Q&A session with Kristin Darragh, performing the role of Maddalena in The NBR NZ Opera's Rigoletto

NZO: For those that aren’t familiar, introduce your character to us.

KD: Maddalena is a prostitute, who works in tandem with her brother Sparafucile the Assassin. In our raw and real production, they are the low lives of the principal characters, representing the opposite end of the wealth and power spectrum. They live and work in a seedy dive of a bar/brothel, where Maddalena is trapped in a world of drugs, alcohol and the selling of herself to survive. She is beautiful and sexy, but has ended up living a much trashier and more hopeless version of the dream she may have once had for herself. She falls instantly for the Duke of Mantua, when she is called on for her seduction duties prior to his assassination... and consequently makes a desperate attempt to avoid his murder, as she believes he might just be the key to an escape from this sorry life she is living. I won’t reveal the wonderfully dark twist of our production, but it promises to be spine-chilling!

NZO: What are you most looking forward to in performing Rigoletto?

KD: It is a very welcome occurrence when, as opera singers, we are given a role which takes us to an extreme place in human emotion and expression. Maddalena is one of these gifts because she is so extreme as a character and it’s all so immediate and intense in her scene, which is the final act of the opera. I really have to go all the way there to access her and bring her to life, somewhere where the stakes are high and the edge is fine. This is a demanding and exciting task, which requires me to push beyond my limits during rehearsal, so that I can go to that edge in performance without losing the cool and control at the core, which must always be maintained.

NZO: What opera do you consider to be a turning point in your career?

KD: Probably my debut professional role of Fyodor in Boris Godunov, with The NBR NZ Opera in 2003. This was my first experience in an opera. The cast and creative team were so wonderful, and the opera was an artistic triumph. To be a part of this was such a personally rewarding and impacting experience, that I committed my life to this profession from then on!

NZO: Where do you find your creativity within opera?

KD: Interesting question. I find it in the drama. I find it in the human stories. In the emotions of the people I play and the experiences they are going through. It’s an intuitive approach really, where much of the work is done off stage, living, learning, etc. I try not to ever sing without joining up all those dots that connect feeling with thought with intention with action. It’s all there, done by the composers and librettists. I just tap into my own humanness and experiential understanding and the creative process sort of unfolds from there.

NZO: How can opera continue to thrive in today’s world of music?

KD: Big question! We have to keep evolving as an art form and as artists and as companies. Which happens naturally anyway I think. But there is no threat to its thriving really, I don’t believe. It will always have its place, (now even reaching movie screens in HD all over the world!) It’s too great an art form to be replaced or forgotten. Neither will it probably ever be a necessity in everybody’s lives, which is okay too I think, because it reaches people who want to be reached and for those people, it is irreplaceable.

NZO: Do you think more contemporary music genres (such as Dubstep) could be integrated with Opera?

KD: Yes, I guess so! Dubstep needs a specific beat though, which may be hard to integrate musically, but the dance itself is so amazingly physical and theatrical, I could see that working! So much integration and evolution is possible, maybe we just need to integrate and evolve our thinking first! But I hope it’s never integration for the sake of itself or experimentation, at the cost of the quality of the original music or the essential drama.

NZO: Describe your most memorable operatic performance.

KD: Jumping in as the title role in L’Italiana in Algeri at Aotea Centre in 2009, when the mezzo realised she was unable to sing just 2 hours before the curtain was due to rise. It was my father’s birthday, and my whole family came to hear me sing the wonderful role of Isabella. One of my favorite conductors, Wyn Davies, was in the pit and it was great fun!

NZO: How do you continue to inspire and believe in yourself in the creative industry?

KD: It has never been an issue to remain inspired, for there are few things that inspire me more than the international world of theater and opera with all the richness and wonder it entails. To continue to believe in myself and my talent is easier some days than others. Mostly I find if I stay in touch with the inspiration, the self belief tends to follow suit. I try to remember that every artist has a gift. Something they offer, their own uniqueness if you like, to be expressed in however it manifests itself. As long as I feel I can contribute to the art form with my voice and interpretation and dramatic ability, bringing something to the stage that uplifts or excites or awakens something in people, then I can believe in that.

NZO: How do you remember all the lines for your arias?

KD: They just go in with repetition. It’s only hard when you don’t have time to put in the sufficient practice hours.

NZO: What are your plans after the Rigoletto season for 2012?

KD: It’s a very busy time for me after Rigoletto! I start with a debut tour with my trio ALTO , in association with Chamber Music New Zealand, performing in concert venues from the North to the South of NZ. Next, I am thrilled to be singing in the Dame Malvina Major Anniversary concert with the NZSO at the Michael Fowler Centre on the 30th of June. Joining Dame Malvina of course, and a line up of prominent NZ singers, a most celebrated one being Teddy Tahu Rhodes, I’ll be singing the great Verdi scene from Don Carlos, ‘O don Fatale’. Following that, I will sing three concerts with the NZSO again, this time as a Valkerie in Wagner's Die Walküre, starring our own acclaimed Tenor Simon O’Neill. Then in August, I begin my first full time contract in an opera house in North Germany called Theater Lünburg, as principal mezzo, where I will be singing in my first season the roles of Olga in Eugene Onegin, Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Hansel in Hansel & Gretel and Suzuki in Madame Butterfly.

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Q & A Session with Aussie baritone, Warwick Fyfe (the guy with the brooding, multi-coloured eyes in our imagery), performing the title role in The NBR NZ Opera's Rigoletto...

NZO: Describe the role of Rigoletto, and how your personality is reflected within this character. 

