Harmony ensues when worlds collide
The Drover’s Wife seamlessly negotiates the merging of grand opera with Indigenous storytelling in Leah Purcell’s flawless reimagining of a Henry Lawson classic.
If you want to learn a thing or two about literary adaptation, take a seat and watch Leah Purcell at work.
A force of Australian storytelling since the ’90s, Purcell has taken Henry Lawson’s short story The Drover’s Wife and utterly transformed it: first into a play, then a novel, a film, and now an opera with a world premiere season in the new Glasshouse Theatre at Brisbane’s QPAC.
An Opera Australia production in association with QPAC and Oombarra Productions, The Drover’s Wife is directed by Purcell, who also co-wrote the libretto with composer George Palmer.
Molly Johnson (Queensland soprano Nina Korbe) keeps the fire burning at home in the Snowy Mountains while her husband Joe is out droving for months at a time. Such is the world she inhabits, Molly cradles a shotgun as she prepares to give birth – alone.
Yadaka (Queensland tenor Marcus Corowa) is an Indigenous man who is on the run from a crime he says he did not commit. He surprises Molly, and us. A cautious, symbiotic relationship forms.
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Molly’s eldest boy Danny (Nick Smith) returns to check on his mother, and is also drawn to the stranger’s quiet dignity and inner strength.
A giant ghost gum anchors The Drover’s Wife, both literally and figuratively. Isabel Hudson’s extraordinary design stretches across the stage horizontally, allowing the small dance ensemble places from which to emerge and dissipate.
Jeanette Fabila is a grounding presence as Ginny May, who periodically sits atop the great tree to watch over Molly.
Michael Waters (sound design) and Craig Wilkinson (video design) add yet more layers – capturing the natural environment in a way that will be immediately recognisable to Australian audiences.
Evidently, The Drover’s Wife is far removed from the courts and fairy tales of European opera, and Palmer’s score reflects this world. There are early moments of acapella singing, performed in Indigenous Australian language.
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In the second act, passages sing out from the orchestration that are reminiscent of Bernstein and Sondheim. When the occasional aria or duet arrives, it unfurls quietly and beautifully, like a flower in the dark.
To create a new role requires skill and courage. Korbe and Corowa are both magnificent, and their performances will leave a rich legacy for all who follow them.
Korbe’s lyric soprano has a spine of steel. Her upper register is not merely thrilling; it is the musical expression of a woman who has learned the hard way to always be on guard. Corowa’s Yadaka hits you in the heart. His clear, expressive tenor rings with the truth of a man who knows his dreaming, and who becomes a surrogate father to Danny.
Both leads have superb diction, ensuring we are never lost in their intersecting stories, which Purcell illuminates via flashback sequences.
The Drover’s Wife deftly deploys the tools of opera to build a world that pulls us in and holds us there. But this is no Wagnerian fantasy. The Australia it depicts carries the deep scars of colonisation, racism and misogyny. The worst of this world is summed up in brutal fashion by Robert Parsen (a truly terrifying Jud Arthur), who is a mate of Joe’s, and engineers a confrontation at the show’s climax.
But even in this bloody, vengeful place, Purcell’s adaptation maintains its sense of self, and hope.
The Drover’s Wife is an ambitious and masterful retelling of an Australian story that will resonate with the world.
The Drover’s Wife – The Opera continues at QPAC’s Glasshouse Theatre until May 22.
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