Big sky, big notes … opera scales new heights in the Outback
Thousands of music lovers from around Australia and the world make the annual pilgrimage to Outback Queensland to experience majestic voices and big skies in beautiful harmony – welcome to Opera Queensland’s Festival of Outback Opera.
Opera Queensland has boldly taken opera – with all its European origins – into the remote country of Waltzing Matilda at Koa, a region Banjo Paterson referred to as a place “where the telegraph don’t reach you nor the railways run to town”.
Each year, OQ’s Festival of Outback Opera lobs into Winton, Australia’s dinosaur capital, with a program of events and a phalanx of soloists, stage hands, photographers, a filmmaker and sound engineers who are ready to brave all manner of electrical circumstances. Within a matter of days, they’ll do it all again a two-hour road trip away in Longreach.
Proud of its heritage, Winton maybe small but its dreams are as limitless as the vast skies looming above. Committed to tourism, there’s a strategic reliance on the festival as a drawcard and, consequently, there are also film, opal mining and writing jamborees.
Over six years, Festival of Outback Opera has become a major feather in Winton’s cap. Apart from social, artistic and educational advantages, this year there’s a premiere of the children’s opera, The Adventures of Figaro, and school workshops.
It’s estimated that each iteration of the festival boosts the local economies of Winton and Longreach by $1.7 million, due to the generous number of interstate visitors and, of course, the company’s personnel.
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Opera Queensland’s mission to champion Winton’s heritage, historic buildings, community and environmental wonders shines through CEO Patrick Nolan’s thoughtfully curated program, which offers a healthy combination of informal and formal happenings in outdoor and indoor places.
Pop-up airings by University of Queensland vocal students at The Matilda Centre, Truck Museum and North Gregory Hotel are much appreciated. Evidently, encountering an artform like opera, branded as elite and stuffy, in fun ways and unexpected places has immense appeal.
On day one at The Royal Open-Air Theatre soprano Katie Stenzel, baritone Jason Barry-Smith and Luke Volker performed with panache as daytime faded into dusk. The music strolled through popular arias, music theatre specials including Everywhere That You Are from James and The Giant Peach and Peter Allen’s Tenterfield Saddler.
Stenzel’s warmth and polish graced receptive ears. Dvorak’s Song of the Moon from Rusalka glimmered and her account of Deborah Fraillon Cheetham’s Crepe Myrtle Sky was persuasive. A photographed backdrop of a flock of galahs in bushland appeared to come alive as hefty flying locusts glinted in the stage lights.
Opera has long been associated with birds, partly because there’s a perceived synergy between avian and human voices. Musical scores have adopted feathered shrieks, trills and chatter, and these calls and the fluted songs of various species convey dramatic moments of love, madness or ominous portent in many librettos. Mozart’s aria The Bird-Catcher’s Song from The Magic Flute is a famous example.
On day two, Dawn Chorus, a bird-spotting excursion to Bladensburg National Park, delivered a particularly successful partnership between the town’s Red Dirt Tours and OQ. While whistling kites and eagles wheeled on thermals in panoramic skies, sightings of brolgas, a quintet of bustards striding through scrub and red wallaroos springing across flat plains heightened the senses in preparation for morning tea and a modest recital near the shearers’ old shacks at Bladensburg Homestead.
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Jackson Eastwood, Eline van Bruggen and Jessica Irwin’s heartfelt Mein Herr Marquis from Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus delighted birders and opera aficionados alike.
Dustarena, Winton’s tongue-in-cheek arts precinct, is “a theatre in a paddock’’, according to local performer Amanda-Lyn Pearson, who creates and directs The Crackup Sisters. Pearson introduced All Together Now!, a jolly romp through operatic treasures, sea shanties, footballer anthems and jingles. Seasoned baritone Jason Barry-Smith, sopranos Gabrielle Diaz and OQ Young Artist Maddy Stevens performed, with Luke Volker providing excellent backing on piano.
After a rendering of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, Barry-Smith rehearsed vocal exercises, massed chorusing, body percussion and chanted asides in a rigorous pursuit of audience participation.
As can be the case in this kind of event there’s a risk of becoming unintentionally patronising. To be fair, there were finely etched solos flowing from the stage. Diaz and Stevens’ Flower Duet from Lakme had fluid, dovetailed elegance.
Coming up soon is Dark Sky Serenade, a grander and more logistically complex presentation at the marvellous Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, perched on top of a 75m jump up on the town’s outskirts. This event is much anticipated due to the participation of Filipe Manu, the internationally acclaimed tenor, as well as a program tailored for maximum enjoyment, peppered with songs by Verdi, Puccini and Bizet. The concert, conducted by Richard Mills and accompanied by Camerata, Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, will begin as the sun sets. Before long, the musical action should roll out against the backdrop of a dazzling, star-studded sky.
Longreach’s happenings include pop-ups at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Merino’s bakery. A Long Lunch serenaded by musical interludes will unfold at Qantas Founders Museum.
Singing in the Night, hosted by Camden Park Station, could be confronting for singers. Situated in a massive paddock it can be breezy with dust swirling around the temporary open-air platform. It’s a reasonable bet that the soloists will battle against the odds and excel.
Last year, it was a bonus that Nina Korbe sang as a Koa ancestor, sadly not possible this time around as she is performing the lead in The Drover’s Wife at QPAC.
Hopefully, the Koa people’s memory can continue to be represented in this superior example of cultural tourism.
Opera Queensland’s Festival of Outback Opera is an annual event, this year taking place from May 19 to 25 at Winton and Longreach.
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