Kátia Kabanová, Opéra national de Paris

When Joan Sutherland came back to Sydney in 1965 there was much complaint that the opening night has not been as glamorous as Melbourne’s. The problem was the venue. Her Majesty’s Theatre, in Quay Street near Central Station, had until a few years previously been the Empire Cinema, and its foyer was not big enough for women to show off their frocks and jewellery and be seen.

The Palais Garnier, the main opera theatre in Paris, has no such problem. When Charles Garnier designed it he made sure there were plenty of spaces for people to promenade during the intervals, and boxes facing the audience so that bejewelled bosoms might sparkle in the light of the huge chandelier. Most important is the great foyer, focusing on a huge marble staircase, and with balconies at all levels from which to see and be seen. It is a great example of form following function, years before the principle was encoded by whoever it was that encoded it.

And only one word can adequately describe the interior – wow. Look it up on the net. The auditorium is dominated by the chandelier and Marc Chagall’s gorgeous mural across the roof, a tribute to opera composers (the picture above represents Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov).

Oh, and the seats in our little box were comfortable (we didn’t try the chaise longue at the back, but the mirror came in useful for checking that we looked fabulous before we walked out into the lobby).

Janacek’s Kátia Kabanová is a short but intense three acts, here played consecutively without a break so as to run within 100 minutes. Thomas Netopil conducted skilfully; the music is angular yet lyrical, rhythmic and compelling, and with the right performers you get drawn in, even thought the words and the surtitles are in languages you don’t speak.

Christoph Marthaler’s production is set not in the rural village specified by the librettist, but in a contemporary apartment block by the Volga River. Two shabby walls of windows, and the people living behind them, look down on the courtyard where the action plays out. Unlike those in Orlando, of which the best that can be said is that they didn’t fall down, the sets participate in the action.

Kátia is caught between fidelity to her husband Tichon (Donald Kaasch) and the joy of her affair with Boris (Jorma Silvasti). Kátia is weighed down by boredom and something less intense and desirable than despair, which explains why she might find either of these harried and haunted men attractive or worthy of loyalty. Angela Denoke (Kátia) has the ability to convey that kind of inner life without grandiose gestures, and her strong soprano soars over the orchestra, making the Czech words flow with the melody. Vocally the only other interesting performer was Ales Briscein (Kudriach), a light tenor with a much stronger voice than you usually hear in this part. Jane Henschel (Kabanicha, Kátia’s mother-in-law) doesn’t have much chance to show off vocally but impresses with her acting. Kabanicha, is a plump ball of self-centredness teetering between her heels and her beehive, one of those rare characters in opera who do not develop but stay as they were at the beginning, and her indifference to Kátia is as fatal to her as anything else.

When we left the Opéra to catch the metro home, the lights of the Louvre were glowing in the distance, and breakdancers were performing for a crowd on the Opéra steps.

Orlando Furioso, Théâtre du Champs-Elysées

The first thing you need to know if you ever go to the Théâtre du Champs-Elysées is that the seats upstairs are ridiculously small. The place was built for a more petite age, and unless you are snake-hipped and have short legs, or are a child up to twelve, you will be crippled by the end of the evening. Even before the opera began Megan was sitting on the steps, and I was standing. It saved embarrassment to know that we weren’t the only ones.

If you go there to see Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso, one thing you don’t need to know is the plot. A loves B who loves C and so, D casts magic spells and E goes mad for most of act III. The end. The important thing is the singing, a thought which comforted us when we saw the French surtitles.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Orlando) has a big contralto voice, bright and even throughout her whole range. She deserved the ovation for her act I aria ‘Troppo è fiero’, and the cheers and stamping that greeted her curtain call at the end. Jennifer Larmore was a fiery Alcina, ripping off ornamental runs like the spells she put half the characters under.

But we were there for Philippe Jaroussky, probably the first legendary voice of the 21st century. Jaroussky sang the small role of Ruggiero, but his stage presence and his extraordinary voice made his three arias stand out. His melancholy ‘Sol da te, mio dolce amore’ was perfect in every way. The review in Friday’s Le Monde simply said, ‘The Ruggiero of Philippe Jaroussky, miracle of poetry incarnate, is very beautiful.’

Jean-Christophe Spinosi conducted his Ensemble Matheus, their customary clarity and balance a joy to listen to. It has been said that we are in a golden age for baroque opera. It’s probably true. Pity about the seats.

Notre Dame

In an age that has seen it all, it is remarkable that every day thousands flock to Notre-Dame de Paris. We don’t view it with the eyes of our predecessors: we don’t look for God, and we have seen bigger buildings. But today the square in front of the cathedral was full of tourists, street performers, hawkers and beggars, and the fat pigeons approached them boldly, showing that this was not an unusual day.

