An insider’s view of Opera Australia’s woes
OperaFrom an informed slippedisc.com reader:
Without wanting to deny the obvious managerial issues during Davies’ tenure at OA (summarised in some of the other comments, some entirely valid observations, but also some sexism/ignorance on display), this has got more to do with her programming ambitions for the company, her commitment new operatic writing, and her strategy for developing audience taste in Australia. Davies’ first season was critically fantastically well received, and was a statement of intent: Puccini, Mozart (great), but also Brett Dean’s ‘Hamlet’ in Sydney and Missy Mazzoli’s ‘Breaking the Waves’ in Melbourne, two major critical successes for the company, two operas of enormous international significance and renown, and yet two box office flops in Australia. One has to wonder: is it that those pieces are bad, uninteresting, unengaging, unmoving, overly provocative, ugly, intellectually elitist or whatever criticism could be levelled at them, or is it that the company doesn’t know how to share them with an Australian audience that has been undernourished, and abandoned by real artistic leadership as the art form continues to develop elsewhere.
Perhaps Davies went too hard too fast, but unfortunately there are loud voices in Australia that fundamentally disagree with the entire project on the grounds of either funding or an absence of ambition to be a part of the development of the art form. Opera in Australia is dreadfully funded by international standards, and unfortunately the company is expected to wash its own face in a way that few national companies are expected to do: in Europe there is major state funding, and in the US there is a highly developed philanthropic model. In Australia, contributions from those sources are modest, and so ticket sales are expected to fund the company. The catch is that tickets rightly have to remain affordable, and so there is a model which involves staging musicals to make money with which to fund the (much more expensive) operatic work – a policy which pre-dates Davies. But gradually it seems the creative ambitions of the operatic work are being eroded in order to run the company as a whole as a commercial enterprise. The question is, what does Australia want its national company to do? Perform 30,000 shows of a clapped-out production of La Boheme for tourists off a cruise ship parked up outside the Sydney Opera House that will never come back, or bring perhaps the most internationally-significant Australian opera ever written to Sydney for home audiences to experience. The reality is that as an outsider, Davies’ understands and believes in the power, significance and value of the latter to Australian culture, but very few within the company actually do. She even planned to present ‘Hamlet’ to Melbourne audiences, but that was quickly put to bed. Where’s the ambition for Australian culture, pride in Australian artists, belief in the value and necessity of opera? I was in Sydney to see Hamlet and was genuinely saddened to see the flags around Circular Quay alternating Cosi/Tosca/Cosi/Tosca, not a single invitation to see Hamlet. Were the marketing department embarrassed to be doing it!? If you don’t believe in opera, get another job.
So personally, for all her faults, I think it’s a great pity she’s gone. And I think it’s very important that Australian artists understand that this is the conversation that is happening within OA, not only about new works but about any opera which is not profitable. Time to participate in this conversation if you care about the future of the art form.
If Davies was so keen for True Blue Talent, why did she import D grade British “Toscas” for her Shabby Little Arena Spectacular?
She could have saved on flights and employed a D grade singer from home.
I rather take issue with the comment “D grade singer from home.” I can assure you Sheila that we go much higher up the alphabet with Tosca(s), Cavaradossi(s) and Scarpia(s) et al in this, allegedly, Opera backwater. That said, I am in total agreement with the remainder of your comment. I’ll refrain from making a star casting list here of Australian singers who would have done a superlative job in all these Puccini roles, as oppposed to those non-Australian cast members who were employed.
This was really more about scheduling and existing contractual commitments that many of the Australian Toscas had during negotiations. For instance, I heard Nicole Car was in the mix, but she was already tied up with engagements in Europe… so I can imagine they were left with few options. Also, I’m sure the pay wasn’t very appealing to the A/B-list Toscas from major international houses.
This sounds penned by the likes of Joe Davies own partner. These questions face EVERY opera house post pandemic. Australia does not get a unique pity party. And this “friend of Jo’s’ totally overlooks her inexcusable absences from the company over her first 80 weeks, plus her absurd, impractical international casting aims within budget – and as a wise person says below, Why was she casting D list Toscas and Sarah Brightman in Sunset Blvd when the woman cannot sing or act any longer. Jo Davies was unqualified for the job from day one. Yes, friend of Jo’s, the state of modern opera is very challenging, but none of this excuses Davies’ utter failure to perform as an AD, as a leader of the company, or as an active member of the Australian arts community. Please stop trying to ice the cake. It’s been trashed for good reason.
Somebody who puts the other side of the case must be a “friend of Jo’s” or possibly even his partner? What a childish response (but unfortunately one common on social media).
I do not know enough about the situation in Australian opera to have a view, but I do know enough about piling on to recognise it when I see it.
Whatever the merits of any of the arguments, it is heartening to see an articulate, reasoned, cogent and well-argued analysis of the activities of Ms. Davies and her tenure, and sourced by someone Mr. Lebrecht identifies as well-informed.
