BY SPENCER DARBY
‘Fly Away Peter’ World Premiere
Music by Elliot Gyger, libretto by Pierce Wilcox
Sydney Chamber Opera
Carriageworks, 2 May 2015
The Sydney Chamber Opera has recently established itself as a small-scale alternative to the national opera company and other large houses in Australia, focusing on new works and giving a voice to Australian composers (as well as a regular platform for performance). The fresh, youthful approach of the company never ceases to amaze as they tackle difficult works and maintain an exceptional standard.
‘Fly Away Peter’ – a one act operatic meditation on nature, war and human fragility – takes a startling look at the Great War, now 100 years on. Elliott Gyger’s use of orchestral colours to represent the Australian landscape and animals was extraordinarily well done given the relatively small band assembled. Chillingly beautiful (and tragic) birdcalls broke through the texture, as a frequent reminder that this is effectively a story of gentleness and fragility thrust into the madness of the western front. The pit band charged with painting this world deserves more than just a mention as they tackled a challenging score with great concentration and determination.
The trio of singers also had their work cut out for them in a score that no doubt required immense focus and copious periods of counting. Mitchell Riley embodied the kind curiosity of the enigmatic bird-watcher Jim, but sometimes struggled to project his light baritone over moments of denser textural figures from the orchestra. It became difficult to understand his diction in these moments and the audience was no doubt pleased to have surtitles only a glance away.
Jessica Aszodi (Imogen) grew as a dramatic figure over the course of the night, finishing with a dogged strength both vocal and dramatic in the harrowing last minutes on the western front. Her stillness and strength starkly contrasted the growing insanity of her two male counterparts. Brenton Spiteri (Ashley) was the standout performer, his clarion tenor sound never once faltering, even in fiendishly difficult periods of sustained high tessitura. His progression from fun-loving property owner to mud-spattered officer in the trenches was as devastating as it was professionally managed.
Imara Savage’s direction was bold and pulled no punches. In a stark white physical setting that needed to serve first as Queensland bushland and then as war-ravaged France, Savage utilised every inch of the stage and the entire bodies of the cast. As the music feverishly represented the growing chaos, so too did the caked-on piles of clay grow on the three singers, indicative of the knee-deep muddy quagmires that came to be synonymous with the First World War.
Despite moments of disconnection with the non-linear narrative flow due to aforementioned imbalances in sound, the story progressed well and served to transport audiences to a place that few would have wanted to go. The chaos inside the theatre seemed to inspire another tempest outside, a fitting parallel as audience members trudged home through torrential rain pondering the madness of war, and how seemingly uninvolved Australians managed to get mixed up in a hell thousands of kilometres away.
Image supplied.
