Enjoy the magic of Mozart with Opera Australia

This month our national opera company’s 2012 Sydney season opens with a spectacular production of The Magic Flute as part of a composer-driven festival of three Mozart operas. Robert Clark talks to Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini about his 21st century vision for Opera Australia and to some of the stars of A Summer of Mozart: sopranos Elvira Fatykhova and Nicole Car, baritones Michael Lewis and Samuel Dundas, designer Ralph Myers and conductor Benjamin Northey.

In September 2009, on the cusp of commencing his role as Artistic Director with Opera Australia, Lyndon Terracini spoke during an interview with ABC Radio’s Monica Attard about the importance of narrative and logic in the programming of seasons. When pressed to detail exactly what he had in mind, Terracini avoided specifics as his opportunity to make creative choices had not yet arrived. ‘I mean, my first season won’t be until 2012,’ he admitted. And now, after his first two years as custodian of the national opera juggernaut, he reveals exactly what he meant.

The beginning of this season will certainly make an impact on Sydney, with A Summer of Mozart planned that will feature a bonanza of talent, theatrics, innovation and colour; not to mention the timeless appeal of Mozart’s music. When I asked him how this tied in with his overarching philosophy, the response was clearly born of a man heavily influenced by his experience at the helm of major festivals. ‘I always used to try and find an overarching narrative, or one going through the festival itself, a series of highs and lows so it becomes like a wave. In this case, it’s breaking the 2012 season up into a series of festivals. So in summer it’s a Mozart festival, and to break that down even further, it’s three wonderful Mozart operas, all in English: The Magic Flute directed by Julie Taymor, which is a tremendous production that we’re bringing from The Metropolitan Opera in New York; a new production of The Marriage of Figaro directed by Benedict Andrews; and Così fan tutte directed by Jim Sharman.’ <p>The Magic Flute opens on the sixth of January and will boldly herald the beginning of Terracini’s vision for Opera Australia. It is the only time in its history that The Met has allowed another opera company to use one of its productions in its entirety, and marks a real coup for Australian audiences. ‘Everyone was absolutely thrilled that we were able to do it,’ says Terracini, who visited New York and approached Taymor personally in order to procure her internationally lauded interpretation. In this one hour and forty minutes performance, sung in a new English translation by American poet JD McClatchy, period costumes give way to giant puppets, flying children and dancing animals. For one of Opera Australia’s rising stars, soprano Nicole Car, the combination of such spectacular visual imagery with Mozart’s music is ‘a very winning formula.’ Car will be singing Pamina, her first leading role for Opera Australia after completing a year in the Young Artist Program, and she couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity. ‘Mozart is like gold for the voice; it’s just beautiful to sing. I’m really looking forward to the first day of rehearsals because it’s a fantastic cast to be working with. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.’ It is certainly a youthful cast, with Car joined by two recent graduates of the development program, Andrew Jones (Papageno) and Jane Parkin (First Lady). Soprano Emma Pearson, returning from Germany where she is a principal artist with the Hessisches Staatstheater in Wiesbaden, will sing Queen of the Night.

Only a month after The Magic Flute opens in Sydney, a new production of The Marriage of Figaro will commence its season at the Opera Theatre, showcasing the talent of two shining lights of the theatre world: renowned designer and Artistic Director of Belvoir St Theatre Ralph Myers and maverick director Benedict Andrews. For Myers, getting the chance to return to his roots as a designer amidst the frenetic activity of his role at Belvoir St was a welcome gift. ‘I love it. Here at Belvoir I do a lot of things but not a lot of them necessarily involve practising my craft as a designer, so it’s great to have an opportunity to come to the opera and do that. And there’s no other company that gives you the sort of scale and resources that you get at Opera Australia, so it’s a great joy.’ The wunderkind designer has been collaborating with likewise precocious Benedict Andrews for the better part of a decade now, and the two have built a healthy respect for each other’s work. ‘I think Andrews is a great choice of director for an opera like Figaro,’ says Myers of his collaborator, ‘because, despite the fact that it’s such a firm favourite and is so loved and revered, it’s an incredibly radical opera – at the time that it was written by Beaumarchais and then adapted by Da Ponte and Mozart, it was highly incendiary.’ For veteran baritone Michael Lewis, who will be singing the role of Count Almaviva, the controversial nature of the story goes hand in hand with its sumptuous irreverence. ‘There is a lot of fun to be had in it, there’s a lot of terrific humour; it’s a real situation comedy in many ways.’ Lewis will be joined by a distinguished cast of Australian and international singers for this production, including Joshua Bloom playing Figaro after a very successful year in the USA, Opera Australia favourite Taryn Fiebig as Susanna, and Russian-born sensation Elvira Fatykhova, who is thrilled to be playing the Countess for the first time since her student days at the Ufa State Institute of Arts. ‘It was actually one of my favourite roles,’ she says, ‘I always wanted to perform it again.’ Audiences will get the chance to see Fatykhova and Benedict Andrews’s unique interpretation of Marriage from the sixth of February.

Completing the A Summer of Mozart program will be a startling re-imagining of Mozart’s final opera, Così fan tutte. Director Jim Sharman will be remounting his groundbreaking production from 2009, combining a ‘sexy, irreverent’ design with live video projections designed by Mic Gruchy to show close-ups, slow motion replays and audience reactions. But it won’t simply be an exact copy of the previous season, explains Ralph Myers, who will return to OA as designer for the remount. ‘Jim’s got a great brain, which is always active, so he’s always thinking about details and how things can be finessed.’ This emphasis on freshness also translates to the choice of artists, with five out of the six principals singing their roles for the first time, and conductor Benjamin Northey tackling the opera for the first time after his successful company debut with Don Giovanni in 2011. Northey looks forward to bringing his newly-acquired Mozart experience to the production, although he is keenly aware of the two opera’s fundamental differences. ‘Don Giovanni deals in the supernatural, whereas Così is so human, a human story about human emotions, so that makes it more difficult because you have to really be in tune with the issues of human behaviour and frailty that Mozart was working with in Così.’ Northey describes his preparation for the season as ‘an interpretive journey’, which is a sentiment shared by the young baritone Samuel Dundas, playing the role of Guglielmo for the first time with Opera Australia. ‘It’s about finding the truth in it all. I know what it feels like to be jealous, I know what it’s like to have my heart broken, so I think you have to play the reality of the situation. Although, especially in Così,’ he admits, ‘the scenario is a bit twisted.’

Story-lines such as this, that deal in the abstract and universal at the same time, and are cutting-edge yet simultaneously rooted in a bygone era, are perhaps why we find Mozart’s operas so compelling. Opera Australia’s A Summer of Mozart promises to explore these contradictions and controversies in a way that celebrates the sublime artistry at the centre of it all, whilst reaching out to new audiences in new territories. ‘I’m really keen that we play to as many people as possible,’ explains Terracini, ‘and through that we have to speak a number of theatrical and musical languages so that we communicate with as many people in the community as we can. The way younger people communicate now is through different technology, but at the same time we want to play to our older, loyal audiences, and also to expand out of the opera house.’ It will indeed be fascinating to watch Lyndon Terracini’s bold narrative unfold over the course of the next couple of years, but we can be assured that this summer of opera will be truly exciting and stimulating, not just for die-hard fans but for newcomers of all persuasions as well.

For more information on Opera Australia’s 2012 season please visit
www.opera-australia.org.au