Recent Reviews: June/July

My reviews for Limelight Magazine in June/July of 2022:

The Invisible Opera (RISING Festival)
Federation Square
Reviewed on 10 June, 2022

The art of looking is a detailed one, driven by curiosity, hunger, delight. It is a fine art, like painting – the more we practise looking, the better we get at it. I read about looking and about public space greedily; I want to know how other people, other artists improve their looking skills, and how it impacts their work. When I went to see The Invisible Opera as part of Melbourne’s RISING Festival, I was also halfway through Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin, a book that turned out to be a rather apt companion read to this live performance. Elkin’s writing focuses on the great joy communities can or should take in public spaces, and therefore, the absolute importance of continued support and advocacy for those spaces, the way they impact communities – mostly for the better but perhaps, sometimes, for worse. The latter raises the question: what happens when not all people are permitted (not literally, of course, but sociologically, culturally) in public spaces? This seems to be a major thread pulsing through The Invisible Opera by Sophia Brous with Lara Thoms, Samara Hersch, and Faye Driscoll.

The name itself immediately stops you to think – why ‘opera’? What operatic elements will this piece of performance art contain? The opera, it becomes clear, is the drama: the messiness, the joy and pain and romance of the public space itself. It is the space’s inhabitants who use it in myriad ways – to sit and stand and lean, to take phone calls, to meet, to cry, to yell. It is a call to attention: what is happening right in front of you that you could be missing while caught up in the minutiae of your day?

Arriving at Federation Square for the outdoor, unsheltered performance of The Invisible Opera was slightly woolly – the show was delayed, the rain was threatening and the wind was biting. Perhaps 80-or-so brave audience members climbed into the raked seating, wearing beanies and gloves; shivering as we put on our headphones, adjusting the volume. Couples and friends held onto each other as Barry Manilow’s Keeping Each Other Warm played over and over in our headphones – initially funny, then dystopian and eventually, frustrating, as the performance’s beginning was pushed to accommodate latecomers and the track began again. Once begun, though, immediately we were asked to consider the city: there is the HWT building, the Crown Casino sign, two gulls overhead. The voice in our ears described the scene while ambient music soundtracked the experience. We were encouraged to think on the musicality, the rhythm, the majesty of the everyday; to reflect on the joys of observation. I did find myself wishing that I were experiencing this on a day when the Melbourne’s famous four-seasons-in-a-day was on the spring/summer setting; it is a surprising challenge to reflect on beauty when fat raindrops insist on blurring your vision.

The delicately spoken, sometimes sung poetic libretto describing the experience was novel, beautiful, well-improvised at points and moving, but I found myself asking, ‘Is novelty enough?’ What do we as audience members require from an artistic experience? Is it enough to simply document? Perhaps, yes; perhaps, no. Context is important here. This work, almost a meditation in the first half, allowed us to look closely at a city that was looking closely back at us. But from there it moved to something a little more uncanny valley – the natural movements of the city began to twist and morph into something a little stranger.

People giggled around me at some of the improvised observations as the narrator began taking more liberties with explaining occurrences in the Square, but I didn’t once feel amused. There was something strange about the experience of watching collectively in this way, something sad about the judgement it felt we were leveling at unsuspecting tourists, concert-goers, city-dwellers. It pointed out – whether on purpose or incidentally – the way we fill in the backstory of strangers to suit our own needs, and the convenience of putting people in boxes without looking to see if they fit.

I had walked through the Square earlier in the day on a work trip as another session of The Invisible Opera was happening, and couldn’t help thinking: was I referenced? Was I part of the show? Are we all simply here to be consumed? Are we, the general public, laughing along? Or are we being laughed at? That final question speaks to both sides – the people using the public space as it is meant to be used, but also The Invisible Opera audience, being observed observing. We were watching, yes, but it was hard not to notice that we were also being watched. The gap feels significant, and made me reflect, in hindsight, on the place of festivals and how we assess their programming – specifically, who they are curated for and why. Is art for everyone, or just those already in the know? Are we looking down on those who we, the artistically inclined, believe do not know better?