WF: Rigoletto is, to use a cliché, an outsider. He’s tolerated for his capacity to make people laugh but he is simultaneously despised and not valued, much less liked, for himself. From when I started school, I was only really tolerated (if I was tolerated at all) for my ability to make people laugh. It was the tired old story of disarming the sting of ridicule by laughing along with those who were laughing at me. It sounds like I feel sorry for myself. I assure you I do not, but your question demanded that I ventilate these facts if I wanted to answer it honestly. To this day, people who know me only slightly can think of me primarily as a verbal jokester, saying cheekily what others are thinking (which is exactly what Rigoletto does from his first entry). Although he is profoundly embittered for these reasons (he spells it out better than I can in "Pari siamo"), I think his tragedy, however, is primarily a function of his narcissistic self absorption. Even his love for Gilda, though passionate, is ultimately self reflexive. The consequence of this personality trait is, crucially, that he doesn’t listen. If he’d paid attention to what she was saying, disaster may well have been avoided. I’m not a father. I’m slightly Aspergery, so I’ve had to learn to pay better attention to what people are saying both in words and with their non-verbal signals. I was hopeless in my youth and childhood and spent much of my early adulthood trying to improve. I don’t believe Rigoletto’s deafness stems from the same cause, but there’s some analogy in terms of the effects of it. 

NZO: On stage you play the role of a jester... what is your best joke off-stage? 

WF: One of my best jokes (about private health insurance) is unprintable. When I was in fourth grade in primary school and we were sharing riddles as a class, my contribution was “What did the river say when it passed Shakespeare’s house? Avon calling!”. This contribution was received with mute incomprehension by the entire class except for one other little boy, the “other” weird kid, who guffawed conspicuously. Last time I was in New Zealand I heard a good, clean, one: Two cows in a field. Cow 1: “I’m really worried about this mad cow disease”. Cow 2: “Well I’m not because I’m a squirrel..”

NZO: What is your favourite aria in Rigoletto, and why?

WF: When I first started listen to the opera in my youth, "Questa o quella" always smacked thrillingly of decadence to me. That catchy, rakishly sliding harmony.. 

NZO: You have sung in Rigoletto on previous occasions, has you perception of the opera changed since the first time you sung?

WF: Not really. It’s just become more rounded and fleshed out.

 
NZO: What have you learnt about yourself through Opera? 

WF: To misquote Tom Lehrer, it’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for seven years. It’s people like that who make one realise how little one has accomplished. To answer your question in another, I’ve learnt all manner of things about what sort of a performer I am. For instance, my approach to building a character is essentially intuitive and synthetic so that my whole life is in effect a preparation for my work. Another thing would be that I’ve learnt the necessity of keeping a part of myself in my centre which is cold and objection regardless of how passionate the music and dramatic situation become. Otherwise one loses control.

NZO: What are some of the challenges of an opera singer?

WF: When I first changed from tuba to voice, the first thing I had to learn was about pacing myself. With an acoustic instrument, one can practice from dawn till dusk and will probably improve by so doing (in a technical sense at least, although devoting some of that time to broadening one’s culture generally will make one an infinitely more interesting artist. I often say, look at great paintings and I guarantee it’ll make you a better singer. But I digress.). By that I mean, it’s hard to overdo it. With singing, particularly when one’s starting, it’s the easiest thing in the world to overdo it. One toughens up with physical maturity and increased technical know-how, but it’s still a constant preoccupation. I’m not one of these singers who boring marks all the time in rehearsals. I like to sing out as much as I safely can. It has to do with integrating the energy I need to sing with the physicality of the role. Also I get bored marking. I find others marking boring. BUT, in some roles one just has to. Where I can sing out most of the time when rehearsing a role like Scarpia, which, even though it’s big, sits comfortably in my voice and is more in the Germanic baritone range than the Italianate, with a role like Rigoletto, which is, vocally, the hardest role I do, I have to be very careful. This is a constant challenge. One needs to sing out some of the time to keep it where it needs to be in the voice and integrate it with the blocking, and the music begs one to sing it out with passion, but one absolutely must be parsimonious when it comes to how much voice one expends in a day of rehearsals. There are many other challenges I could discuss, such as optimising performance day routines, keeping one’s various upcoming roles on simmer etc., but I don’t want to bore your readers.

NZO: What other styles of music inspire you? 

WF: I bet you mean as distinct from classical music. (By the way, I don’t regard classical music as a “style”.) It always irritates me in the reviews section of the paper how they divide music into rock, pop, soul, indi, world, jazz fusion and god knows how many other categories, but lump classical music, so that they don’t accord it the respect it deserves relative to other forms of music. Under classical are subsumed everything from cross-over classical (which would be better described as “fake” classical because it isn’t classical at all) to the works of Messian. Well I only listen to classical music. Naturally I don’t just listen to opera. In fact I probably listen to more baroque and chamber music than anything else, although lately I’ve been gobbling up historical Wagner recordings conducted by Keilberth. My favourite composer has always been Wagner. After him it’s a dead heat between Bach and Beethoven. The first tape I was ever given was Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality. It was a gift from my brother in 1976 for my seventh birthday. He’s now a fundamentalist Christian and I’m anti-religion, but we still get on very well. When I was a youth I quite liked Tom Waits.

NZO: You were last in New Zealand for The NBR NZ Opera’s Pagliacci, what are your views on the country?

WF: I absolutely adore New Zealand. I would happily live here. The only thing that is not as good as or better than in Australia is the TV. You have no grown up stations free to air. Why?????? We have crap telly too but there are alternative stations like SBS and ABC for those whose knuckles are not dragging along the ground. But overwhelmingly I love NZ. The galleries, the natural environment, the food, the extraordinary capacity to conjure up things be they films, opera productions or whatever which are better than anywhere else in the world with ingenuity and in spite of often limited resources. Look at Peter Jackson. My favourite of his films is Braindead. Top actors, superb comedy writing, all lavished on a spoof. He built up to that with films like Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles which are triumphs of brains and persistence over dollars. Now he’s one of the top directors in the world. There’s a sort of dauntless spirit. Never an attitude of “oh, that’s above anything I could go after. Outta my league”. They just barge in and make it happen. Italian Girl which I did in 2009 here looked like a far more expensive production than it was. In Cav and Pag, they went to the four corners of the Earth to get people who could really sing it rather than lazily saying “oh we’ll give that to Bloggs because he always does those roles” because opera’s like Cav and Pag simply must be sung by certain types of voices or they’re pointless. They’re not operas which can serve as training ground for people with potential. The singers have to be in their maturity now. The best thing of all about New Zealand is of course the people. I admire them so much and am so grateful to them for their kindness and hospitality. I confess I would love to see an overarching ceremonial union of equals between our two countries.

