Mozart with meatballs at IKEA: How opera faces its existential crisis | Opera

IIt’s Sunday and I’m in a suburban Ikea on the verge of tears. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising – who among us hasn’t come close to an emotional breakdown while navigating a labyrinthine homewares store? But these are tears of joy. And no, it’s not because I captured one of Djungelskog’s beloved characters; This is because of the five people singing to me from two meters away.

I’m in the plants and outdoor furniture section, watching the movie The Marriage of Figaro — or a version of it, where Figaro and his bride Susanna work in floor sales and their flirtatious boss is the store manager. This is perhaps the last place I would expect to discover the exquisite beauty of a Mozart opera. Half an hour ago, I and my fellow audience members – who had been emailed about the secret location 24 hours earlier – were eating meatballs and mash in the canteen.

This is Secret Opera, a project of Opera Western Australia that brings essential and rare works to extraordinary places, including, in the past, an abandoned theater and a prison. The night before, I had seen Philip Glass’s staging of Franz Kafka’s absurdist, nightmarish novel The Trial, staged in a former Flight Center office in a shopping mall — the latest venture from the Lost and Found opera. Both were part of this year’s Perth Festival, which under its artistic director, Anna Rees, continues to use the city’s existing and disused spaces in creative ways.

Secret Opera and The Trial are part of a broader shift in opera around the world toward unconventional settings — think Wagner in a parking garage in Detroit; Shostakovich in a nightclub in Manchester. In recent years, Opera Australia has presented Puccini’s one-act opera Il Taparo on board a century-old lighthouse ship in Sydney Harbour, Bizet’s Carmen in the former industrial estate of Cockatoo Island, and Verdi’s Tosca on a tennis court – in addition to its annual outdoor productions as part of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour.

There are also smaller companies dedicated entirely to showing opera in exotic locations. Previous Lost and Found productions have transported audiences to an Italian suburban social club, an aquatic center and an abandoned lumber mill. Brisbane Underground Opera uses caves, abandoned mines and aircraft hangars. The Western Australian band Freeze Frame has staged operas in a former prison and given “spotlight” concerts on flatbed trucks.

There are various reasons why companies choose to work in these types of unusual venues: connecting with regional locations that do not have traditional theaters designed for music-based theatre; Cost, if they don’t have their own place and can’t afford flashy sets; and accessibility, if they are trying to attract new audiences who may be intimidated or alienated by traditional venues. The sites themselves can also clarify concerns about the piece.

The shift to non-traditional spaces is also part of a deeper existential crisis of the 19th-century model that dominated the industry until well into the 21st century: spectacle productions staged in lyric theatres, says Caitlin Vincent, an academic and opera writer whose new book, “The Opera Wars,” surveys the state of opera around the world. “It’s not sustainable,” she says. “It’s expensive” — sets can cost as much as building a house, plus staff and performers — “and there are many other competitors in terms of entertainment and audience time.” In response, opera companies are “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to see what new models might stick.

Opera Western Australia’s artistic director, Chris Van Tuinan, who also co-founded Lost and Found, says Secret Opera is part of its mission to expand the company’s repertoire beyond its traditional program. But in the case of Figaro, he was driven by a desire to do something familiar in an unexpected way – and a realization that IKEA would be an interesting setting for an opera about class dynamics that begins with the protagonist measuring a bed. (The opening scene of his production, directed by Humphrey Power, is set on models of budget luxury Grimsbu and Mandal beds, prices on the horizon.)

Projects like The Trial and Secret Opera resonate with the festival’s need to offer “something different,” Rees says. Mel Cantwell, co-director of Lost and Found, approached her with a clear vision of presenting Kafka’s classic story of an individual oppressed by the system in a bleak corporate office environment, à la Severance. The abandoned office they found in Perth’s Forest Chase Mall – with its stripped concrete floor, exposed silver ductwork and fluorescent lighting – “took audiences on a joyride.” [unique] a trip”.

In the case of The Trial, some audiences were undoubtedly drawn to the opera itself, which had never been performed in Australia; others through the novelty of seeing a show about the meaninglessness of modern life in a quintessentially vulgarly sterile contemporary setting.

At Secret Opera, some of the older regulars told me they loved the adventure of an unknown place — though they seemed less keen on part of the evening with meatballs.

But at IKEA, unexpectedly, I had a profound and moving experience that revealed something to me not only about this particular opera — which I had seen many times, in grandiose traditional productions — but the art form itself. As I sat in front of the singers, without the distraction of the groups or even the orchestra, I found myself face to face with Mozart’s interwoven vocal lines and the pure beauty and power of the human instrument. It reminded me why I keep heading to the opera – anyway, anywhere – in the first place.