Trigger warnings: Racism, private schools (lmao), sexism

I was my insulated private school’s token “bad influence” and, as I repeatedly force my friends to attend operas, I can’t help but agree. After all, tonight it's opera, tomorrow it might be caviar… or worse! In all seriousness, I find that attending opera is an interesting social experiment: what happens when you slide up a few classes, just for one night?

But, being my only text subject, the sample size for my observations were small. Also it’s boring sitting up in another class all by my lonesome. So now I drag my country-town friends as well. And the key observation from this experiment? An after-the-fact self-consciousness. A maths student, animator, even a professional musician, all stumble over their words when asked, “What did you think?”

“Well, I don’t really think I know enough to make a judgement really, I mean I’m not really qualified-” In what way? In what way does an audience need to be qualified to have an opinion on a piece of media? It's supposed to be for us, isn’t it?

Or, perhaps, it’s not supposed to be for us. We should only watch and be grateful as the real audience discusses the opera. Maybe serve them wine, while we’re here.

In recent history, Opera Australia has been trying to diversify this ‘real’ audience. They offer cheaper tickets for under 30s, do more contemporary performances, and now have put on The Puccini Gala, a celebration and introduction for those new to the classic Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. But Opera Australia can’t break these class barriers by themselves, so, because underqualified heathens can have opinions, here is my review of The Puccini Gala.

My previous experience of opera galas was closing your eyes and letting a relatively contextless bombardment of songs wash over you. This is less to appreciate the voices, though usually superb, and more because there is nothing to look at on stage. Rapidly switching from story to story, the subtitles rather disorient an unfamiliar reader, and the singers stand motionless on stage a reasonable, social distancing-style distance away from each other.

Opera Australia delightfully shook this up by adding host Peter Coleman-Wright to introduce songs from Puccini’s masterworks with fun anecdotes and life stories. By the end I was oddly attached to the hundred-years-dead Italian composer. Puccini’s paradoxical character—womaniser and fast car enthusiast by life, sensitive and tragic by writing—endearingly unfurled itself, and offered far more understanding and appreciation of the songs than any other gala I’ve attended.

Far from having nothing on stage, in addition to plot introductions making the subtitles sensical, lighting designer Paul Jackson did a spectacular job setting the tone for every song, and masterfully changing the lighting to strengthen emotional turns and breakdowns.

The singers themselves accompanied the lighting spectacularly well, moving across the stage to and from each other and giving the acting their all. Tenor Young Woo Kim without a doubt stole the show. Every time he was on stage my eyes and ears were glued to him. His voice filled the huge space with overwhelming brilliance, and had just the right amount of light and shade to make the softer moments feel that much more emotional, and the angrier moments that much more powerful. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that Young Woo was actually a replacement tenor brought in two days before opening. So he essentially blew everyone away with almost no rehearsal time. What the fuck.

These changes made The Puccini Gala not only spectacularly sung, but fun and engaging, even for those new to the genre. It also made it a jot over-acted, an endearing campiness which (aside from elitism) is the essence of opera.

And we arrive at the issue. The issue haunting all of the old opera classics: racism, sexism, a dash of homophobia, and an absolute refusal to acknowledge any of it. Coleman-Wright’s hosting masterfully skipped over all these issues with the ease of an old white Australian man used to ignoring the existence of anything that shatters his worldview. Which makes sense, given that he is an old white Australian man. But I won’t make surmises about his personal beliefs.

A rather infamous case is Puccini's Madama Butterfly, repeatedly bashed for its cartoonish picture of East-Asian women, particularly via its abominable costuming (shown above) and use of yellow face.

Now, before performing songs from this opera, Coleman-Wright could have offered any of the typical excuses for these decisions: it was part of the time, Puccini didn’t know it was wrong, he actually meant to show the struggles of East-Asian women, etcetera etcetera. Which would not have been close to a sufficient acknowledgement, as I’d rather not try to get into the mind of a racist man to understand just how “bad” the racism is. However, somehow worse, Coleman-Wright didn’t mention this at all. Rather he talked about how Puccini was ostracised for writing it. The rich, sports-car owning Italian man getting bullied by the mean critics. Poor baby! It’s one thing to ignore, another to justify, but we’re in a whole other ball game by somehow making the racist rich womaniser the victim.

Despite all efforts to make the opera accessible, it was this outdated approach that made me feel so unwelcome. Can you really claim to be open to diversity while celebrating operas that were, essentially, hate crimes? The Puccini Gala may have done a fantastic job making some of the most beautiful arias and duets approachable to new audiences, but the songs’ troublesome histories and concerning undertones nonetheless made the opera feel distant. You can have as beautiful and accommodating a production as you want, but diverse audiences will never feel comfortable if what you’re saying is still elitist.

Images:

Header: A picture of Giacomo Puccini, from: https://opera.org.au/features/7-surprising-facts-about-puccini/

Image 1: Taken by Jocelyn Saunders at Opera Australia’s The Puccini Gala

Image 2: A portrait of lead tenor Young Koo Wim and lead soprano Nicole Car, from: https://opera.org.au/productions/the-puccini-gala-concert-melbourne/

Image 3: A still from Syracuse Opera’s 2018 performance of Madame Butterfly, from: https://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/2018/04/syracuse_opera_8.html