NZO: Do you have any words of wisdom for young opera singers? 

WF: Listen to the recordings of the great singers of the golden age!! Save your pocket money, go to Marbecks and buy recordings of singers from the '50s and '60s and earlier. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about the danger of imitating recordings if one listens to them. That cant strikes me as arrogant nowadays. A young singer could do a hell of lot worse that imitate the greats – greats the like of which we simply don’t have now. Artistic independence will come with maturity. Even then, being influenced by the greats and adopting some of their ideas where one’s own voice and humbler powers will allow it is fine. The recordings of the '50s and '60s are good because not only were giants still bestriding the Earth, the quality of recordings had become good enough to hear detail easily. Having said that, one should still listen to lots of the earlier recordings. One can learn to hear through the crackles and boxy sound. When I asked some young kiwi singers who their favourite singers were, they either couldn’t name anyone or came out with someone the record companies want you to buy currently. The greater, earlier singers on the much cheaper reissue recordings never featured. This must change!

NZO: If you could meet with Verdi in today’s world, what would you discuss with him?

WF: Insofar as one’s character and personality is partly formed by environment, I don’t think I could meet Verdi today because he wouldn’t be Verdi! I’d probably ask, as I usually do when I meet someone new, “have you read any good books lately?”. The answer to that question can tell one a great deal about a person. All you need to know in some cases.

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Might have been the massage, she laughs.

At this point, aside from the usual crises which hit at the last minute, she admits there isn't a lot she can do but let things play out for this – her third and final – festival as director.

While her predecessors all extended their three-year contracts and she has loved the experience, Hume is candidly itching to get out.

As someone who graduated in arts administration and opera production (but was “a terrible dancer”), she says she “misses being in the rehearsal room”.

“The interesting thing about this [Sydney] job is it so huge you can't be directing other things. This is too full-on, it is a straight-up, full time job.”

But now – the festival behind her – she is out there, back in the rehearsal room as director of Opera Queensland (“part-time which I am thrilled about”)  . . . and directing of the forthcoming NZ Opera production of Verdi's Rigoletto (see dates below).

And this classic story of the venal, powerful and corrupt Duke of Mantua and his lustful urges, is no ordinary production.

“Well, it's set in Berlusconi's cabinet,” she says laughing loud and long.

“So that's a start.”

Yes, she admits she was “pissed off” when the notorious Italian prime minister stepped down in November last year, “but by the time we get it on stage he'll have done something else. He'll be back.”

She directed a previous but rather unsatisfying production of Rigoletto, in Houston where she inherited the setting, but this contemporary setting struck her as exciting and even a little obvious.

“Every time I looked at Silvio Berlusconi's bunga-bunga parties and his crazy world I thought, 'There is Rigoletto'. There is your corrupt, violent, ridiculously fake-tanned duke with his mafia connections and his media empire, who couldn't give a shit and had women everywhere, underage women, putting women in his cabinet . . .

“It just seemed like an opera to me, so when [NZ Opera General Director] Aidan Lang rang me about it, I said, 'Can I do it in Berlusconi's cabinet?' and in the same phone conversation we agreed to do it.

With stage design by Melbourne's Richard Roberts with whom she has worked previously, Hume is excited about this edgy treatment of the opera. It is one of the productions which has seduced her back into a world she has felt removed from.

“I can't honestly put my hand on heart and say I'm going back without trepidation. I am a very different person and programmer now, and bring a very different philosophical view about audiences and community. I think however I was always inclined it the direction of looking beyond the confines of the opera community.

“The problem is that opera has to make itself relevant to people, and that for me is the big challenge. It's also however still a place where simply extraordinary music and performances can happen, and it's about sharing that.”

In her roles as festival director and her travels Hume has encountered worlds of music and performance beyond those which most opera people and companies normally encounter. She speaks as easily and enthusiastically about the ambitious stagings by the American alt.rock band Lambchop as she does about the thrilling beauty and hypnotic power of The Manganiyar Seduction from Rajasthan.

She has seen the epic narratives and grand scale of work by artists across the whole spectrum which can only be described as “operatic”. For many indie artists and performers, she says, their thinking is often on a huge scale and is simply a different version of what it is that she has done.

“What I want to do will be about opening that up. The 'hard core opera experience' is just one of many possibilities in the scope of an opera company. I'd like to get Lyle Lovett to write me an opera,” she says, namechecking the American country singer. “He's got such fantastic urban poetry that no one else has touched on.

“Opera people need to get out to different kinds of programmes – and opera also needs to be in that space.”

A scan of Hume's career – 50 operas in Australia, productions in Europe and the States, and Lucia di Lammermoor in New Zealand in 2007 – suggests if anyone has the vision and energy to be restlessly creative and ambitious for the art of opera, it is her.

She sees classic operas in the manner of Shakespeare's plays, malleable material which can be made exciting and relevant while still being loyal to their greater truths. And she's itching to do it in Queensland, New Zealand and elsewhere.

“I'm looking forward to what they call 'a portfolio career' where I do a bunch of different things,” she laughs and says by being only part-time in Queensland she can explore other opportunities.

“I love Brisbane which has a boldness and audacity, and an appetite for modernity. That's a good headspace for me to be in.

“But I'm hoping for a more strategic relationship between New Zealand Opera NZ and Opera Queensland, and I'm talking to Aidan about that. We are really excited about the possibilities of sharing productions and ideas, of being more cognisant of the broader Australasia region.

“It doesn't make any sense for Australia and New Zealand to be so separate culturally.”

And she should know. As I'm leaving we stop and chat about certain restaurants on Ponsonby Road where she feels right at home, and of the Christmas lights down Franklin Rd which she just loves.

Lindy Hume is an opera director with a common – and uncommon – touch.

Graham Reid, Writer
www.elsewhere.co.nz 

RIGOLETTO 2012 SEASON DATES

19, 24, 26 May at 7.30pm; 22 May at 6pm
St James Theatre, Wellington
BOOK TICKETS at Ticketek

7, 9, 13, 15 June at 7.30pm; 17 June at 2.30pm
ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland
BOOK TICKETS at The Edge

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… with a new opera that speaks to today’s issues and directly to today’s audience. 