Some go there to tick another sight off the list. Others go because of its mythologies, real and imagined. I am one of those; as we approached from the Petit Pont, I could see the crowds storming the cathedral in search of the hunchback, and inside I could see where Napoleon I (they don’t call him Bonaparte here) grabbed the crown and made himself Emperor.

It’s a lot like the Musée d’Orsay or the Louvre, using culture and history to turn a quid. The cathedral shop sells books and cds, jewellery and rosaries. If you put 2€ in a machine you can get a (very good) little book in any of nine languages describing the cathedral. If you put 2€ in another machine you can get a souvenir medal. Across the road, one side of the Rue d’Arcole is lined with souvenir shops, and within a couple of blocks you can find Le Quasimodo brasserie, the Hotel Esmeralda, and the Café Notre Dame (which serves great crepes).

But among the profane the sacred continues. The clerics get on with the business of God, holding mass for the faithful while the tourists shuffle around, gawking at the roof and the stained-glass windows. The priest reads the homily and prays, the communicants respond to the formulas, and the great organ rings through the nave. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is a window into the numinous, something beyond the stone and glass. Somehow it is quiet.

We're here

Sitting at the table in our flat on the 7th floor in the 7th arrondissement,

• having flown in to Charles de Gaulle at 6.30am to 7ºC and fog, and got through immigration, baggage collection and (non-existent) customs with a few confident bonjours and mercis;

• having caught the Air France bus into Paris at peak hour, and realising that the Boulevard Peripherique is an eight-lane version of Parramatta Road, only uglier (‘C’est impossible!’ I hear you cry);

• having caught a cab and experienced the thrills and danger of the traffic at the Arc de Triomphe, and remembering that the French invented Grand Prix motor racing;

• having found our flat and realised that the lift will take both of us, or the luggage, or one and some luggage, but not everything, and that we can see the spire of Les Invalides from our kitchen window;

• having strolled over to the Champs du Mars to see the Tour Eiffel and take a few photos, and having contemplated which boulangerie we might grab a coffee at later;

• having bought a few days’ supplies from the G20 supermarché down the road, and having lunched on inexpensive camembert purchased at said supermarché;

• having discovered that French people are not rude and arrogant but friendly and welcoming, even the checkout fille at the G20;

we contemplate, what shall we do next? What is the best way to spend the afternoon that stretches before us, that is a natural consequence of what we have so far experienced, and will prepare the way for new adventures to come?

A shower, and a sleep. That flight is LONG.

We have liftoff! (almost)

We’ve dreamed, we’ve planned, we’ve scrimped, we’ve saved, we’ve booked, we’ve learned the languages and watched the movies, and now we’re off (well, next Wednesday we will be).


Just a quick list of where we’re going and what we’ll be dressing for:

16 March – Sydney to Paris
17-30 March – Paris (min 5.1, max 11.8)
31 March-10 April – Hamburg (min 3.3, max 12.3)
11-17 April – Berlin (min 4.2, max 13.2)
18-19 April – Köln (min 3.6, max 14.2)
20-26 April – Paris and Northern France (min 6.8, max 14.7)
27 April-11 May – London (min 8.7, max 17.0)
12 May – Paris (min 10.5, max 19.0)
13-14 May – Paris to Sydney (min 11.5, max 19.3)

Five countries (if you count Belgium and Singapore in transit), seven cities, ten operas, a million cathedrals and art galleries – it’s a culturepalooza!

Watch this space for updates on our exciting adventures.

Stuff I have learned from studying history

1. The first postgrad students at Sydney Uni did not have APAs. Instead they spent three months each year in Egypt building the pyramids.

2. Charles Dickens got the idea for Oliver Twist while working as an intern on the space shuttle program in 1968.

3. When travelling by sea Abraham Lincoln caught krill for breakfast by putting his head in the water and straining them through his beard.

4. The Country Women’s Association was founded in 1919 as a militia to resist invasions from space.

5. Richard Wagner wrote only 45 minutes of original music for Der Ring des Nibelungen. The other 13 hours and 45 minutes were computer-generated on a mainframe designed by Johannes Brahms.

6. The manuscript of Tolstoy’s last completed novel, The Romance of a Lobster, lies unpublished in a Moscow bank vault. No one knows which bank.

7. Attila the Hun was neither Attila nor a Hun. He was a northern minke whale named Gerald.

8. The working title for Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blowup was Photos an’ shit.

Thought you'd like to know.

