Sleeping Beauty Awakes, and Sings
January 2013
For those who don’t care much for it, and even less for the state subsidy it commands, opera can appear to be little more than a museum culture, with little to say about, or to, contemporary Australia.
In response, we might challenge the presumption that museums are inherently bad things, or that contemporary Australia should eschew historical depth. Victorian Opera nevertheless seems brave to try to reintroduce Melbourne audiences to another old (and old-world) genre of music theatre, the Pantomime. In fact the company is guided in part by the considerable success of their first foray, last year’s production of Cinderella. Their 2013 season opens later this month with Sleeping Beauty, which, like its predecessor, is also conceived and conducted by founding Music Director (and now Conductor Emeritus) Richard Gill.
The origins of Pantomime can be traced to the commedia dell’arte, a comic style of theatre based around stock characters and comic scenarios that began in sixteenth century Italy. By the eighteenth century it became common in English theatre in particular for a scene based around the courtship of two characters from the commedia dell’arte (usually Harlequin and Columbine), to be interpolated between acts of a serious drama. Then, in 1728, the runaway success of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) helped established a free-standing genre of comic music theatre in which the audience was warmly encouraged to hum along with the music and identify directly with the characters. Ironically, Gay wrote his work more as an anti-opera than an opera; one of its chief targets for satire was the English nobility’s obsession with Italian opera and he created his score by borrowing musical sources from Handel as well as from popular street songs of the day.
In the form that Gill has reintroduced it, the Pantomime (or as it better known in England, the “Christmas Panto”) is a particular, if not down-right peculiar, offshoot of a mix of these satirical and comic traditions. Typically, a well-known fairy tale is taken as the dramatic skeleton around which a “strange, admirable, absurd, inscrutable thing” (as one critic described it in 1870) is formed. Just as was the case with The Beggar’s Opera spoken words are interspersed with musical borrowings.
The extraordinary reception by Victorian England of the fairy tales published by the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen enabled these tales to replace the stock stories and characters that had sustained the currency of the commedia dell’arte. A successful Panto, indeed, depends on the audience knowing the basic outline of the plot in advance; its chief comic and dramatic vehicle is cliché. “Oh no it’s not!”, I hear you cry. “Oh, yes it is”, the Fairy Queen responds. (She is, of course, behind you).
The particular kind of slap-stick humour common to Pantos is especially appealing to children, but the dialogue is also usually full of in-jokes, topical references, audience participation, gender-defying roles, and (if you listen very carefully) mild ‘adult’ themes. But Pantos do more than just provide ‘fun for all the family’. As incoming Artistic Director of Victorian Opera, Richard Mills, noted: “One can never underestimate the impact a performance will have on a young person particularly if the work speaks to them.” In short, a good Panto is a great way for people of all ages to discover or rediscover the power of musical storytelling. In England, indeed, the Panto has become for many people, adults and children alike, the first live theatre they encounter; for many more it may be the only such theatre they will ever encounter. The Panto is in fact now the single most popular form of theatre there; the cornerstone of many a regional theatre’s financial stability as well as their audience development programs.
The English Panto has also become one of the few remaining spaces where communities consider themselves licenced unselfconsciously to sing en masse. This fact has not been lost on Gill who, if Cinderella proves to be any guide, will no doubt slip in some audience “musical development” opportunities. If there is one thing that unites his work as a composer of a Panto, as a director of an opera company, and as a life-long music educator, it is that he wants more Australians to sing, more often. Thus grounded, opera is definitely not a museum (oh no it isn’t!) and it is most certainly not behind us….
The cast of Sleeping Beauty includes Melbourne operatic luminary Suzanne Johnston reprising her role as Ticketty-Boo, alongside Jonathan Bode (Darcy the Jester), Oliva Cranwell (Queen Clementine), James Payne (King Florestan), Dimity Shepherd (Dargonelle/Chenille), Lotte Betts-Dean (Princess Aurora), and Daniel Todd (Prince Waldheim).
Sleeping Beauty shows at Her Majesty’s Theatre from January 17 to 19. For full details visit victorianopera.com.au/what-s-on/sleeping-beauty/
Sleeping Beauty has a running time of 60 minutes and Victorian Opera advises that it is suitable for adults and children aged 6 and up.
Photos: Martin Philby
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