So why does new opera have such a bad name, filling its potential audiences with dread, when the same people will happily turn out for a new musical, play or film with a spring in their step? Any opera asks a lot of its audience on first acquaintance. They are bombarded with plot, character, design concepts and individual performances, and then the whole is crowned with the music. It is a lot of information to take in at one go, and it is very easy to get lost somewhere along the way. If the musical idiom is familiar, the audience has a comfortable cushion; if, on the other hand, there is a fear that the idiom will be unfamiliar or tonally challenging, then the prospect can indeed be daunting.

I firmly believe that quite complex ideas, be they musical or dramaturgical, can be conveyed in opera, but it is essential that the audience is given a clear entry point. Nothing annoys more than to feel alienated and excluded the moment the curtain rises. I consider myself a relatively informed opera-goer, but I can remember more than one new opera  they shall remain nameless! – at which I have sat through the entire evening completely in the dark as to what has actually been happening on stage. But however mystifying the drama might have been on occasions, I am also aware that it is the music that binds the whole thing together, and which ultimately defines the success or failure of a new opera. “What is the music like?” has been the question most asked of me ever since we announced the exciting world première of Jenny McLeod’s Hōhepa, which we present together with the New Zealand International Arts Festival and which opens our 2012 season.

And what is the music like? Mid-way through the overall rehearsal process, we are unusually placed to be able to give quite an accurate answer. For four weeks before Christmas, our rehearsal studio buzzed with Jenny’s music as the production took its first fledgling steps and gradually began to take shape. The composer, singers and creative team then had a couple of months off to reflect and consider progress, during which time any modifications or the further development of ideas were given the luxury of ample breathing space. The company then re-convened in February to take the opera to its première. Again without mentioning names, I have known instances where a new opera has actually received its first performance without being fully completed! Successful musicals always benefit from out-of-town try-outs before their official opening, and often, quite substantial changes are made along the way. A new opera, alas, tends not to have that luxury, but our split rehearsal period has gone a long way towards addressing this. Just before Christmas, we were privileged to witness the first full run-through of the piece, and an exciting event it was too!

What immediately struck me is how beautifully the music has been written for the voice, and how it is completely at one with the nuances and tone of the dialogue, the dramatic situations and the nature of the individual characters. Furthermore, the opera moves at a terrific pace. It is like watching a fast-cut film, and in this manner, it balances an epic narrative sweep with an intimate look at the characters. At times it is amusing; at times it is intensely moving.

As part of its new leadership strategy for major arts organisations, Creative New Zealand identified the development and presenting of new operas by New Zealanders as a key area for investment, much to our delight. Hōhepa is therefore the first stage in an important new strand of the company’s work that will see in time a series of new operas produced. Why is this important? Opera has always sat comfortably on its well-established repertoire, but there is a danger that it will cease to speak to its audiences of contemporary issues. Production style can, of course, rectify this to a certain extent. Human behaviour has not changed that much down the ages, and a successful modern reinterpretation of a classic can bridge the historical gap between the composer and the audience, and make the piece look like new; but this ignores the fact that the classic works were all contemporary pieces in their day. We therefore need to expand the repertoire, to produce pieces which speak to today’s issues, and to do so in a manner that speaks directly to today’s audience.

It’s human nature to focus on the duds - I’m as guilty as the next man - but the opera repertoire has been enhanced in recent years by some terrific pieces. Brett Dean’s Bliss, which Opera Australia presented so thrillingly a couple of years ago, has already received a second production in Germany. And Jonathan Dove’s Flight, premiered in Glyndebourne in 1998, has now been played in multiple productions all around the world. Will Hōhepa follow that path? I don’t know for certain. But I do know that it will be an evening to remember for all the best reasons.

Aidan Lang, General Director

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In which the writer discovers why it’s a bit of a waste of time to try to accompany a baroque opera with a modern orchestra.

So, it’s quite good news, then? “Definitely,” he says. “The Lautten Compagney has an outstanding reputation in Europe for their playing style and their commitment to baroque performance, and they play across a vast repertoire from the 16th to the 18th century.

These specialist players will be bringing to this opera something that New Zealand audiences have never heard here before. What I think is really exciting and insightful is that a mainstream opera company that doesn’t specialise in baroque works has decided to put on a baroque opera, using baroque instrumentalists and singers who are experienced in this style.”

But is it really important to use baroque players? Couldn’t the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and the Vector Wellington Orchestra do the same job? “There are lots of differences in approach to the repertoire that happen as soon as you draw a group of baroque string players together, as opposed to those who are modern players. Their insights into the period – in this case the 18th century – result in performances that are almost automatically vibrant, exciting and cutting-edge. The audience hears something that is fresh, not just because it’s different from the modern orchestral techniques, but also because an historically informed approach is all about looking behind the notes on the page and finding the rhetoric, the persuasive style of performance, which is what this music is about.”

It’s more than just style and having the right baroque kind of attitude, though surely. What about the physical nuts-and-bolts differences in the instruments?

If you put a baroque violin and a modern violin side by side, at first glance they are exactly the same instrument, James tells me. The Stradivarius instruments played by famous concert violinists today are a very long way away from their original set-up. The original instruments were strung in gut and had a lower bridge than modern violins. The angle of the neck was also different. “This gives a sound that is sweeter than a standard modern violin,” James continues. “It’s not as loud so the sound is drawn out of the instrument, rather than being pushed to the back of a large concert hall.”

Pitch, too, has changed down the centuries. The standard pitch of the modern orchestra is very different to that of baroque times, which varied all through Europe. The baroque standard is now around about a semitone below modern pitch. “Even more interesting than that,” James adds, “is that the tuning of the instruments is fundamentally different from the modern equal temperament and the way the instruments are tuned with unequal semitones gives the music a very special character where each key has its own personality. That’s a very special feature that will be brought to these performances.