The upcoming season is a reason to emigrate
https://opera.org.au/sydney/
Making one’s way from the city centre to the opera house is unpleasant; bars line the harbour and raucous thumping so-called music emanates from there after 6pm. One feels trapped inside a disco machine and upon arrival at the OH, you feel there is another form of punishment awaiting…
I witnessed Jo’s commitment to Australian artists, new work, and opera as a legitimate art form first hand. I believe she would continued to shape tastes and advocate for ours as a legitimate and a vital art form here in Australia, despite the hyper-“pragmatic” view that the only way to survive was a steady diet of Traviatas and Bohèmes. A sad loss for opera in Australia. She wasn’t even given the chance to realise her vision and opera in Australia is the poorer for it.
Hamlet was exceptional and the entire company rose to the occasion. Yet I knew several contemporary music enthusiasts in Sydney who didn’t even know it was on, so limited was the PR, all while, as the article above outlines, there were flags waving all over Sydney harbour advertising Cosi. The result of this lack of PR meant decent but ultimately far from sold out audiences, which predictably results in some committee meeting where they say “well, we put on something adventurous but see? Nobody goes. We can’t lose money like this again. Back to musicals!”
G’s suggestion that lack of PR for Hamlet accounted (largely) for lack of audiences is surely facile. I can recall way back to the 1970s when Scottish Opera with great fanfare announced a commissioning scheme that would see four new operas in the repertoire over four years from 1974. This received a great deal of PR. Even though two were included in the Edinburgh Festival programming – Robin Orr’s Hermiston (1975) and Thea Musgrave’s Mary Queen of Scots (1977) – audiences for three were close to abysmal other than the subscribers in two cities who had bought seat packages. Only the Musgrave opera drew major audiences (perhaps influenced to a large extent by the subject) and was in my view an excellent work that did receive performances outside the UK. The operas by Orr, Thomas Wilson and Iain Hamilton all but died. Selling contemporary opera is a tough nut in many parts of the world.
This reader does not seem to be particularly well “informed”
It is certainly a shame that she departed so quickly, but like the recently departed boss of the Queensland Ballet, perhaps she misunderstood the Australian context a little. Plus the role of boards and management in Aus are to ensure that the company doesn’t go broke. They aren’t there to bail out whatever adventures or risks the AD wishes to take. Furthermore there isn’t the board culture of “give, get or get off” like in the US.
Either that or she didn’t look at the finances before taking on the role, like anyone should.
Thank you for whichever “informed Slipped Disc” reader contributed the above submission. An intelligent submission.
I had the privilege of being in Sydney at the start of August and caught the performance of Dean’s Hamlet on Fri 2nd (with Allan Clayton on blistering form in the title role). It was rapturously received and very close to capacity. Doing something right!
The production of Hamlet was first presented at Glyndebourne and then in Adelaide in 2018, where it was received rapturously. We didn’t go in Sydney because OA gave us no reason to want to see the same production again.
The Golden Days of opera in Australia are past….the 70’s & 80’s!! Sadly audiences are changing as society and culture are being consumed by ‘soundbites’, rampant populism, and the immediate ‘grab’.
Opera here in those two decades flourished because of visionaries, good directorship and lots of coorporate funding and a repertoire that was world class in it’s ambition…17 or so operas in a season of breathtaking scope.
Opera requires money and lots of it! It is the ultimate artform requiring gymnast level artistes and a huge creative team.
Opera companies should be staging OPERA…not musicals!!! Do it ….or don’t bother.
Where are the visionaries like the wonderful Fred Street who funded programmes for disadvantaged youth…(not the rich kids of the eastern ‘burbs) to be educated and introduced to this world. I worked on this project and saw children ,who had not even been to the cbd of Sydney, marvel and even weep at being immersed in this magnificent artform, mouths agape in wonderment!
As the song goes…” the children are our future…teach them well”
We are a global culture now of being dumbed down….and fed endless pap and tv garbage in the name of entertainment and ‘art’.
‘The Emporers new Clothes” syndrome is at the fore across most of our institutions and that includes sadly education and health domains….too much hype, pc and padding…not enough substance.
Look at the incredible money pumped into sport!! Thats where our priorities lie sadly….too lopsided….and the thuggish game of NRL is even more our national obsession and identifier. YAWN!!! Sport is great and necessary on some levels….but it thrives because it appeals to our baser instincts of ‘winning & losing’…of rampant ,often mindless, competitiveness.
Art is subtle, subjective, nuanced, mysterious and its place in the human life and experience essential. Humans are dreamers and imaginers….and Opera is one of it’s ultimate expressions.
I’m afraid the ‘thuggish game of NRL’ (rugby league) is only an obsession in the states of NSW and Queensland. Elsewhere, it’s the thuggish game of Australian Rules.
