By Reviewed by Michael Shmith
THE PERFECT AMERICAN
Phillip Glass
Brisbane Festival/Opera Queensland
Queensland Performing Arts Centre
September 15
If the reason for a festival's existence is to take risks, then there could have been no riskier production than Philip Glass' new opera, The Perfect American. After all, Brisbane's retiring artistic director, Noel Staunton, scheduled it while the work was still gestating. Its world premiere was only at the start of last year. It has been seen at the Teatro Real, Madrid, and the English National Opera in London. Now it's Brisbane's turn.
Christopher Purves as Walt Disney and Cheryl Barker as Hazel George in the Philip Glass opera The Perfect American.Credit: Dan Swinbourne
Who could have predicted the result? An opera whose central character is Walt Disney – and a dying Walt Disney at that – and one that has yet to be staged in Disneyland Central (the United States), may well have turned out to be less of a grand opera and more of a Mickey Mouse outfit. Fortunately, The Perfect American is anything but. It might not be the perfect opera, but such is the standard of its drama, design and execution that it overwhelmingly makes you feel it is.
For a start, Glass' score is lusher, grander and indeed, more romantic that one might expect. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra, efficiently conducted by Gareth Jones, played the music with heart and soul. Likewise, the singing of the Opera Queensland Chorus, under Narelle French.
But it's the production itself – recreated by its original team, including director Phelim McDermott and Australian-based designer Dan Portra – that is the real star.
Portra's designs centre on the very nucleus of animation: elemental drawings on paper. In fact, the whole set is a collection of various unfolding sketchbooks and billowing, paper-like sheets, illuminated by ingenious projections. But animation, by definition is also about movement; and the production, one love reverie experienced by Disney from his hospital bed, is creativity in ceaseless motion. Enter Leo Warner's astonishing video designs, aided and abetted by Jon Clark's vivid lighting.
All this matches exactly the turmoils of Disney's own contrary nature, caught superbly by English bass-baritone, Christopher Purves, who created the role. No less affecting were Douglas McNicol as Disney's elder brother, Roy, and Donald Kaasch as Disney's nemesis, Dantine. Marie McLaughlin as Lillian Disney and (luxury casting) Cheryl Barker as Disney's nurse, Hazel, were most moving. Rosie Lomas, Zachary James and Kane Breen gave grace and dignity to smaller roles that include Abraham Lincoln and Andy Warhol (it's that sort of opera).
The Perfect American allows us to think anew about Walt Disney, 48 years after his death. The work neither eulogises nor ridicules him. Instead McDermott and Portra, via Glass' opulent score and Rudolf Wurlitzer's pithy libretto, juxtapose Walt's boundless ambitions and his personal frailties to give an almost sympathetic account of the man whose idle sketch of three circles became a mouse more popular (he says) than Jesus or Buddha.
Michael Shmith was a guest of the Brisbane Festival.