“But the most interesting and special characteristic is that with the shape and articulation qualities of the baroque bow, the music speaks very clearly and articulately. The bows go very, very quickly. The music can go lightning fast, compared with the more heavy and even bow strokes of the modern bow and bowing styles. And the same applies to the baroque cello and violone. The violone, being a fretted instrument, has a much more focused sound than the modern double bass and obviously a lute is nothing like anything else. It acts a little bit like a guitar because it’s plucked but the resonant qualities of the lute are unique and the instruments we will be seeing and hearing will be a lot larger than a guitar. When we look at the earlier repertoire – for example the operas of Monteverdi, Cavalli and Cavalieri – the music just tends to sound ridiculous and of no particular interest without these specific instrumental colours. Most people recognise that 17th-century music just isn’t okay on modern instruments. Getting the real thing with the very clear and beautiful and articulate sound of the baroque instruments is something that New Zealand audiences will absolutely adore.”

So, that’s part of the reason that baroque operas ceased being performed in the 19th century? It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the music – it just didn’t sound all that great with continuous vibrato and the other trappings of 20th-century performances.

Just when I think I’ve got the whole baroquemodern thing sorted, James throws in another musical curve ball. Not all baroque ensembles are the same, which I suppose is obvious when you think about it. It all depends, he tells me, on where they come from.

“If we were to put a group of baroque ensembles from different countries together on a stage, it would be easy to hear that English-trained baroque musicians make a completely different sound from those who come from a school of playing influenced by the Dutch performers – and the German approach is different again. It is wonderful to have the possibility of experiencing a German company of very fine baroque specialists in this country. Most of the baroque musicians working at a professional level in New Zealand have studied in the Netherlands, so our own baroque ensembles have an approach that is very much based on the Dutch school.

And, finally, size does matter. We are used to seeing a modern-day opera orchestra with anything from 40 to 90 players in the pit, “so when the baroque musicians walk on stage, you’re surprised at how relatively tiny the ensemble is”, James says. (The Lautten Compagney is bringing 20 musicians.) “But the word ‘orchestra’ is quite problematic as a lot of the 18th-century repertoire is really conceived for a small number of violins, as opposed to the modern orchestral set-up, with several desks of violins on each part. This gives the baroque ensembles a tremendous agility and flexibility. Each individual player is largely autonomous, rather than relying on ensemble skills and matching the ‘leader’. It makes the baroque repertoire more like glorified chamber music.”

Diana Balham, Publications Editor

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Our former spear-carrier for the Handel Opera Society is in a unique position to observe that it's high time his operas were performed here.
 Photo: NZ Opera General Director, Aidan Lang

We take it as a given that Handel is now regularly performed in opera houses around the world, but this was certainly not the case 30 years ago. The pioneering work of the Handel Opera Society, and the two German Handel festivals in Gottingen and his birthplace Halle, was indispensable in bringing attention to the operas of a composer who was otherwise exclusively known as a writer of oratorio, plus a couple of well-known orchestral suites. That the Handel Opera Society would lose its government funding within a couple of years of employing me was hopefully not down to my stage-management skills - nor indeed to my occasional cameo performances as assorted servants, bodyguards or, on one bizarre occasion, half of the Greek army! Having carried the Handelian flame almost single-handedly for so long, it is slightly ironic that the company didn't move with the times and respond to the extraordinary sea changes that took place in the early '80s, and which would forever change the way that Handel's operas would be presented: namely, the emergence of new styles of operatic production and the advent of "period" practice in music of the baroque era.

With the benefits of hindsight, the fairest adjective to be applied to the Handel Opera Society's productions is "worthy". Often inspired in their presentational style by etchings of the original performances, the taste was for historical authenticity. Forgetting perhaps that a drawing is inevitably the stylised capture of a single moment of a theatrical perfrormance and not a living archive, the general method required the performer to sing an entire section of an aria in one static position, and then stride with great purpose (but little or no dramatic intent) to a different spot on the stage during the ritornelli - the short orchestral passages linking two sung sections - before launching off again.

Sometimes, this reliance on contemporary visual reference also applied itself to the costuming. This usually consisted of the singers donning plumed headgear with a naive colour coding, according to character type: the innocent soprano in white, the villain in black, and red reserved for the slightly racy or morally dangerous mezzo-soprano. And when productions were not trying to be "authentic", they would go in the opposite direction, filled to the brim with naturalistic stage "business" which sat completely at odds with the resolutely non-naturalistic idiom of baroque opera. So therein lay the problem: how to find a theatrical style that was appropriate to the works themselves, and yet spoke to a modern audience. Enter stage left that sometime hero, sometime villain, the contemporary opera director.

The hallmark of a "modern" opera production is not whether it is in modern dress or not - a common red herring - but whether it attempts to find a new and suitable theatricality for the work in question, which in turn allows its inner meaning to be read alongside its basic narrative. This often results in a move away from the straitjacket of naturalism that so dominates our theatre today - and let's remember that the overwhelming majority of the core operatic repertoire was written before the concept of naturalism had even been conceived. So Handel is a perfect candidate for revisionalism, and in recent years we have seen a string of truly outstanding produtions, which have revealed his operas to have a keen sense of dramatic pacing and a profound and truthful understanding of human behaviour in all its shades and colours. In other words, Handel has been shown to be a real dramatist and a truly great composer of opera and not just a quaint historical curiosity.

Working in tandem with this new theatricality has been the rapid growth of period practice in the way in which baroque works are now played. Research into baroque style, coupled with the reconstructions of period instruments, has created sound worlds for Handel's music that are completely different from those I experienced when I stood poised in the wings, spear in hand, ready to risk my all. I have been asked why The NBR New Zealand Opera has gone to the trouble of bringing a period orchestra to New Zealand to play for Xerxes - the acclaimed Lautten Compagney.

The short answer is that now I simply cannot conceive of Handel's music being played on modern instruments. My memory of the orchestral sound back in the 1980s was that it was genteel. Yes, the musical phrasing was stylistically correct, but the unfortunate players, armed with powerful modern violins, were continually having to hold back, trying their best to prevent the music from sounding like Brahms. Put a violin strung with gut into the hands of specialist baroque players, however, and you have a completely different beast. The music is liberated. The fast-moving passages - and there are many in Handel - dance with a savage intensity, which rivals the virtuosity Handel demands of his singers. It's rough-edged, visceral and thrilling.