A French man, deeply troubled, shouting on the phone at someone and kicking and slapping at the flagpoles that flank Swanston St interrupted our connection. I was worried for him; watching it happen was upsetting, and made me feel voyeuristic. To watch someone in distress without helping, while listening to quippy chat about changing the channels on our headphones so we can get on with our “show” seems unhinged, un-human, unethical. The show’s architects purposefully blurred the lines, making it hard to know what was real and what was staged – I thought perhaps the French man was a plant, because no one was moving in to help him. Had the police been warned? The ‘setting’ of what was happening in front of us was, to begin, novel and humorous, but now felt overwrought. More questions appeared: what does it mean to be observed? What are the ethics of watching and being watched?

Then as soon as it began, the man was gone; in his place an American-style float boasting larger-than-life boxes of popcorn appearing on the road in front of us, driving slowly, holding up city traffic. I had to blink a number of times to confirm I was seeing something real. A tap dancer in Melbourne Demons garb began setting up next to the RISING merchandise stand (which in another dystopian move, was selling long-sleeve t-shirts for $80), then a giant purple monkey was inflated and wrangled by several attendants, followed by a squad of five TikTok dancers who began their synchronised routine. In our headphones, bonafide operatic music began to play, highlighting the strangeness of what we were all doing on that grey night. It seemed completely appropriate for opera to be playing as this Margaret Atwood theme-park fever-dream came to life around us.

Standing quietly at the edge of the Square the next day, there by chance rather than design, I watch the ‘screaming French man’ finish his performance and take his glasses and hoodie off, morphing from character to actor in front of my eyes. Our eye contact is fleeting, but it unsettles me. Something twists inside my gut; the mask is broken. Nothing is sure – our judgments are mostly based on conjecture; public spaces holds secrets in their folds; the people working and walking alongside us are complex, and cannot be so easily boxed. I am not sure what to take away from this – a deeper empathy? A reminder to think and speak kindly of those around us? A fear about festivals becoming narrower in focus, in context, in audience?

I cannot stop coming back to the question of who art is for? Who is the festival for? And how can we continue to lessen the gap between us and ‘Them’ – the people we should be talking to (everyone) – and the people we are currently talking to (ourselves)? All good questions, I believe, but I did catch a cold while contemplating them.

Art and Life, Domestic and Sublime (fortyfivedownstairs)
fortyfivedownstairs
Reviewed on 12 June, 2022

In early 2019, following a strange and disappointing New Opera Workshop (NOW2019) in Brisbane, supposedly created to celebrate the scope and future of opera in Australia but instead highlighting the lack of room for female and non-binary creatives in a famously sexist sector, a group of exceptional composers (Sally Blackwood, Liza Lim, Peggy Polias and Bree van Reyk) shared a call to action in ArtsHub. They asked for cultural leadership and systemic change in a form that desperately needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st-century. Their seven demands, which ranged from asking for diversity be reflected in all aspects of opera making, to the building of safe inclusive spaces in pre-existing opera companies, did not feel like too much to ask for – and yet, a number of years on it feels like we’re still not delivering.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that COVID has disrupted possible action, but it feels time to begin to make good on these commitments. May I recommend a possible place to start? Further curation of works like those by Katy Abbott and Linda Kouvaras, as explored in song cycle form by pianist Coady Green and soprano Linda Barcan in a salon-style event at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs on Sunday afternoon. One of the greatest challenges identified by the New Opera Workshop was the lack of female and non-binary voices telling their own stories. Instead, opera has seen a spectacular number of works – old and oft-repeated, and new and immediately revered – by men, telling women-centric stories through the male gaze, and perpetuating the same old cycle that has become not only boring, but deeply damaging.

In Kouvaras’s On Art and Life, which boldly looked the epidemic of domestic violence in the eye, women’s stories got the operatic rendering we don’t see enough on stage. Through a selection of poetry by Diane Fahey, Bronwyn Bartal and Kouvaras herself, these all-too-familiar stories were not shied away from. Across the work, we got to know, cry for and flinch with a young woman in early adulthood, who meets an “artist” referred to only by that title (highlighting uncomfortable truths surfaced through the #MeToo reckoning). The young woman sits for the artist, falls in love, has that artists’ baby, begins to succumb to the artists’ violence, fights back, and finally, we see her sitting incarcerated for her retaliation – a devastating yet unsurprising outcome.

