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On the eve of retirement, Opera Australia’s executive producer Stuart Maunder tells Randolph Magri-Overend about his musical journey
April 1983 proved to be an important landmark in Stuart Maunder’s life because he met Simone Young for the first time. The occasion was an amateur production of the G&S double bill Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore with The Lane Cove Light Opera Company. Maunder was a resident assistant director with The Australian Opera (AO) [now Opera Australia] and had been given the opportunity to direct something from scratch by the late Gordon Wilcox, then a principal tenor with the AO and a singing teacher in his spare time. |
| Wilcox had cast most of his pupils in the principal roles and I happened to be one of them. Young (who incidentally was my music coach) had just finished the opera course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and, contemplating a career as a music teacher, was handed her conducting debut with Pinafore. It must have made quite an impression because Young, following a stint as a repetiteur at the AO, became a protégé of Daniel Barenboim in Berlin and later blossomed as a conductor and music director of prestigious musical organisations. In addition, Greg Yurisich, then a principal baritone with the AO and currently the artistic director (and founder) of the Australian Opera Studio in his native Western Australia, was the musical supremo of the Lane Cove project.
Forward tracking to the present day I find myself at the Opera Centre in Elizabeth Street to talk to Maunder about his impending retirement (1 January next year) from the executive producer role at Opera Australia. For a 50-year-old cultural icon, married to singer Ann-Marie McDonald, it is a momentous decision especially after spending so many years with Australia’s premier opera company. His daughter, Lucy, is carrying on the family tradition and at the time of writing is in the cast of the Lyric Theatre production of The Rocky Horror Show.
Maunder was brought up in Boggabri in rural NSW and showed an affinity for the stage, joining the Tamworth Musical Society before attending university. Moffatt Oxenbould saw his work as senior stage manager of the Melbourne production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and invited him to join the AO. His first opera stint was assisting Christopher Renshaw in 1981. The opera was Norma and included Rita Hunter and Lamberto Furlan.
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