Xerxes is witty, lyrical, moving and at times explores the human condition with acute perception. For Handel opera "newbies", it is a perfect introduction to his genius. You are in for a treat.

Aidan Lang, General Director

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As with the Auckland season, we recently offered another guest blogger the chance to attend Macbeth opening night in Wellington and share their thoughts on the show. Sarah Chesney was our lucky guest, and below is her blog on Wellington's opening night of Macbeth...

"A performance to equal last year’s impressive Eugene Onegin is no easy task, but The NBR New Zealand Opera production of Verdi’s Macbeth was fiery from beginning to end.

Michele Kalmandi sings Macbeth superbly, his voice shifting easily from a vivid, full sound to the cupa or hollowness Verdi demands.  As Lady Macbeth, Antonia Cifrone is formidable, her second act aria, ‘La luce langue’, captivating and resolute. She sustains a vocal intensity throughout the opera from the brilliance and polish of her bursts of coloratura in the brindisi to the sense of controlled detachment in her mad scene. 

The production conveys all of Verdi’s fast-paced dramatic continuity. The three main props – three blasted trees, a bed and a folding screen – are used to good effect, particularly the screen, which successfully differentiates between public and private spaces within the unchanging, shady scenery. Although later in opera some of the dramatic sense is lost when the trees and bed are used together, confounding any distinction between inside and outside. This is especially obvious in Act 4 when the introduction of Lady Macbeth’s sonnambulismo is used to change the scene from Scottish border to bedroom and Lady Macbeth must carefully and sanely pick her way through the branches.

The fantastical element of Macbeth is limited in this production. Rather than prophesising, the witches appear to make ‘educated guesses’, garnering their information from the newspaper scraps they sweep up. The witches are the fundamental dramatic impetus of the opera. Three of them maintain a constant presence on stage, serving as a visible extension of their permeating voice in Verdi’s score. With not a cauldron in sight they sneakily stalk the stage, half-crouched, as cleaners and midwives. In Act 3, they deliver perhaps the descendents of Banquo, who they predicted would father kings in the first act. At the very least, the witches’ mischievous dance, tossing the babies amongst themselves and fashioning them tiny crowns to wear, presents a symbol of life. This scene is contrasted with (but doesn’t completely justify) the superfluous action of the prelude, in which Lady Macbeth suffers a miscarriage.

The performance was punctuated by the gasps of horror from the person sitting beside me. Lady Macbeth enters the stage in a bloodstained dress (gasp). The witches slide back the screen to reveal King Duncan’s murdered body (gasp). The assassins leap from the trees to attack Banquo (gasp). My neighbour’s reaction attests that even if the fantastic is absent, it is offset by the shock of violence, on-stage death and gripping dramatics. However, perhaps director Tim Albery could have followed Verdi’s lead and limited the continuous literal depictions of the characters’ thoughts and visions to Banquo’s ghost and the apparitions. Little is left to the audience’s imagination – or the music – when all is visible on stage.

The banquet scene was particularly brilliant. The chorus developed the unsettling mood, reacting against Macbeth’s flights of madness and Lady Macbeth’s exaggerated attempts at diversion during her brindisi. The only blip in an otherwise sensation performance by the Chapman Tripp chorus was the weak assassins’ chorus – too sotto voce even for Macbeth – which briefly showed an imbalance between singers and orchestra evident in a couple of passages. Overall though, the Vector Wellington orchestra perform admirably under the direction of Guido Ajmone Marsan. The nuances of Verdi’s score were well executed and the interplay between the winds in their solo passages and with the vocal lines was especially notable. 

Of the supporting roles, Roman Shulackoff shone as Macduff.  His tormented Act 4 aria (‘Ah, la paterna mano’) was memorable for his sustained phrasing and lyricism.  Jud Arthur’s Banquo was assured and rich, his entrance as the ghost, wrenching off his bloodied clothes prompted a final gasp from my neighbour.  Macbeth ended spectacularly with the original 1847 ending, suitably updated to the production’s Cold War-era staging.  It was, by a whisker, my highlight of the performance." 

Sarah Chesney, guest blogger

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For the Macbeth season in Auckland we offered our online followers the opportunity to attend Macbeth opening night and write a blog entry for us on their experience. Olivia Young took us up on the offer, and put together a succinct review of her experience at Macbeth. Here’s what she had to say about the production…
Photos: Jane Ussher   

“Verdi wrote to his librettist Francesco Maria Piave “This tragedy is one of the greatest creations of man, if we can’t do something great with it, let us at least try to do something out of the ordinary.” The season of Macbeth for The NBR New Zealand Opera has illustrated a fine execution of the restaging of this Shakespearean play.

Shakespeare’s tragedy unravels against a sombre and dark backdrop, complimenting the gloomy Scottish theme. The back wall is well used with the comings and goings, notably for the construction of three perches for the devious witches. The ominous, twiggy trees are creatively featured throughout as broom sticks, a bonfire and the infamous Birnam Woods.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are an intense, brooding couple. Michele Kalmandi plays the role of Macbeth. He captures the intensity required and gives an honourable and effective performance. The stage is commanded with a combination of vocal grandeur and dramatic tension. Lady Macbeth (Antonia Cifrone) filled the house with her sustained, full-voiced lyrical phrases. 

The supporting cast is led by Macduff (Roman Shulackoff) and Banquo (Jud Arthur). The latter excelled in his second-act aria before his murder, however Macduff was shown up against Macbeth and we were left wanting more from his character and voice.  A highlight of the evening was the brilliant singing of the Chapman Tripp Chorus, also noted for their ability to smoothly change roles throughout when required.

Tim Albery’s production creates some visually powerful and convincing scenes, particularly in the choral tableaux featuring the witches and the exiles. The use of lighting emphasizes the emotion and atmosphere of the production, bringing the sparse landscape to life alongside the drama. Despite death being a main theme in question, perhaps a display of more gore and blood would have been well received. The use of a screen to hide the deaths interrupted the narrative which was an unnecessary addition to the staging.

