By Robin Usher
PRODUCING opera for contemporary audiences involves taking risks, according to Lucy Shorrocks, Victorian Opera's managing director. As long as it's artistically justified.
Tomorrow's concert version of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust is the company's first performance for 2010. More than 90 singers will be on stage at Hamer Hall, including the Victorian Opera Chorus and the National Boys Choir, as well as the the entire Orchestra Victoria. The evening will also see the return of two expatriates: Julian Gavin is flying in from London to appear as Faust and Berlin-based Pelham Andrews is singing Mephistopheles.
Faust kicks off a busy year for the company, recently buoyed by a $1.5 million boost in funding from the Victorian government to $3.79 million a year. The company is planning 43 performances this year, nearly double last year's tally.
This is paying dividends by driving subscriber numbers past last year's total within six weeks of the subscriptions going on sale. ''This year is the biggest to date in every sense of the word,'' says Shorrocks. ''In number of performances, artists employed and the size and scale of the works.''
This is the start of the company's fifth year and Shorrocks' first anniversary in the job. ''The first four years were marked by a need to prove the need for our existence, compared to [the much bigger] Opera Australia,'' she says. ''But that has changed now that our work is connecting with the Victorian public.''
The Damnation of Faust is evidence of the company's growing ambitions, but Shorrocks says this is nothing compared with Berlioz's hopes for the work. ''The score has Faust riding towards the abyss while the sky is raining blood. I would love to see a full production by some crazy German opera house that has the funding base to attempt it,'' she laughs.
The key to success in opera is to encourage respect for the artistic vision, Shorrocks says, a view based on her experience as marketing director with the Welsh National Opera.
The Welsh company chose to open its season at Cardiff's new Millennium Centre with Berg's 20th-century work Wozzeck, she says, rather than ''a shiny new production'' of a top-10 classic such as Verdi's La Traviata.
Shorrocks praised Victorian Opera's partnership with the Malthouse Theatre and its director, Michael Kantor, who is directing Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera in May with Eddie Perfect, Judi Connelli and Paul Capsis.
''Working like this is a powerful way to get opera on the agenda for people who otherwise might think that it is not for them,'' says Shorrocks, who came to Australia four years ago. Next month's double bill of The Bear and Angelique might seem new even to regular opera-goers, she says.
''Nobody can afford to be complacent because that is the enemy of any functioning organisation. I have a zero-tolerance attitude to anyone who thinks that things are going well so they can afford to relax.''
Victorian Opera's presentation of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at Hamer Hall, 7.30pm tomorrow. 1300182183.