By request, the PhD proposal (sans footnotes)

Project: The experience of Australian female opera singers 1796-1970

Australian women who sang opera professionally in the 19th and 20th centuries found themselves at the meeting point of major political and social changes. Their business was a theatre for the working out of transformations in concepts of culture, female autonomy and national identity. I want to examine how these women tried to fashion a place of personal integrity and expression in professional, public and private spheres in the face of these changes.

Principle areas of focus
1. The status of female performers
The first recorded female opera performers in Australia were convicts such as Mrs Greville and Mrs Parry. When free settlers and visitors sang opera in Sydney and Hobart in the 1830s and ’40s, and Melbourne in the 1850s, they were respected but not respectable. But the adoption of cultural bifurcation in Australia from the middle of the century placed the opera singer on a higher level, and singing slowly changed from a genteel pursuit to a respected profession. Female singers began to be known under their own names instead of their husbands’. With changing ideas of female identity and power, women explored new possibilities of self-expression and realisation through art and work.

2. Negotiating the business
The business of opera was never simple, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became even more complex. To train to a professional standard the singer had to overcome obstacles of location and economics. Even when these were overcome she had to protect her financial and artistic interests, contending with agents, directors, impresarios, patrons, critics, and fellow artists, and the challenges of distance, health and time.

3. Running the business - female impresarios
Adroit women who had achieved a level of success took control of their musical destiny by mounting their own opera companies. From the 1840s through to the 1950s female entrepreneurs played a significant part in operatic performance in Australia. As opera’s status changed from entertainment to high art, women such as Anne Clarke, Fanny Simonsen, Nellie Melba, Gertrude Johnson and Clarice Lorenz competed and cooperated with their male counterparts.

4. Career and/or marriage
Nellie Melba showed that a female performer did not have to be married or virginal to be respected. But while she built her career she had had the shelter of a married name. From the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries the woman’s options in relationships changed. Some singers were able to successfully negotiate the nexus between career and marriage, with a partner either in the business or outside. Some dared to try for a complete family life, while some sought its benefits in less conventional forms.

5. Artists at the cutting edge
Among the many roles they performed for themselves and others, singers saw themselves foremost as artists. From Melba’s time onwards Australian singers began to exert an influence on the roles that were written and the repertoire that was performed. They worked for the development of the industry in Australia, set new standards in skills, and led the way in the establishment of international trends, such as the revival of bel canto and the presentation of contemporary opera.

6. Transnational identity: negotiating a new vision
Australian singers venturing into the wider world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were challenged to redefine their identities. Opera was a transnational artform, and by performing it Australians were participating in an idea of culture which was not local and idiosyncratic but extended beyond national and geographical boundaries. As artists moved from a settler-colonial society to a more cosmopolitan context, they had to assimilate imperial and international factors to the already existing components of blood and geography. They negotiated compromises between the new and the old, finding what they valued, what they had to change, and what they could retain; and they discovered that even in their new conception there were liabilities as well as strengths.

Why is this research important?
Little scholarly research has been done into the experience of Australian singers. Until recent decades the history of opera was the history of the art form, concentrating primarily on the composers and works. The story of business and performance, and the experience of the singers, was subordinate to the process of creating the works. Since the 1980s scholars have examined the business and audience aspects, with notable work on seventeenth- to nineteenth century Italy and England. Works by Rosselli and Rutherford have examined the experience of the singer but from a Eurocentric perspective.

Major monographs on Australian opera emerged in the 1980s as cultural history achieved greater acceptance as a discipline. Alison Gyger and Harold Love laid an important foundation for the study of Australian opera. By necessity they took a chronological approach, recording what was performed where, by whom, and how it was received, but there was little examination of the place of opera within society or the personal experiences of the singers. Some scholarly biographies have appeared, however while these highlight personal experience, they too are limited: they give only a picture of successful, and in some cases unique, individuals, operating in a very restricted milieu.

This study will examine the experience of a broad range of performers in the wider social context, and therefore will be a major step towards a social history of Australian opera.

Sources
The primary sources fall into three general categories:
1. contemporary press articles (news items, reviews, articles, interviews and advertisements);
2. archival material from opera companies (artist files and company records); and
3. artists’ personal papers (correspondence, business papers, ephemera and memoirs).

I will draw on many of the sources I discovered in the research for my MA (Research), but have identified further relevant material in the following archives:

• Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne
• State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
• National Library of Australia, Canberra
• Mitchell Library and State Reference Library, Sydney

I intend to visit a number of overseas archives with significant records relating to specific Australian performers:

• The Royal Opera, Covent Garden
• English National Opera
• Hamburgische Staatsoper
• Bayreuther Festspiele
• Metropolitan Opera, New York
• San Francisco Opera

This is by no means a comprehensive selection, but covers the European and American regions while remaining within my language competencies.