Guido Ajmone-Marsan conducts conducted the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra superbly, and they relished the challenge of Verdi’s arousing and emotional score. The power of the music itself, the brilliant performances of Kalamandi and Cifrone, and the superb Chorus and Orchestra created much magic. The NBR New Zealand Opera has executed another magnificent opera, and we can look forward to another scintillating season in 2011.”

Olivia Young, guest blogger

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Verdi's Macbeth is never going to be a jolly romp on the moors, but if you're expecting to see kilts and bonny Caledonian witches with sprigs of heather in their buttonholes, you're going to be surprised by Tim Albery's production. He is the operatic master of getting straight to the point: a director who admits that he's not crazy about props or terribly interested in baddies and goodies. And Tim's award-winning Macbeth (first performed by Opera North in the UK in 2008) is a textbook example of his style: "I go for extreme narrative clarity - I tend to pare things right back and Macbeth has a very simple narrative thrust. It's incredibly fluid: there aren't scene changes and you don't have to go anywhere because you're there all the time. What I like about it is it's just so savage and brutal. It doesn't mess about. No long overtures. He just gets on with it."

He being Verdi, a man who might have been reading from the same songbook, as it were, when he adapted Shakespeare's potent tragedy for the opera stage. "Verdi leaves out a whole lot of stuff that doesn't interest him," Tim continues. "I think it's a brilliant chopping job, but he still deals with the heart of it. You don't get nearly as much of Macbeth's internal narrative as you do in the play. His intellectual emotional crisis is really the crux of the whole play and I think in the opera, the way we chose to look at it, Lady Macbeth's becomes very much an equal tragic journey. She gets relatively more air time."

So, what will it look like? Not Scottish, that's for sure. "It's vaguely mid-to-late-20thcentury, possibly European-ish," Tim says helpfully. "I didn't want to do something that was period in another way, but it's got to be a militarised society, that's the first thing." There will be guys in possibly fascistic army uniforms, menacing thugs in dinner jackets and an army of cleaning ladies (the witches) who maintain a constant presence and knit - like tricoteuses during the French Revolution - while the horrifying action unfolds around them. Plus blood, blood and more blood.

Why not a bit more Braveheart and a bit less Ceauşescu's Romania? "You see the story: a dinner jacket. You don't have to look at it. A woman in a black cocktail dress. You don't have to think about it. It just says these are people with wealth and money. This is the power élite. That's all you need to know. I wanted to get to the heart of this relationship between these two people in this strange world and it didn't feel to me that it would help us to make it specific. So it was just about saying, 'Do we need that? Nah, we don't. Get rid of it. Let's not do it. Keep it simple so that it just really zones in on these people.'"

With such a straight-downthe-line philosophy, it's hard to imagine that Tim just fell into directing, but he did, in the classic right-time-right-place situation. With a degree in French from Manchester University, he was wondering what to do with his life. He'd done some production management and backstage work at university and directed a play by default, after someone else couldn't do it. That led to his being a guinea pig on a brand-new drama course at the university: his alumni included actors Julie Walters and Mary McDonnell (Kevin Costner's love interest in Dances with Wolves), TV writer Peter Flannery and Tim's longtime accomplice theatre designer and director Antony McDonald. "We were quite a radical, difficult group. We weren't crazy about the guy who was supposed to be running the course so we sacked him and started inviting in directors who we knew about. It was actually a fantastic, immediate concrete kind of training."

Tim went out into the world in 1974 with a fresh qualification and a head full of genrebending ideas. He did "a huge amount of things", often in alternative theatre, and built up a formidable repertoire and reputation. But opera was about to get him. "In about 1983, I was asked by this guy who rang me up out of the blue saying he'd seen some of my theatre and thought I might be good at opera. I said, 'Look, I've only ever seen one opera in my life and it was a nightmare!' It was grim: a tiny little tenor wearing high-heeled shoes because he was so short, a big, fat soprano - all the clichés you could imagine about opera. And he said, 'Just listen to it. Don't just turn it away like that.' And in fact it was The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten, which for a theatre director is a brilliant thing to start with in opera because there are no big choruses, it's pretty much a linear narrative and very seldom do three people sing at once."

The opera was a festival in a village in Tuscany and - needless to say - it was a done deal. Now, all these years later, Tim is talking to me from Santa Fe, where he is directing The Magic Flute in the desert. "God, how lucky is that?" he says. "It's great going to a rehearsal in the morning and someone sings for you instead of some dreary actor muttering away and looking at the script."

But he'll never abandon theatre. Now based in Toronto with his Canadian wife Patti, it's largely geography that keeps him away from the stage. "Since I've been here, I've only directed two theatre works, partly because theatre is much more native-culture-based than opera, which is international. I'm increasingly wanting to do more radical things. I don't really want to do straight plays any more."

Diana Balham, Publications Editor

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Roman Shulackoff - Macduff in Macbeth - shares a favourite opera memory.

I have been very lucky to meet different great singers, artists and directors while travelling all over the world. As an opera singer, I've always been interested in getting advice from people to discover new things in vocal technique, staging, acting, etc.. This is another level of an opera singer's education that never stops. Mostly you're talking about how to breathe, to sing the top notes or something like that. This is very useful, especially when you're not such an experienced singer.

Once, I was in New York, rehearsing L'Elisir d'Amore, and I got a chance to work with some great singers and watch them working. One of them was Paul Plishka, the great American bass. His career was just phenomenal and the voice unforgettable. His generation has produced lots of great singers and he is one of them. He was very kind to talk with me on several occasions. He was born in American but had Slavic roots like myself. While we were talking about Boris Godunov, he suddenly said: "Give me any person and I promise I'll make a great, fantastic Boris of him, even if he's got no voice!" I asked how it could be possible. The answer was: "There is much more besides singing and having the voice in our profession! The public wants to be the part of the story you're telling from the stage. And if they are, you will get a lot of sympathy from them. Boris is this kind of role, and it's very easy to include the audience in the story and to touch their hearts."