Meanwhile, as in the USA, getting to the opera house in Australia can be an expensive business: quite apart from the tickets themselves, those who live outside the state capitals have the cost of travel and overnight accommodation as well. The AO might well emulate the Royal Ballet and Opera and Glyndebourne by setting up a streaming service.
The 70s and 80s were not always golden days for non-Australian CEOS. In 1977 Peter Hemmings was recruited from Scottish Opera where in tandem with Sir Alexander Gibson he had been acknowledged by all as a major success in developing a new company from a couple of weeks of performances to a full-time opera company in its own House that attracted genuine international acclaim. You don’t reach that level of achievement by being a yes-man wallflower. His tenure down under lasted all of 2 years when allegedly he just could not get on with Richard Bonynge and vice versa. As his wife was the reigning diva, perhaps unsurprisingly Bonynge won that battle. Sadly boards frequently seem unaware that personalities in opera and the performing arts are one of the key qualifications, an oversight that seems also to have been the case with Ms. Davies.
Richard Gill said years ago that music education in Australia was in decline. Australians barely listen to orchestral music unless it’s Hans Zimmerframe or it’s used in a computer game. Under Moffat Oxenbould and Donald MacDonald The Australian Opera was powerhouse organisation that reached out. We had Musica Viva too, bringing music to the suburbs. Australians love sport and streaming entertainment. Our governments don’t care for serious culture and popular culture is more highly valued. Thus we have Flopera
All of this is inevitable when opera is not funded properly.
A company that absolutely has to make every dollar to survive absolutely cannot take risks. Opera Australia is beholden to the fact that it is entirely reliant on ticket sales.
Jo Davies was not responsible for casting Sarah Brightman in Sunset Boulevard, let’s be clear about that; these were decisions that predate her tenure.
She presented a season filled with Australian Opera and largely filled with Australian singers; but the finances don’t stack up.
How can opera be presented, at a ticket price that is affordable (and OA tickets are already very expensive), and with varied and occasionally risk-taking repertoire, without funding?
Adding endless musicals to the seasons isn’t the answer – Sunset Boulevard makes it very clear that you can lose just as much money presenting a musical as you can an opera.
The answer is increased funding – but every smaller arts company in Australia already whinges endlessly that opera gets too much. This is the flagship national company that routinely presents work of outstanding quality – and yet other arts companies like to whinge and be jealous of their funding, instead of supporting them.
Presenting quality at the “top” of the arts pyramid, through Opera Australia, making it affordable and accessible, and interesting, flows throughout all other arts companies; it’s not a case of opera taking it’s money from others.
Double Opera Australia’s public funding, and you will be able to halve the ticket prices, increase audiences, present better variety of repertoire, invest in new work, build young artist development, increase opportunities for directors, stage managers, lighting people, set and costume and makeup, to present their craft at the very highest level, develop the next generation, and have that flow across the entire arts industry.
It is a flagship company, and deserves to be treated as such.
Leave Opera Australia to die – the death by a thousand cuts of every dwindling funding in the face of rising costs and static funding (the same story of the past 20 years now compounded beyond belief into an impossible storm of financial misery) – and it will die. Ticket prices up, audiences down, La Boheme every night of the year, jobs lost, skills and talent lost, the Opera house with Opera no more.
This is the reality facing a company like Opera Australia (and indeed the state opera companies too), but not a single Arts Minister in the country has the guts to put money where their mouth is. They will turn up for the photos on opening night and take the credit, of course.
Fund opera, or it will be gone within five years, and the national cultural landscape incredibly poorer for it. It’s not actually a difficult decision.
I cannot understand all those who are against opera companies presenting one musical in a season. Chicago’s Lyric Opera has been doing it since 2012. Many German houses do the same. Even in Australia I recall seeing the late Victorian State Opera presenting an excellent My Fair Lady with Warren Mitchell in the late 1980s. A few performances of a well-presented musical can be a major boost to a season’s overall box office revenues.
Personally I would never have chosen Sunset Boulevard. But if London’s National Theatre can sell out classics like Carousel and Guys and Dolls in excellent productions, it should not be outwith the imagination of Opera Australia’s artistic team to come up with some money sinners. How about operettas like the Gilbert & Sullivan canon, Lehar etc.? After all, it was a long season of Lehar’s Merry Widow conducted by Alexander Gibson that almost literally saved Sadler’s Wells Opera in its Rosebery Avenue days.
The issue isn’t about including a single musical in the season; the real concern is that Opera Australia is planning to feature FOUR musicals next season. The number of performances dedicated to these musicals will significantly surpass those for opera. Additionally, the musicals they’re staging don’t make use of the orchestra, and in some cases, they rely on a small band with synthesisers instead of live musicians or opera singers. This leaves many professionals without work for extended periods, and subscribers are left with fewer operas in their packages, which alienates them. That’s the core of the problem!