Perhaps one of the most beautiful things about living in a city with a cultural calendar as rich as Melbourne's is the serendipity of what happened to me yesterday - on a whim, I decided at about 11.30 am to head into the Arts Centre and catch the final performance of Victorian Opera's The Sleeping Beauty at 1 pm. I am a subscriber to VO, but for some reason this show was not on my radar, and how glad I am that I was able to see it before it closed. It was full of all the things that I love about Victorian Opera: innovation in form and performance, an absurdly talented young Australian cast, creative collaboration and exchange with other companies and artists, and unbridled joy in the ridiculousness and sublimity of opera.
This opera is a 1922 composition by Ottorino Respighi, originally written for a famed Italian puppet theatre and sung from within the orchestra pit. The music itself is beautifully unpretentious, clear, sparkling, and entirely supportive of the storytelling. Sung in Italian, the libretto cracks along, and is interesting and often very funny. In short, the bones of the opera are an absolute joy, and at an hour and twenty minutes, the whole thing feels like a beautifully polished, sparkling little gem of a work. Here, it was magnificently performed by a predominantly Australian cast, full of promising young artists, without a single weak link. The women, when singing together, were particularly clear and beautiful. Elizabeth Barrow's coloratura was divine.
The primary point of interest within this production, however, is the use of puppetry to tell the story. Instead of having the opera sung from the pit, accompanying the puppets onstage, director Nancy Black chose to have the singers and puppets performing together, often interacting, across two different times - the present day, and the 1600s of the fable. In fact, the conceit of the performance is that a contemporary community come together to tell a story, which then becomes animated by the puppets. The puppets themselves are quite stunning. They are anthropomorphic, without being specifically human - in fact, to my mind, they most closely resemble wizened trees or ancient apparitions from myths and fables. There is an old lady, impossibly stooped, with a moon-like face, there is an actual giant tree (with a Game of Thrones Winterfell feel), a very funny spindle, a spider that would do Louise Bourgeois proud - each puppet that comes onto the stage elicits delight and surprise and wonder from the audience, and I left the theatre wishing that I could have seen more of each of them. The interaction between performers and puppets, and between the puppets themselves, was a source of real interest and humour throughout the show. Small details, such as the way the King puppet was moved so that his beard shook with anger or concern, combined to create a theatrical space and mode that was utterly spellbinding.
In fact, within the opening moments I was unexpectedly moved, almost to tears. As the house lights go down, and the music starts, two bird puppets - a nightingale and a cuckoo - mounted on huge bending poles, fly out over the audience, dipping and swinging, almost touching the heads of audience members, and interacting with one another. There is no artifice here - the puppeteers can clearly be seen in the auditorium, and the birds are not designed with verisimilitude in mind - but there is a sudden transition through the music and movement into a world of purely unpretentious theatricality and delight in storytelling that is overwhelming. I felt like a child again, a sensation I don't often experience at the theatre, and particularly not at the opera.
This theatricality is, to my mind, the triumph of this production. Projections, light and moving shadows, the interactions between performers and puppets, the music and singing, the simple and effective set and lighting; all these elements of production are used to create a luscious theatricality, and a joy in the act of storytelling. Effectively, that is what this show is about - what it is to tell a story within a community, how we use stories to foster connections and goodwill with one another, and the simple and almost primally human joy found in storytelling. It was, in short, a delightful and almost magical show.
I can't speak for the composition of the audience during the evening performances, but the Saturday matinee was filled with young children and their parents or grandparents. This overexcited and very receptive audience responded freely (and unpredictably!) throughout the show - from vocal delight at the entrances of puppets, to laughter, and half whispered questions - there was an atmosphere of joy throughout the performance, from start to finish. I'm a firm believer in the work that Victorian Opera do, and I think that naysayers of the 'dying artform' variety are overlooking the radical potential within opera for experimentation with form, technology, and collaboration (in the past year, VO have done a production with a 3D projected set, collaborated with a circus, and live streamed a concert over the internet to subscribers). This performance showed me that those naysayers are also overlooking the joy that young people can find in opera - here, the sublime ridiculousness of it all was translated into joy and wonder in a young audience unencumbered by the cultural baggage that opera carries with it. What a delightful way to spend the afternoon.