The celebrated mezzo-soprano Linda Barcan was exceptional in the role of empathetic narrator, and seeing her perform again was a gift: the middle of her voice was rich and velvety, but her career creating roles and portraying complex characters allowed her the space to not fear making an unpretty sound, which is incredibly satisfying in a piece of this emotional heft. Some of the libretto was a little clunky, a little obvious, but no mind: the poetics were no match for the importance of the work itself. And perhaps the fact On Art and Life felt a little formulaic merely reflected that this cycle of abuse in Australian homes is just that – formulaic, heartbreaking, easy to walk by. Easy not to notice. Perhaps we need to have these stories spelled out for us, so we can take how we feel and what we learn in the comfort of a concert back into our lives.

Kouvaras writes well for the voice, understanding how a line sung in a specific way can catch the breath in your chest and squeeze it; tighten your throat until you feel like you might sob. Her piano writing was rhythmic and varied; Coady Green clearly has a great reverence for Kouvaras’s compositions, though his performance would have been helped by a slightly better piano in the space. His playing was very fine, but the battle with the instrument meant some of the more nuanced moments became musically clunky, the piano at times outstripping Barcan’s top notes.

The flaws of the instrument did not help in either of the composers’ work for solo piano, either – Abbott’s Glisten and Kouvaras’s Shoalhaven Nightpainters both explored colour and impressionistic sounds, which came off, unfortunately, a little overwrought on the less-than-perfect instrument. I’m desperate to hear both again on another piano, one that matches Green’s evident facility.

Luckily, Abbott’s song cycle The Domestic Sublime made me forget all about the foibles of the keyboard. I have long admired her compositional practice and the breadth of her creations and was delighted to see a work of hers for voice programmed. As she mentioned at the outset of the performance, it takes her some time to find a piece of text that she really wants to dig into, so it felt like quite a treat to hear a work based on writing that truly spoke to her. The cycle, based upon poetry by the revered Australian poet Christopher Wallace-Crabbe – who to my delight was in the audience, and gave a generous reading of his sextet of poems prior to the performance of Abbot’s work – was, indeed, sublime. Her interpretation of the poems was in turn subtle, provocative, funny, moving and witty.

Barcan relished Abbott’s rolodex of references, moving seamlessly from art song to cabaret to lieder without blinking an eye. The domestic tasks that formed the basis of the texts – coat hangers (useful until they get underfoot), shaving, bed making, washing up – are reverently surveyed, giving a powerful voice to the overwhelmingly female tasks that make up a day of homemaking. The six short pieces (how I wish there had been more!) were excellent together, but I could easily see them being slotted into other concert programs, perhaps just one or two at a time. These are works that deserve frequent performances, and I beseech interested singers to seek them out and program them. They should, to my mind, be part of the future of Australian opera – womxn’s stories, told with respect and humour and power. May we continue to work towards those systemic changes we all deserve to see unfurl in our lifetimes, and may these important works continue to receive stage time, long into the future.

May-Day in June: To Sing on the Streets (Astra)
Church of All Nations
Reviewed on 25 June, 2022

A lot can be said (and has already been written) about the joy of singing – the way it awakens you, giving you the opportunity to discover more about yourself through the exploration of the instrument that lives inside you, how invigorating it is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with others and make music without the need for physical instruments. We humans have been singing forever, and the great need for choirs – professional, community, church, independent, children’s – is not to be taken for granted. During Melbourne’s expansive lockdowns, when it was impossible to get together and raise our voices, we were reminded of this fact: singing alone in the shower or around the house pales in comparison to the joy and relative anonymity of singing alongside friends and strangers, united in a common musical cause.

Known across Australia for its boundary-pushing performances of new chorale works and its bold forays into text-based ensemble pieces, Astra was ambitious in building an extensive concert program around two new works by acclaimed Australian composer George Dreyfus, with further focus on political choral works by the likes of Hanns Eisler, Margaret Sutherland and Elisabeth Lutyens. Their concert program, May-Day in June: To Sing on the Streets saw several works receive their world premiere, and a number more their first Australian performance. A testament to conductor and musical director John McCaughey’s vision and direction, Astra should be lauded for its commitment to new work, constantly pushing back on barriers and expectations. If you think you know what choral music should be, one listen to Astra’s work will prove otherwise.

