Despite dramas - and a pandemic - Victorian Opera plays on

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This was published 3 years ago

Despite dramas - and a pandemic - Victorian Opera plays on

By Nick Miller

Half its lifetime ago, in 2013, Victorian Opera was singing the blues. Its production of the modern minimalist masterpiece Nixon in China was about to open and barely half the seats had been sold. This was going to be a financial nightmare.

"It was not (an) inexpensive (production), through the international licensing and the amount of people on stage," recalls CEO Elizabeth Hill-Cooper, who at the time had just joined the company as artistic administrator. "We were sitting on a knife-edge going 'oh God'."

Barry Ryan as the former US president Richard Nixon in the Victorian Opera production of Nixon in China.

Barry Ryan as the former US president Richard Nixon in the Victorian Opera production of Nixon in China.Credit: Tim Young

"Then 42 per cent of ticket sales went in the 10 days before closing. It shot through the roof."

It was hailed by critics — The Age called it "nothing short of a triumph" — and marked a milestone for the young company, which formed out of the void left after Opera Australia absorbed the state opera company. Artistic director Richard Mills (known internally as Richard the Second, having replaced the much-loved Richard Gill), picks this production as the highlight of the company's life so far — for its "overall quality" and spectacle.

A few years later, the National Opera Review recommended VO be supported with national funding as an Australian major performing arts company, hailing it as a "significant source of innovative opera" and "clearly meeting unmet demand".

But Nixon was not to be the last crisis the company would face in its short 15 years (it celebrates that anniversary on Tuesday). In 2018, management made the flawed decision to relocate to a purpose-built headquarters in Laurens St, West Melbourne, paying an expensive lease and commissioning a lavish architectural vision before rapidly realising the numbers didn't add up. Annual reports reveal this mistake meant almost $700,000 down the drain - a significant bite out of VO's generous (and necessary) state and federal funding, and an amount that could have funded a lot more opera.

And now, COVID-19. Of VO's big plans for 2020, only Salome made it to the stage. The vagaries of JobKeeper meant only five of their part-time and casual "work family" received government support, so employees have been sacrificing salary into a pay-it-forward program of supermarket vouchers for hard-up former (and hopefully future) colleagues.

Hill-Cooper says they have salvaged two productions from the canned 2020 season for 2021: a Youth Opera production of Schubert's The Friends of Salamanca and The Who's rock opera Tommy. The rest is all new. Mills had been close to finalising the 2021 program before the pandemic made it clear "we just had to stop, and start again".

"Richard felt, and we all agreed, those (2020) titles were not appropriate in a pandemic and lockdown," she says. "And Richard reimagined (2021) — he has been very clever."

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Victorian Opera artistic director Richard Mills

Victorian Opera artistic director Richard MillsCredit: Charlie Kinross

That 2021 program, yet to be announced in detail, includes three productions in February, March and April. All will have a livestreamed element, with "contingency plans" to cancel a performance to expand the film production. The February work originally came with a "massive chorus" that has been removed, for health reasons, and a double bill work for March was commissioned specifically for "COVID-19 parameters".

"We have adapted the brief to the prevailing circumstances," Mills says.

But beyond that, his vision is the same, he says: to "reimagine the potential of opera for everybody".

"We do things differently, we do things in different places using different people, we recognise the potential and the great traditions of our artform."

Hill-Cooper says their proudest tradition has been their connection to young audiences and artists, fostered through livestreams and workshops, and assisted by making sure ticket prices stayed "accessible".

"We work really hard to break down the barrier that opera is only for an elite audience," she says.

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