directors, designers and choreographers. As a result, productions are revived without the input of the original creators. So the same wigs, costumes, makeup and carpets are used until they are literally worn out. The directors and designers are rarely invited back to reinvigorate productions being revived years later. With continual revivals frozen in time, the company risks presenting museum productions.

Glyn Davis is the new chair of Opera Australia board.Credit: Louie Douvis

If opera is just about experiencing awe-inspiring music, it is a lot cheaper and easier to stay at home and listen on a good sound system rather than buying a ticket and trying to find parking at the Sydney Opera House. Surely part of the magic of the experience is being immersed in the power of transformation with strangers. Great art provokes us to feel fiercely alive and reminds us we are not alone. It is unfortunate that revivals can have entirely the opposite effect.

I look forward to Opera Australia prioritising making opera and musical theatre that is fiercely alive.

Let’s have our major opera company ask itself the genuinely tough questions about the revivals they produce. Is the production current best practice? Is it innovative? Is it timely? Such interrogation takes organisational courage and new resourcing priorities, and it involves establishing long-term collaborative relationships with artists.

When Aidan Lang, then executive director of Seattle Opera, revived a production of Madame Butterfly that I directed for New Zealand Opera, he invested in creative relationships with the Australian designers, set and costumes designer Christina Smith and lighting designer Matt Scott. He flew all three of us over to Seattle for the entire rehearsal period, initiated discussions about changes we might want to make to the production and ensured our changes were fully resourced.

To ensure there was a modern context for the discussion of American imperialism, Lang organised an ongoing exhibition of Seattle’s Japanese American internment camps during the 2nd World War and commissioned and programmed American Dream, an opera about those internment camps to run in concert with the production.

Not everyone loves Verdi and Puccini, but I am fascinated by the journeys of their female characters. Take Madam Butterfly. In a transactional, patriarchal world, Cio Cio San is essentially horse-traded by the men who surround her. She embodies honour and love. She is also a daring risk-taker and dreamer prepared to live outside the mores and expectations of her own culture. Her capacity for love and dignified stoicism, coupled with exquisite music, moves me in a way I rarely experience in the theatre.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but let’s throw the bathwater out right away. The music is enjoyable, but the stories of Cio Cio San and other opera heroines can only resonate today if brought to life by fresh perspectives.

Artists in opera and musical theatre embrace change more than most. The art form is ephemeral. Opera Australia can produce classical opera and offer artistic vibrancy if the productions are new and timely and initiated by diverse teams of talented creatives and if contemporary operas are consistently introduced into the repertoire.

Including a diverse range of artistic voices in the conversation regarding Opera Australia’s future is imperative. Tenaciously exploring innovative ways to engage new audiences is imperative. Making new productions and supporting new opera is imperative. So let’s have the courage to have the tough conversations about the future of opera in our country, and let’s look forward to Opera Australia’s continuing evolution into an artistically vibrant company that leads a new audience of opera lovers into the next decade and beyond.

Kate Cherry is a member of the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre Faculty and a freelance director of opera and theatre based in Perth, Western Australia and Boston, USA.

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