Opera in Sydney

Walking—and singing—on water

The Economist:

SYDNEY’S famous harbour has undergone several character changes. Once a rich source of food for Australia’s indigenous aborigines, it later evolved into the country’s biggest trading port and a point of arrival for ship-borne immigrants. On March 24th Sydney Harbour was transformed once again, this time into an opera venue. Opera Australia, the country’s main opera company, staged a triumphant premiere performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” on a water-borne stage before an audience of 3,000 people on shore. Nothing like this had ever been done before.

The dimly-lit roof sails of the Sydney Opera House, the company’s usual home, provided a stunning backdrop across the water. For once, Australia’s most iconic structure took second place, set against the daring new stage. The only other place where a water-borne set has been achieved was at the Bregenz Festival in Austria, where opera is staged on a lake. “But it’s nothing like this,” says Adrian Collette, Opera Australia’s chief executive. “You wouldn’t want to under-estimate how operationally difficult this is.”

The location, in one of the world’s finest harbour settings, made the risk worth taking. Mrs Macquarie’s Point (named after the wife of Lachlan Macquarie, one of Australia’s most visionary colonial governors) looks across the water to Sydney’s botanic gardens, the opera house, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the skyscrapers of the city’s business district. The setting has already hosted a popular open-air cinema during the summer months, with a screen that rises majestically from a pontoon on the water. During a visit to the cinema two years ago Lyndon Terracini, Opera Australia’s artistic director, seized on the idea of staging an opera on the harbour.

But a screen on a pontoon is one thing. A fully fledged grand opera, designed to lure international opera lovers and boost Sydney’s standing as a travel destination, is quite another. The budget for the three-week season turned out to be A$11.5m ($11.9m). Some funds came from Opera Australia’s box-office revenue, and a grant from Destination New South Wales, a state government agency. But the deal was clinched with a donation (reported at A$3m) from Haruhisa Handa, a businessman and arts philanthropist from Japan, whose name adorns the event’s title, “Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour”.

As the opening night approached, two hurdles emerged. One was money. Since the idea’s birth, the value of the Australian dollar has soared against most currencies. The numbers of overseas visitors to Australia from Europe and America (but not China) have fallen in the past year. The opera company is not discussing how much this might have upset its earlier box-office calculations. But Mr Collette says the company had always expected the “La Traviata” season to establish the idea of a harbour opera for other productions over coming years: “I’m confident this will become an iconic event in Australia.”

After Sydney’s wettest summer in years, the weather also threatened to spoil things. But on opening night, the sky was flawless. As the sun set over the city lights, the capacity audience settled back in tiered seating flanked by towering palm trees and the harbour wall. Having got this far, Mr Terracini was not about to offer them something conventional: “If a traditional repertory company like Opera Australia wants to draw a younger audience, you have to change.”

With this in mind Francesca Zambello, the director, and Tess Schofield, the costume designer, relocated Verdi’s operatic story of Violetta, the doomed courtesan, from 19th-century Paris to the 1950s (“another era with a loose underworld grating against strict social conformity,” says Ms Schofield). Brian Thomson, the designer, conceived a large, tilted stage shaped like a mirror in a gilt frame. The stationary stage was built across pylons drilled into the harbour seabed; they will stay there for future productions. Virtually the only prop was an enormous chandelier suspended from an almost invisible crane above the stage.

With this spare but arresting setting, Ms Zambello says she wanted to connect the story to the visual world of contemporary Sydney, and its energetic outdoor life. The sprawling stage turned into a dazzling display of matadors, vibrant ’50s fashion and chorus members arriving for the performance’s second half by water taxi, a popular Sydney transport mode.

None of this flamboyance upstaged the three central outstanding performances by Emma Matthews as Violetta, Gianluca Terranova as her lover Alfredo, and Jonathan Summers as Giorgio, Alfredo’s father. The cast was fitted with tiny microphones to carry their voices through the night air. This was an unavoidable compromise, despite disapproval from some opera purists.

Australians are not usually given to offering standing ovations. But the audience of 3,000 rose spontaneously to applaud the inaugural event’s seemingly flawless management. The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra had been hidden from view under the stage, a precaution against even a few drops of rain hitting their instruments. Brian Castles-Onion, the conductor, led the entire orchestra on stage afterwards. Even the large technical crew, who had made it all work, ran on stage in their overalls and reflective vests to bow, if a bit self-consciously. As an exercise in pushing boundaries, Opera Australia’s gamble paid off.

Opera Australia’s season of “La Traviata” runs until April 15th

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