Comedy is a serious business

By ANNAROSA BERMAN

Anyone who has spent five minutes in the company of bass Conal Coad - Le Comte Des Grieux in Opera Australia's production of Massenet's Manon, which opens at the Sydney Opera House tonight - will realise that the comic roles for which he has become famous are not entirely an act.

Coad admits that when singing this dramatic role the challenge is to keep a lid on his natural exuberance. "I think directors would often like to tell me, 'For God's sake, stand still and sing'," he laughs.

Surprisingly, Coad does not necessarily prefer comic parts. "A boring funny role is not as interesting as a complex dramatic one," he says, conceding that he probably does not strike audiences as "the gaunt, suffering type". Yet he loved singing the roles of the animal trainer/acrobat in OA's 2003 production of Berg's Lulu. "There aren't too many laughs in that. And musically it was terribly difficult."

Coad doubts that any of the singers in the production could have pulled it off without direction from OA's former musical director Simone Young. "If you make a mistake in an opera where the music goes oompah-pah, you're either late or early and anyone can tell which it is. But come in two bars late in Lulu and three pages later you think, 'What's happened here?'

"Simone was like a bus driver - she made sure we were all in our seats and that we got on and off at the right stops."

Coad's favourite part is nevertheless comic - Bottom in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he sang in Venice last year - in a tent, as La Fenice theatre, destroyed by fire in 1996, was still under reconstruction.

"A tent is not a gorgeous place to be in the middle of winter, but I hardly noticed because it's such a great part. It's big enough to give you time to establish the character on the stage, the music is very clever and it's one of the great comedies of all time."

Doing comedy well is a serious business and timing is everything. "There is a moment where it's hysterical and choosing that moment is what it's all about."

Luck plays a part, too. Coad remembers how in Venice there was a scene where Bottom threw a handkerchief at someone. "On a particular night it landed somewhere indelicate, an incredible fluke, and the audience just cracked up." He never managed to repeat the performance.

Coad, who endeavours to perform for OA at least once a year, has not been seen in a New Zealand production since his performance in Falstaff for the NBR New Zealand Opera in 2001. But he has been signed up for "a major production" in Auckland and Wellington next year.

And although he has lived in Australia since 1969, to some extent New Zealand is still home. "I have an elderly mother in Auckland - she's 90 and a box of beans - and a sister whom I adore, so I try to get there as much as I can."

He has recorded part of a CD - a collection of works by Gareth Farr - with the NZ Symphony Orchestra.

His father, Leon Coad, was an amateur poet who in the 1940s wrote a poem based on the 1864 Battle of Orakau in the Waikato. Conal Coad commissioned Farr to turn it into a concert aria and the work received its world premiere in Auckland two years ago.

The CD, recorded on the Trust label, has not yet been released.

"I keep calling and saying, 'So where is it?' And they keep replying, 'We're doing the final mix.' And my mother keeps saying plaintively, 'I'd like to hear it before I die'."

The son of teachers, Coad was brought up in Maori communities "all over the back blocks of New Zealand". His parents were jazz fanatics but he became hooked on opera after hearing a radio serial on Nellie Melba at the age of 8.

Although he enjoys working with the New Zealand Opera, Coad finds the lack of sufficient funding for the company a major oversight. "In Sydney last week, I was chatting to Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Jonathan Lemalu, Paul Whelan and Jud Arthur, who are all having international careers. Then there's Dame Malvina Major, and look at Kiri's career.

"Kiwis deserve to see the great singers they've produced in action - it's part of their heritage.

"You don't need a fortune to keep an opera company afloat but you do need regular funding."

Although he owns a rambling house in the 15th-century Belgian town of Mechelen ("it has far too many rooms and it's packed to the gunwales with far too many pieces of art and antiques"), Coad's base is the house he and his partner have bought on the Gold Coast. This year he has spent eight days there and two weeks in Mechelen.

"I'm really based in my suitcase. My life has been like this for many years. Fortunately I enjoy it."

His partner accompanies him when he travels to the Northern Hemisphere and, besides travelling first class, they always stop off "somewhere gorgeous" on the way. "It's my biggest extravagance but it makes an enormous difference. I economise in other areas."

Next year there will be quite a bit of travelling. Coad will be performing in productions in Perth (to be announced), Sydney and Melbourne (Friar Lawrence in OA's production of Romeo and Juliet), Auckland and Wellington (to be announced), Washington (Manon and Billy Budd), Madrid (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Mexico (Elixir of Love).

"It's going to be a very full year."