BY CARISSA DYALL
Aren’t millennials the worst?
We spend our house deposits on avocado on toast and specialty coffee. We choose to raise dogs over kids. We are an entitled, lazy, and delinquent bunch.
Frustrated and dissatisfied with the state of things, Allison Tyra and Holly Champion have created a production that combines these stereotypes with the traditions of opera. They shake it all up, and turn this artform on its head.
With a cast of talented, emerging opera singers, they hope that A Millennial Opera will expose a new generation of audience members to the full potential of opera.
We had a chat with Allison and Holly about cereal killers, memes, and revamping an outdated, elitist artform ahead of their new show at Sydney Fringe.
Allison, as the writer and producer of this opera, what was your vision for this production and how has it developed?
Allison Tyra: My initial inspiration was attending a production where the company had translated the works into English. On the way home, I presented the idea to Holly: Why couldn’t I just write new lyrics, [and] completely change the meaning? Operatic music is absolutely beautiful, but as both a theatre lover and a modern woman, the plots, characters and other story elements constantly frustrate me. By keeping the music, but putting entirely new meanings behind the songs, I hope to open the genre up a bit more, and make it more accessible to wider audiences.
As someone who can’t even read music, I’m indescribably fortunate to have someone like Holly as dramaturg, and singers who work with me to fine-tune – pun intended – the pieces.
Reimagining opera is a great way to introduce new audience members to this artform. How have you updated the genre from something associated with ‘long-dead white guys’ to a production that is more relatable and accessible?
AT: First, we started with topics that are both well-known, and commonly associated with millennials: selfies, memes, hashtags, hipsters, online dating, living with your parents as an adult, and so on. We then matched them thematically with the right operatic works, based on original meanings, and added a bit of social commentary to each.
It’s a more relaxed atmosphere than you typically find in opera, and it’s only about an hour, compared to full productions that often run around three hours. The audience is also likely to find the content more relatable than a lot of standard opera.
Holly Champion: We’re really fortunate to have been able to cast some of the finest emerging opera talent in Sydney. Not only are they brilliant, highly trained singers; they are also great all-round performers who are able to clearly communicate this sassy, snarky text, which is really necessary for a cabaret-fusion-style show.
What are some references to millennial culture that audience members can look forward to enjoying…or cringing at?
AT: Our version of Nessun Dorma – originally about a guy deciding he will ‘win’ by succeeding in a competition that would force a woman to marry him, when she does not want to get married – features a white guy interrupting our female MC, Holly, to brag about how “woke” he is. It’s very tongue-in-cheek, though I couldn’t get the tenor to try singing it literally tongue-in-cheek!
There’s a duet from Marriage of Figaro, now between a mother and adult daughter who are living together; and a barista’s lament from Bach’s Coffee Cantata. La Donna e Mobile is now about hipsters – I may need a trigger warning for overly relatable content.
HC: We also have a new version of the aria normally sung by Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello about how many ladies his master has seduced, which we have reimagined as sung by a guy who likes bragging about how many puppies his best mate has rescued.
Cat memes also feature pretty prominently in our version of Figaro’s aria Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville. It just seemed appropriate, seeing as cats and dogs make up some of our generation’s most consumed online content…
Holly, as someone who has worked for large production companies including Opera Australia, how have these external experiences helped you with directing this production?
HC: I have really realised how much money, resources, time, organisation, and marketing – as well as expertise and passion – it takes to mount a full-scale professional opera production. So I’m glad that I am cutting my teeth as a director with a small-scale production like this; with minimal costuming, a pianist instead of an orchestra, and basically no set!
This is only my second directorial project. The really great thing about a small-scale project like this is that we can take artistic risks that Opera Australia and other large companies can’t afford to take. This show is about as far from traditional opera as you are going to get.
There’s an extensive list of things that millennials have been accused of ruining. My personal favourite is the recent accusation of how we are responsible for the demise of mayonnaise. What do you think is the most ridiculous thing that millennials have been accused of doing?
AT: We actually have an entire song – the Habanera aria from Carmen – about how millennials are killing or ruining everything. Except the planet; thanks, baby boomers!
To me, personally, idiotic attitudes about millennials can be summed up by blaming us for destroying the diamond industry, then turning around and saying the reason we can’t afford houses is all that avocado on toast. If we over-spent, they’d talk about how reckless we are; but if we prefer not to waste money on certain things, suddenly it’s on us that an entire industry is in trouble.
Never mind that in the United States, [Forbes reports that] ‘despite being the largest generation in the workforce today, average millennial salaries are disproportionately low compared to the national average—and are 20 percent lower than baby boomers’ salaries when they were the same age’. But let’s ignore that reality, and whine about millennials killing fabric softener, democracy, golf, running, cereal, marmalade, light yogurt, wine corks…
I do like that we’re cereal killers.
HC: I think the most ridiculous thing that millennials have been accused of is being ‘naive idiots’ for assuming that, with a good education and hard work, we would get good jobs and be able to eventually buy homes. Our parents’ generation brought us up to make that assumption – and given their experience of a long post-war boom, it seemed like a reasonable assumption… until the Global Financial Crisis hit.
There was also this related message: ‘Follow your passion and the money will come’. But, now people are turning around, particularly to artists, and sneering: ‘You idiot, why didn’t you study STEM?’.
It’s really not fair to demonise millennials for trying to make our cherished childhood dreams come true. And fortunately, if you really follow your passion as I and my opera friends have done, even if you are (sob) chronically poor, it connects you to this really vibrant, wonderful community that you just can’t find anywhere else.
Stuff it – life is for living now, not for deferring until you retire at, say, 65 with a nice property portfolio.
At the end of the show, what would you like the audience to take away from all of this?
AT: I hope it makes them laugh, spurs some interesting discussion, and leads to them checking out more opera.
HC: I would like them to have fun and look at opera in a new way – to realise that it isn’t just stuffy old people and expensive, elitist nights out, but can be really engaging and modern and youthful and relevant.
I would also love them to experience the sheer power of the unamplified operatic voice in close-up, which is something that most people never get to experience. It is a totally different experience from hearing opera from the back of a big auditorium. Close up, these amazing, beautiful voices can almost literally blow you away!
See A Millennial Opera at the Newsagency, Sydney Fringe Festival, 6-9 September.
Shout the writer an avocado on toast?
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