Next year's opera schedule a little fluffy around edges

By WILLIAM DART

With only two performances of Tosca remaining, Alex Reedijk, the general director of NBR New Zealand Opera, can look back over the company's season this year with pride.

"We have been able to carry out the vision that we put in place a year ago," he says. "We delivered five operatic offerings of one sort or another, with Boris getting the critical acclaim it deserved and our audience increasing by 35 per cent."

The touring Barber of Seville "made us an awful lot of friends around the country" and, for Reedijk, it brought back memories of when he was an 11-year-old at Wainuiomata Intermediate and the New Zealand Ballet Company came to the school hall.

The company also had its first venture into the locals when Michael Williams' The Prodigal Child played three successful seasons in New Plymouth, Christchurch and Auckland.

It's not difficult then to feel a little dismayed by next year's offerings.

Am I the only one to remain stony-hearted when the company's press release says Carmen is "the world's number one opera ... which never dims in its fiery appeal"? Are there others who might not see Rigoletto as "a must-see masterpiece" let alone have any desire to "uncork a potion of emotion" with Donizetti's The Elixir of Love?

These three operas, and a touring Cosi fan Tutte, are what we are being offered next year. Reedijk points out that the company is on a three-year template.

The overall aim is to deliver 12 to 14 operas in that period, including a New Zealand piece and a Baroque opera in two years and a final payoff in 2006, with a work of the scope and nature of Boris.

There are benefits for casting in long-term planning. "The sooner we get our repertoire in place, the better level of singers we can obtain," says Reedijk, pointing out that, with main seasons playing Auckland and Wellington, a 10-week commitment is out of the question for high-flying local stars such as Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Jonathan Lemalu.

It seems we have caught Sarah Castle, who plays Carmen in October, just in time.

"Sarah's star is firmly in the ascendant, in the same way as Lemalu and Rhodes have started soaring over the past few years. She is coming to us from a role at Bayreuth and leaves us to cover Carmen at the Met in New York. In fact the Met held off their production so she could complete her commitments here."

After a weighty, thoughtful year this year, next year looks distinctly fluffy around the edges.

The opening production of The Elixir of Love comes straight from the New Zealand Festival, "with fantastic tunes, going along at a hundred miles an hour and a neat little story" - but there was a time when the festival searched out Strauss and Janacek.

"Director Daniel Slater has visited Elixir for Opera North and is keen to make the piece a young, sexy production," Reedijk explains, "so the singers are all young and fresh and good-looking.

"It's a cheery summer piece which will be perfect with Mamma Mia playing in the Civic at the same time."

All very well, but sad to hear when one reads of more invigorating Slater productions, ranging from his 2001 Wozzeck for Santa Fe to a new Manon for Opera North, which opened last week.

With most of next year's casting still undecided (although Reedijk promises substantially local singers for the touring Cosi) it is difficult to comment in detail, although the loss of a New Zealand piece is sad, incomprehensible even, after the success of The Prodigal Child.

For Reedijk, opera is the supreme art. "On a good night it's the most fantastic live art form in the world. It's the sum of the human experience. This year we proved that opera isn't a dying art form. When you give an audience a work they are interested in seeing, they respond to it."

Audiences did this year. What a pity they are not having the opportunity to continue quite the same sort of adventure next year.