The exciting new works may, however, have come at slightly too high a price: the difficult nature of the compositions and perhaps a lack of time together as an ensemble post-COVID meant that some musical elements weren’t quite up to their usual level. Some unfortunate intonation and rhythm issues prevailed, despite some exceptionally good singing by individual chorus members. The musicians accompanying the choir were excellent. Kim Bastin and Joy Lee on piano, Niels Bijl on saxophones and Alexander Meagher on percussion each brought fine musicality and finesse to the works presented. Meagher, who was featured heavily in what was an inspired curatorial turn from McCaughey, was especially impressive. His two solo pieces – Richard Sanderson’s Going Cross-Eared for solo drums and Andrew Byrne’s Strange Loops 1 for solo percussion (including an array of found instruments including a biscuit tin, a glass bottle and several wood blocks) – were excellent. The ANAM-graduate is technically fantastic, and I look forward to hearing more from him as he continues to build his career.

The two new major works by Dreyfus, which were billed as the cornerstone of the program but in reality were padded too generously with other works to really let them shine. Both explored “historic incidents within the vast calamity of racism and war of his childhood”. In Memory of the Herbert Baum Group and Remembrance of July 20 were written to form part of a trilogy – the third of which is slated to be performed by Astra later on in 2022. The two on display here concerned themselves with, firstly, a failed action by a Jewish Communist group in Berlin in 1942, and secondly, with the unsuccessful assassination attempt of Hitler in 1944. Both were musically complex, with occasional glimpses of the sublime, but the fumbled German language and lack of musical precision from the choir did not allow Dreyfus’s true voice to sing. The composer’s broad range of references is thrilling to hear – his prior work ranges from post-modern ensemble writing to exultant scoring for film and television – and a tighter performance of his works is deserved.

Aside from Dreyfus’s works, the highlight of the afternoon was Melbourne-based composer Kym Dillon’s It Was, an exploration of the famous Charles Dickens text from A Tale of Two Cities. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” went the text, in the only piece on the program that felt truly fit for purpose. The vocal ranges were written in a way that was comfortable for all singers, allowing them to explore emotions, text and the exciting but challenging music with guts and aplomb. Spoken word and whispering, plus a little required acting made for a deeply enjoyable romp through Dickens’ well-loved words. The piece also offered audiences an introduction to a young soprano who I believe was Alexandra Toussaint-Jackson – a stunning discovery.

This sometimes-faltering musical experience could not stamp out the joyousness shared by the choristers and the audience. I know the singing will only improve with more time in the rehearsal room, and what a force Astra will then be.

Acis & Galatea (Genesis Baroque)
75 Reid St
Reviewed on 15 July, 2022

If you asked, I could not say which was stronger in me, hatred of Cyclops, or love of Acis, both of them were equally strong.” So goes Ovid’s story of the sea-nymph Galatea and her mortal lover Acis who is killed in a fit of rage by the jealous Cyclops, Polyphemus. It is Galatea’s story first and foremost, she who has been oft described since the ancient Greeks: she being the fairest of the sea nymphs, but also holding a certain wisdom, saving her lover by turning him into a river-god and living through it all well enough to tell the tale with the resignation and melancholy of a matriarch wizened by experience.

