It’s Sunday and I’m in a suburban Ikea on the verge of tears. Perhaps this is not so surprising – who among us hasn’t approached emotional breakdown navigating the labyrinthine homewares store? But these are tears of joy. And no, it’s not because I’ve nabbed one of the cult-status Djungelskog plushies; it’s because of the five people singing at me from two metres away.
I’m in the outdoor plants and furniture section, watching The Marriage of Figaro – or a version of it, in which Figaro and his bride-to-be, Susanna, work in floor sales and their philandering boss is the store manager. It’s probably the last place I’d expect to discover the sublime beauty of Mozart’s opera. Half an hour earlier, my fellow audience members and I – who were emailed the secret location 24 hours earlier – were eating meatballs and mash in the canteen.
This is Secret Opera, a project by West Australian Opera that brings canonical and rare works to unusual places, including, in the past, an abandoned theatre and a prison. The night before, I saw Philip Glass’s take on Franz Kafka’s absurdist, nightmarish novel The Trial, performed in a former Flight Centre office in a shopping mall – the latest project by Lost and Found Opera. Both were part of this year’s Perth festival, which under its artistic director, Anna Reece, is continuing to use the city’s existing and abandoned spaces in creative ways.
Secret Opera and The Trial are part of a broader shift in opera worldwide towards non-traditional venues – think Wagner in a Detroit parking garage; Shostakovich in a Manchester nightclub. In recent years, Opera Australia has staged Puccini’s one-act opera Il Tabarro on a century-old lightship in Sydney Harbour, Bizet’s Carmen in the former industrial precinct of Cockatoo Island, and Verdi’s Tosca on a tennis court – as well as their annual outdoor productions as part of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour.
There are also smaller companies entirely devoted to staging operas in strange places. Lost and Found’s past productions have taken audiences to a suburban Italian social club, an aquatic centre and a disused timber mill. Brisbane’s Underground Opera uses caves, abandoned mines and aeroplane hangars. WA’s Freeze Frame has staged operas in a former prison and performed “highlights” concerts from flatbed trucks.
There are various reasons why companies choose to work in these kinds of unusual places: outreach to regional locations that don’t have traditional theatres designed for music-based theatre; cost, if they don’t have their own venue and can’t afford flashy sets; and accessibility, if they’re trying to attract new audiences who might be intimidated or turned off by traditional venues. The sites themselves can also elucidate the concerns of the piece.
Caitlin Vincent, an academic and librettist whose new book, Opera Wars, surveys the state of opera worldwide, says the shift to non-traditional spaces is also part of a deeper existential crisis for the 19th-century model that has dominated the industry well into the 21st century: spectacular productions staged in lyric theatres. “It’s just not sustainable,” she says. “It’s hugely expensive” – sets can cost as much as a house to build, plus staffing and artists – “and there’s so many other competitors in terms of entertainment and audience time.” In response, opera companies are “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to see what new models might stick.
West Australian Opera’s artistic director, Chris van Tuinan, who also co-founded Lost and Found, says Secret Opera is part of his mandate to expand the company’s repertoire beyond its more traditional program. In the case of Figaro, however, he was fuelled by a desire to do something familiar in an unexpected way – and the realisation that Ikea would be a fun setting for an opera about class dynamics that opens with its protagonist measuring a bed. (The opening scene of his production, directed by Humphrey Bower, takes place on the budget Grimsbu and luxe Mandal bed models, prices in view).
Reece says projects such as The Trial and Secret Opera align festival’s imperative to offer “something different”. Mel Cantwell, co-director of Lost and Found, approached her with a clear vision of staging Kafka’s classic tale of the individual oppressed by the system in a bleak corporate office environment, à la Severance. The abandoned office they found in Perth’s Forrest Chase mall – with its stripped-back concrete floor, exposed silver air ducts and fluorescent lighting – “took audiences on a [unique] journey”.
In the case of The Trial, some audiences were no doubt drawn by the opera itself, which has never been performed in Australia; others by the novelty of seeing a show about the meaningless of modern life in a quintessential and banally sterile contemporary setting.
At Secret Opera, some older, regular arts patrons told me they like the adventure of an unknown venue – though they looked less enthused by the meatballs part of the evening.
But at Ikea, unexpectedly, I had a profound and moving experience that revealed to me something not only about this particular opera – which I have seen many times, in lavish traditional productions – but the artform itself. Sitting in front of the singers, without the distraction of the sets or even an orchestra, I found myself face to face with Mozart’s sublime interwoven vocal lines and the unadulterated beauty and power of the human instrument. It reminded me of why I keep turning up to opera – anyhow, anywhere – in the first place.
Opera Wars by Dr Caitlin Vincent is released in Australia on 31 March, via Scribner
