Opera often appears to be one of the (many) species endangered by current Australian society. The lists of Australian composers and Australian works are short, and the seasons of any productions - and memories of them - are shorter.
Did you miss Richard Meale's opera Voss, from Patrick White's novel of the same name? Widely labelled the Great Australian Opera, it was commissioned by The Australian Opera, premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 1986, did Sydney and Melbourne and then, in 2011, was added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's Sounds of Australia registry. But don't worry - it comes back courtesy of Vic Opera later this year - a hugely anticipated and ambitious project. We'll be there, through generosity of Vic Opera.
Meanwhile, don't look for a DVD of Voss. Or of Richard Mills' shattering operatic account of the wreck of the Batavia. The only available video recordings of past Australian opera composers' triumphs are of Mills' Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and two more recent operas by Brett Dean. His much lauded version of Peter Carey's novel, Bliss was recorded by ABC and is available on Vimeo (we'll get to that). And his more recent Hamlet currently boasts the only international success of Aussie opera - premiered in Glyndebourne 2017 - we viewed it last year, it is now on the (possible) next season at the Met in New York.
Thus it was for The Eighth Wonder, Alan John's and Dennis Watkins’ opera telling the saga (or one side of it) of the artistic and political battles around the building of Sydney Opera House. It was produced, in Sydney, three times, and disappeared - in a symbolic demonstration of its main premise, that Australian culture was antipathetical to opera! Recently, as documented in a detailed Limelight article, the opera has won its own website, devoted to storing safely a carefully restored libretto and score, as well as some of the rave reviews from those performances, and delightful images of costume design. You can visit the website here.
But how to view this apparent gem? There was apparently never a video record of the first staging in 1995, and the later staging, in 2016, was an ambitious experiment with audience outside and orchestra inside, singers moving between these worlds. Not good for recording!
One highly imperfect record remains, and we'll view it this week! The second 1995 performance was hastily screened on ABC TV, an unacknowledged and possibly illegal video was taken by someone, a copy was found by online searching in the US and has made its way to our group. It's our viewing this week.
Reviews of the 2016 performance raved (and blessed the messages about cultural cringe).
Here's Peter McCallum. 'In Dennis Watkins and Alan John's libretto, the story of how a moment of visionary post-war optimism from premier Joe Cahill and conductor Eugene Goossens weathered peevish artistic rivalry from The Maestro (Adrian Tamburini) and the skulduggery of opposition leader Robert Askin, to realise Joern Utzon's architectural masterpiece is a metaphor for nation building.'
The Guardian reviewer did detect a 'slight whiff of propaganda'.
Wondering why the great Australian blight on opera? Here's reflections in 2015 from the Guardian. A footnote: do they have to be Great Australian Operas to succeed? We've seen three new brief operas from Vic Opera this year.
In his glowing Limelight article, Kim Williams discusses the importance of the opera and why he recommends logging on to the eighthwondertheopera.com.
'In my view there are two truly great, large-scale, original Australian operas, The Eighth Wonder by Alan John with libretto by Dennis Watkins and John, and Voss by Richard Meale, composed to a libretto by David Malouf (based on the famous Patrick White novel). Both were commissioned and premiered by The Australian Opera (as Opera Australia was then known), a decade apart. Both are major masterpieces and deserve to be standard repertoire here and internationally.'
Lyn, 13 June, '21