This story, which has spurred many interpretations – musical, artistic, sculptural, literary – is told with a certain textural lightness in George Frideric Handel’s opera, particularly in opening; an entire act occurs before Polyphemus appears and the action truly begins. It is pastoral in the truest sense – John Gay’s English libretto centres on the lovers and their development, which in theory translated easily into a coming-of-age love story in Robert Macfarlane’s direction of the work. Acis and Galatea became school children with desperate crushes on one another, surrounded by a 21st-century schooling environment. School strike for climate signs were held aloft, selfies snapped on smartphones, and bored children (played with generosity and commitment by the excellent Consort of Melbourne) hit each other with paper planes as their benevolent teacher tried and failed to encourage their concentration on an in-class reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Genesis Baroque, led by Artistic Director Jennifer Kirsner, is a fine ensemble and it was a joy to hear their rendering of Sinfonia, the instrumental opening of the opera that sets the scene beautifully for the nymphs and shepherds (or here, school children caught in the revery of before-school freedom). The musicians played with joyful abandonment as if it was, in fact, a treat to be performing this small gem of a work on a freezing Thursday evening, in the large room of 75 Reid St, warmed by an open fire and filled with excited patrons. The joy was contagious – the Consort’s Oh, the pleasure of the plains! was deliciously sung, with the fervour of a group unleashed from their usual formal style. They giggled and dashed about, perfect harmonies held while they threw balls to one another and played pranks.

The direction began to lack a little as Gay’s pastoral libretto progressed – the shoehorning of the bucolic into the classroom occasionally missed the mark and required extra lines of dialogue, which is, of course, forgivable when serving to move the plot along, but felt somewhat unnecessary in this instance. Karen Fitz-Gibbon as Galatea and director Macfarlane as Acis gave dedicated performances as the young lovers and had excellent chemistry, but were mismatched vocally across the piece: Fitz-Gibbon’s voice crystalline but too small to carry in the enormous space, Macfarlane’s lacking legato, and both sometimes falling prey to unclear diction, leaving the audience slightly confused but grateful for a program that held the libretto its entirety. Nicholas Dinopoulos’ Polyphemus was a stand-out – he too occasionally became unclear where diction is concerned – but was otherwise in fine voice with excellent control and offered a convincing vocal interpretation of the role. It is a shame that Gay’s libretto gave so little for him to sing.

Macfarlane’s direction became increasingly difficult to follow: in an unlikely turn of events, the ‘school bully’ Polyphemus killed Acis seemingly without repercussion, and Galatea crouched mourning in the playground, presumably amongst the tanbark and leaves. Then, without pause, we were spun forward in time to see the sea nymph in an aged care facility, surrounded by the Consort who had transformed from children to medical professionals during the devastating Mourn all ye muses! The final pieces of the opera, performed in the facility – Galatea insinuated as an aged woman, but visually unchanged – were confused further by the return of Macfarlane as an old man, assumedly not as Acis, but also, possibly as the presumed dead character: the director’s note allowing for room to interpret, noting that “the memories of our youth are particularly hazy and subject to the coping mechanisms of a developing mind. What if there [was] no monster…?” True, all, and clever, yes, but these final moments left a feeling of having been offered the operatic equivalent of the “and it was all a dream…” cliche.

Regardless of these confusions, however, that independent opera continues to thrive in this country cannot be overstated – work like this from Genesis Baroque is crucial for the ecosystem of the form, and allows artists to invent, re-create, discover. Despite the challenges, Acis and Galatea was a joyous theatrical experience, helped not insignificantly by the excellence of the musicians in the orchestra who brought not only a diligence to the work, but a passion unparalleled. More, more, more of this, and more funding, more rehearsal time, and more fit-to-form venues to bring alive the work of important groups like this one.

Croissants and Whiskey (Leaps and Bounds Festival)
Fitzroy Town Hall
Reviewed on 23 July, 2022

I have been thinking recently about the impact that Covid-19 has had on Australian performers and audiences – the decimation of the industry, our tentative return, and the trepidation still felt by musicians and music lovers across the country. We have, of course, been focused on rebuilding as we should, but it cannot be overstated how significantly the sector has been hit, and how challenging it continues to be to sustain a creative practice. Right now, we are in the throes of a deeply troubling wave of this virus, and the commitment to creation despite these ongoing challenges is more important than ever. It felt truly poignant arriving at the Fitzroy Town Hall for the Leaps and Bounds Festival – Yarra’s winter music festival and a true celebratory offering of local talent – to hear new works performed by four acclaimed home-grown artists who have been trying to get on stage together since Melbourne’s 2020 stage four lockdown.

