Opera House — Aust’s “original sin”

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 14

Opera House — Aust’s “original sin”

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JANET PARR

When is an opera house not an opera house? And how do you explain an opera house with no opera in it? The answer to the first question, according to some, is when it is the Sydney Opera House. Noone has yet come up with an answer to the second. But as the Opera House sails on towards its sixth birthday they are only two of the comments being tossed around in a rising tide of controversy and ■what has been called “internecine art as stormy as anything the Opera House has yet had to weather. According to the local astrologers consulted when it was opened, rather in the manner of ancient temple prophets, the Opera House was never likely to have a quiet life anyway. They saw trouble. One even saw the whole thing doomed to burn down. It is 22 years since Joern Utzon flew into Sydney with his prize-win-ning concept of a white sailed building looking out o"»r the Harbour at Bennelong Point. His leaving the project was only one of the things that dam-

aged and left scars during the 16 years of building. The old scars are still there, the arguments about who gets what inside the building still go on. That dispute led up to a confrontation in 1967 between the bodies responsible for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on one hand and the opera and ballet companies on the other. In the event, the orchestra got the larger auditorium — the Concert Hall with its generally agreed superb acoustics. Utzon has never been back. He has never seen the complex finished and working. If indeed it does work. In this latest refund of what the Opera House general manager Mr Owen Martin calls “Opera House bashing’’ that is precisely what the argument is about. So what do you do about an opera house that doesn’t, according to many people, work for opera? Do you keep on loving it in spite of the faults? This is Mr Martin’s solution. The deficiencies, he says, are well known. The opera theatre is too small but in spite of that all but

the grandest of “grand” opera can go on there and when you want to do something big, such as “Aida,” you move into the bigger concert hall to stage it. But the orchestra pit, say the critics, still holds fewer than 70 players and the comparatively small number of seats (1547, of which 98 have little or no view of the stage) means heavy subsidies and staggeringly high prices — anything up to $25, and a lot more for expensive new productions and firstnight galas. So there is one faction urging that the Concert Hall should become what they claim was the original concept — an opera theatre with 600 more seats than the present one and more stage and orchestra space. This idea was given a nudge in the 1978 report of the Australian Opera, which commented that “obviously a reversion to the original purpose of the Concert Hall as a large-scale opera theatre would greatly improve the operatic facilities . . .” A well-known music critic, Fred Blanks, is not

prepared to have any of that. He wants operatic hands kept off the Concert Hall and says it sounds like “a manifesto of cultural kleptomania” based on a totally mistaken interpretation of the architectural facts behind the Opera House. According to Mr Blanks it should never have been called the Opera House anyway. The misleading name, he says, “was a glaring bloomer nothing short of original

sin, long past remedy.” The Opera House, he says, was intended to be a home for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Conversion would send nonoperatic music back to the wrong side of the tracks and the wilderness from which it was rescued. The chief conductor of the orchestra, Louis Fremaux, has gone further and challenged operatic invaders to a duel. But the real weapons are words. Another critic ponders just what will happen to that grand organ, years and millions

of dollars in the making, that played its first public concert in the Concert Hall only a few weeks ago. And there is a good bit of line crossing. Another well-known music and operatic critic, Maria Prerauer, agrees with Mr Blanks that the Concert Hall should not be converted because that would destroy “the one auditorium that really works.” Miss Prerauer has not •

forgotten that six years ago she made what she calls “a bit of a stir” when she commented “It’s a beautiful building. But what we need now is an .opera house.” She has not changed her mind. So what she is backing is an idea that has been lurking in many minds for a few years now — that what Sydney really needs is a second opera house. Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Aiderman Nelson Meers, has given that idea its first public and official backing. He has no doubts about the present Opera

House. It does not work, he says. So he wants to spend up to SSOM converting the old disused Capitol Theatre in the Haymarket area of Sydney to what he calls a “lyric” theatre able to seat 3000 people and stage opera, ballet and musical performances, with office tower blocks added. As a further argument he adds that “Brisbane and Melbourne are both building this sort of theatre. If we don’t match them we will be left behind ..." He believes the Opera House should be “recycled” perhaps as a convention centre. (Other people have added another alternative —- a casino when and if such places become legal.) The Lord Mayor does not think it would make Sydney a world cultural laughing stock. “We already are — having this marvellous sculpture, this marvellous edifice that is inefficient.” He has already had a sympathetic response to the Capitol project from the Federal Minister responsible for the arts, Mr

Bob Ellicott, and has talked it over with him. Mr Ellicott publicly prefaced that talk with the comment “Sydney has got to face up to it that the economies of scale I am beginning to think are necessary for the arts are just not possible at the Opera House...” Miss Prerauer has no doubts at all that the opera and ballet companies would move there. Quite apart from the artistic difficulties of playing at the Opera House it is “damned expensive” she says, due mainly to “astronomical” hiring charges. She concedes that an Opera House without opera is going to Jake a lot of explaining. But the Capitol would be cheaper and easier to run and companies could earn the same money at the box office with far fewer performances, thus needing lower subsidies. It is a case of spending money to save it. Economy , is what is attracting other supporters of the Capitol scheme. The whole situation will blow up anyway in 1981 it is claimed when Melbourne

and Brisbane finish their theatres which have stages similar to that of Adelaide’s Festival Hall and the opera and ballet com-' panies will no longer be willing to build and pay for specially constructed sets for Sydney. In between time Mr Martin, the general manager of the Opera House, has been reminding people of some facts. Audiences prefer the Opera House, he says, and he doubts whether any theatre to be built in Australia will manage to upstage it. Many overseas artists agree to perform in Australia only on condition they have a chance fo play there. He says the Opera House has done more to promote interest in the performing arts in Australia both at home and overseas than all the arts councils and other theatres put together. On its last birthday over eight million people attended a total of more than 15,000 events inside the complex. “More people than reside in Australia have visited the Opera House,” he says.