Feature - Upfront
Patrick Nolan
by Guy Somerset
Patrick Nolan, 41, is an acclaimed Australian stage director on a mission: to bring a younger audience to opera. And he thinks Puccini’s La Bohème, which he is directing for New Zealand Opera, is just the production to do it. “Maybe sexing up operas will shock the purists,” he has said. “But if the art form is to survive, a few shocks might be a good thing.”
How old were you when you saw your first opera and what was it?
I was 18 and it was a new Australian production called Voss by Richard Meale and based on the Patrick White novel.
What appealed to you? I think that it was an Australian story and that it had been created in the past five years – its contemporaneousness.
Is that an ongoing thing with younger audiences – contemporary operas being more appealing than the older stories? No, I don’t think so. For me, what was engaging also was that it was different – the idea of a story being told in song.
What do you think younger audiences might find off-putting? I just think it’s the fear of the unknown. And there’s also that classic thing with young people that if old people are interested in it then they’re not.
Although these days, with young people listening to old bands such as the Clash or the Rolling Stones, that argument should pertain less. That’s right. And I think with the way music in general is going. So often you hear these terms such as “post-rock”, everything is post-something. How I understand it is that no genre is complete to itself these days; everything involves jazz or rock or classical or something. They are constantly cross-referencing one another.
So, are we going to be getting post-opera? There is post-opera around, yes – using jazz idioms, using rock idioms.
What are some of the things that would get a younger audience back into opera? Inviting them to experience something different, challenging them to go outside their comfort zone. All you can do is bring them. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water … once you’ve got them locked in the theatre, they won’t necessarily have to drink, but they will see what they are missing out on, and then they can make a decision. The first thing is just about creating a space in which they will feel welcome, that isn’t too stuffy. And once you’ve got them there, you can’t present them with crusty old productions. You have to give them something dynamic, that is responsive to the world they live in.
Why is La Bohème the opera to do that? Because it’s so easy to identify with the characters – young people trying to create their own place in the world, falling in love, partying hard, and taking risks because all those older than them seem to be stuck in a rut. And it’s full of great, great music.
Baz Luhrmann’s production in the 1990s showed what can be done with La Bohème. What touches are you bringing to it? We are setting our production in the present and embracing the gritty realism of a world that is as brutal as it is beautiful. All the props and locations are based on contemporary references, showing the audience a time and a place they will readily recognise. By setting his production in the 1950s, Luhrmann put a bit of a Vaseline filter on the story.
Is there a danger that you’ll alienate older audiences? I haven’t with my previous productions. I did a production of Dido and Aeneas that was very radical and the people who responded to it most were the older people, because they had seen 10 productions of Dido and Aeneas and they enjoyed the fact they were seeing it afresh.
What other opera would you recommend to the young novice? There are so many. Any of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas, Monteverdi – he was like the Radiohead of his day in terms of what he was doing with music, with rhythm and melody. Any of the operas by Puccini. Then, coming forward, the operas of John Adams and Philip Glass.
And what should they avoid? Nothing. Be bold, go out and be brave.
LA BOHÈME, New Zealand Opera, St James Theatre, Wellington, May 10-17; Aotea Centre, Auckland, May 29-June 7.