A few days later, I met him in the corridor and asked how one includes the people into the story and makes it real. "They are one and the same. You cast the lure and then start playing with them. You're attracting a fish, step by step. Avoid frightening it. When the fish bites, be calm, no rush. Keep your mind clear. If you're pulling too strongly, the line will break: if too weak, then the fish will escape. In either case you will lose the fish. And when it is on the hook, don't rush. Keep the fish free, let the one go and then bring it back. And only when you're confident it's yours you can take it with your hands! So that's simple. But you must be honest and sincere with the audience to have something to tell."

I wish I could have been in the audience when he was onstage. This man has both wisdom and a great sense of humour. I'm not sure if he remembers me, but I certainly remember him.

Roman Shulackoff
NZO roles: Macduff, Macbeth (2010), Lensky, Eugene Onegin (2009)

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Why video whizzkid Neill Andrews thought the ruminant might just work.

A goat, a plate of cheese and some Italian pick-up lines are just some of the random ideas that made it into Neill Andrews' online video "A Moment with Riccardo Novaro" in the lead-up to our Marriage of Figaro season. Then there's a rehearsal clip where Riccardo is leaping around the stage wearing a cape like a mad Mediterranean Dracula, Wade Kernot comments that he's "just a big man in tights" and Aidan Lang is riffing on the idea that Mozart was turned on by the idea of a woman playing a boy kissing another woman.

NZOpera%20Figaro-%20meet%20Riccardo%20Novaro.mp4 Watch on Posterous

God forbid that we should call the Opera a brand, but Neill - now back in New Zealand - has applied these same rules to his work for us and wants to do a similar thing for Macbeth. "I want to work with a member of the cast, wake up with that person, go to rehearsals and be taken through his or her day - getting what it's like to be a part of the production and offering a sense of who they are. It's about people - the people are the show. I want viewers to say, "Wow, that might be an option!"

Neill, who talks very fast so that he can fit this interview into a life crammed with video production, weekend DJing and family life with Jessica and 20-month-old twins Jack and Isabella, has it all clear in his head. "I shoot a lot of stuff and edit a lot. The better it is going in, the better it is coming out. It can't be boring - I don't want a reason for people to push 'pause', so I have a rule of about three minutes or less. It's interesting that New Zealand Opera had the foresight to try something like this but Aidan got it straight away. He has an amazing number of screws loose, which is what you need to have!"

Diana Balham, Publications Editor

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How our productions proceed from ideas on a page to characters on a stage.

It seems as if we have only just driven our singers from The Marriage of Figaro to the airport to send them safely on their return travels; now we are up and running again, arranging the schedule to receive the Macbeth cast. But in the overall scheme of things, these arrangements are the final piece of a much bigger jigsaw in the planning of life at The NBR New Zealand Opera. This may still be mid-season, but we are also only a few weeks aware from the launch of our 2011 seasons; and in the background, the planning process for 2012 and beyond is busily chugging away.

By necessity, opera works with far-reaching timelines. There are many reasons for this, which might not be immediately obvious. Singers' diaries often carry engagements two or three years down the line, and if the role is new to them, they must allow sufficient learning time to get it onto the voice. They differ in this respect from actors, who will rarely arrive at a production with their roles completely memorised. Singers, on the other hand, are contractually obliged to have their roles committed to memory on arrival. One cannot rehearse an opera while clutching a vocal score, and the sheer length of time it takes to learn a role means that this preparation has to have been completed many weeks in advance of rehearsals. In the case of the major Wagner roles, one is talking about a year's work or more. So learning time is but one of the number of factors that contribute to the choices we face when planning our seasons.

First, we must decide which operas will be performed. We all have our favourite works, and one of the incidental pleasures of my job is the discussions I have with our supporters regarding repertoire. If we had the luxury of presenting seven productions a year, we might be able to satisfy all your wish lists, but two mainstage productions means that we must choose wisely. If we only ever performed the so-called "Top 10" operas we would be through the list in five years, and people don't necessarily want to attend the same operas incessantly, however popular they might be. We therefore take a long-term approach to our repertoire planning, and over the coming years will be filling some of the glaring holes, while at the same time revisiting some old favourites.

Having chosen what to perform, the next decision to be made is how we do it - and this is where selection of the creative team comes into play. Our artistic profile is defined by whom we invite to create our productions. Conductors and directors all have their strengths and weaknesses, and the trick is to play to their strong suits. Just as it would be bizarre to invite a baroque specialist to conduct Verdi, so we cannot expect a director who favours a modern approach to come up with a lavish traditonal show a la Zeffirelli. So we make an artistic decision on an opera-by-opera basis as to what sort of evening we wish to present, and then invite our team accordingly.

And this, in turn, can have a knock-on effect on our casting. Getting the cast one wants is never an easy matter, and can be a long drawn-out process - just ask Jude Froude, our Artistic Administrator! We ask ourselves some key questions. "Is there a particular artist we would like to showcase?" "Is he available?" and "Can we afford him?" Who he or she might be, however, is the result of much careful deliberation.

Whenever possible, we try to cast a New Zealander. As New Zealand's national opera company, it is our role to assist the careers of our artists as best we can; but we cannot do this blindly. It is essential that they can fulfil the demands of the role both vocally and in accordance with the needs of the production, and if nobody in our amazing pool of talent is suitable or available, then we look to invite a guest. And New Zealand itself plays a part in the process as a draw card. Away from the spotlight of the European circuit, it is a good place for more established singers to try out a new role for the first time. We offer a full rehearsal period, and a run of nine performances gives them the chance to get a role firmly under the belt.

This distance does have its downside, however, as we can quickly become out of touch with who is doing what in the opera world. So here we call on two mighty forces - Wyn Davies, our Director of Music, and the internet. Gone are days of endless correspondence with agents. A massive online database coupled with sound-clips and YouTube videos enables us to filter our asting ideas relatively quickly. Wyn, who is based in Europe, then steps in and listens to those singers who have initially excited us. Following his verdict, the cast slowly but surely falls into place and the jigsaw is finally completed.

Aidan Lang, General Director

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