The ‘prog-baroque’ quartet Croissants and Whiskey has had a stop-start introduction to its audience as a result of the virus and associated lockdowns. At this debut performance, the joy felt at finally being together and sharing their music was palpable. We, the lucky first audience – packed to the rafters in the Town Hall’s Reading Room and treated to the ensemble’s namesake indulgences prior to the performance – sat alternatively moved and laughing, happily wading in the great gift music is when created by people deeply committed to it and each other.

Croissants and Whiskey is made up of four musicians, who are all individually well-known to Melbourne audiences. They are Joy Lee (harpsichord), Ryan Williams (recorders), Katie Yap (Baroque viola) and Miranda Hill (G violone), and they performed an eclectic program of the new and old; Australian premieres alongside Couperin. They welcomed the audience warmly, introducing themselves as friends and admirers of one another, before launching into Louisa Trewartha’s clever and incisive new Baroque Quartet in two movements – the first, Full of Fear and Anger, a fragmented and raw expression of the aggression played out on social media in the early days of Melbourne’s lockdown. Ruminating on the experience of watching people argue online, Trewartha’s driving harpsichord and G violone lines argued away while a plaintive, mournful melody ascended in the recorder and viola. The second movement, Empathy grows as we learn,is named after a quote borrowed from Swiss psychologist Alice Miller. In it, the bite of belligerence gave way to a warmer sound, though the undercurrent of dissonance never quite left and skilfully reflected the experience moving through our growing understanding of the pandemic.

An acknowledgment of grief threaded into the next work, Aftermath, a moving homage to the grief felt following the Tasmanian bushfires of 2016. Written for solo viola by composer and violinist Emily Sheppard, it played beautifully to the strengths of Yap, who apart from her technical prowess was able to straddle the work’s musical challenges with ease to create a chilling but hopeful performance that left our audience on the verge of tears. Yap was extraordinary here and able to lose herself completely in the music. It was a testament to Sheppard’s understanding of the possibilities and constraints of working with the solo viola, as well as the composer’s ability to create something innately emotional without ever giving in to the overly sentimental.

To conclude the first half of the program, Williams’ own Tanjil Bren Suite took us on a brief sojourn to regional Victoria – the three pieces, each named after parts of the state, were in turn humorous, moving and longing. Borrowing from folk, jazz and new music traditions, Williams’ exploration brought out a sense of play in the four musicians – a sense of improvisatory bliss that felt true to the Baroque sensibilities underpinning this new ensemble. That understanding and elation in creating a true-to-period sense of live inventiveness continued in the opening of the second set, with Lee’s solo performance of Couperin’s unmeasured Prélude in G minor, written around the 1650s. There was no sense of staid performance technique in her interpretation and it came alive under her fingers as she weaved her own narrative arc into the piece. Moving without pause into Nigel Butterley’s The White-Throated Warbler, Lee was joined by Williams as they brought to life the strange and compelling 1965 work that drove ceaselessly in the harpsichord while the recorders (playing the warbler) danced and played over the top. Williams, an exacting, characterful musician, embodied the bird perfectly – so much so that when a bird outside the window of the Town Hall called back to him, no one was surprised.

A slightly undercooked CPE Bach Trio Sonata followed. This was not entirely the fault of the musicians, as the lacklustre composition did little to help itself and proved perhaps why it has taken so long to create works for this combination since. The F Major sonata is the only work written in the period for this arrangement of musicians. Listening to the other commissioned works on the program, it felt like this ensemble is doing a great service in changing the way these four instruments are played together. Happily, we were left with an exceptional world premiere from Elizabeth Younan, The Fertile Crescent. This piece, commissioned by the ABC Composer Commissioning Fund and recorded recently by the ensemble, was Younan’s first foray into exploring her Lebanese heritage through music. What resulted was a thrilling Shostakovich-esque trio of dances, that were not only rhythmically electrifying, but also playfully orchestrated and made insightful use of the quartet’s textures. I hope this is the beginning of much more new work for Croissants and Whiskey.

This was a charming and meaningful performance, made all the more so by the performers’ warm and down-to-earth presentation, their technical brilliance and their commitment to new music. Consider this reviewer a convert to the magic of recorders, harpsichord, G violone and Baroque viola!