Timing is Everything

Moffatt Oxenbould

ABC Books

ISBN 073331713 8

Reviewed by Elizabeth Silsbury

The life of Moffatt Oxenbould is inseparable from the several lives of Australia's professional national opera companies. He was irrevocably drawn into the worlds of music and drama at the age of eight, lying on the floor listening to recordings and reading scores of productions his compliant and cultured parents had taken him to. Why this should happen to one child and not to others he does not attempt to explain. It just did, and determined his career.

There are many ways of approaching his densely populated amalgam of autobiography and opera company history. Let us assume that most readers drawn to 694 pages of narrative, plus lists of repertoire and index, will already be opera converts, and of an age to be acquainted, if not familiar, with much of the content. But be warned. This is not bedtime reading - it's so heavy with physical, emotional and historical weight, and so evocative of decades of memories, that it demands time to ruminate as well as time to read.

Those curious about the single-mindedness of a child pursuing and capturing his dream can progress straight through the chronological account of a totally operacentric life from about 1950 through various positions with Opera Australia and its antecedents - carrying out every conceivable task, no matter how menial, among the hundreds of jobs needed to get this greatest of all art forms from score to stage - to the pinnacle. How he became Artistic Director of The Australian Opera (not his own doing) is worth a lot more space than he allocates to it, but as with this and many other delicate matters he is the soul of discretion. Actually, there will be some readers, like myself, who would like a bit more vitriol in his pen when accounting for the manoevres of various unscrupulous, self-interested people behaving very badly indeed. But the author is a  gentleman, as well as a gentle man. This is his story, and he is entitled to tell it his way.

Or one might pick a specific item and chase up all its indexed entries to follow, for example, the fortunes of your favourite singer. The devotees of La Stupenda can start with 1965 and follow her through to the unforgettable Sydney gala of Les Huguenots that marked her farewell to opera in 1989 and beyond. Or conductors. Richard Bonynge of course, Charles Mackerras, Simone Young and the valiant Stuart Challender, struggling to get through Der Rosenkavalier, despite his frailty, not long before he died. And directors, often poached from theatre and dance worlds. Like Baz Luhrmann. Oxenbould gives five whole pages to his Lake Lost, a whimsical treasure that never got past workshop stage but marked him as an outstandingly gifted director and remains a precious memory for the fortunate few who saw and loved it. Remembering that the look of opera is almost as important as its sound, don't forget the highly gifted designers of sets and costumes and their lighting partners - the likes of Tom Lingwood, Kristian Frederikson, Stephen Curtis and Nigel Levings make up a book-within-a-book - and the others behind the scenes, such as the redoubtable Noel Staunton, who rescued many ventures in mortal danger from complete collapse.

Readers of a certain age will thirst for the inside stories of the sometimes farcical in-one-door-and-out-the-other cavalcade of General Managers - John Winther, Peter Hemmings, Ken Tribe, Patrick Veitch (so sad, the account of his departure twenty years ago had me in tears now as it did then), Donald MacDonald. These reports are not nearly as sensational on the page as the events were in the flesh, and of course the really juicy bits remain locked up. From my personal strongbox - during the most vicious of all the confrontations between artistic and managerial authorities, one singer declared that The Australian Opera without Joan Sutherland was as unthinkable as the world without Jesus Christ. Passions ran very, very high. The Chairman track - Claude Alcorso, Charles Berg, David Clarke, Graeme Samuels, Rowena Danziger - is also worth pursuing, but requires some reading between the lines.

There is a track of works by Australian composers that must be heeded by all those who berate the national company for its lack of encouragement of home grown products. Start with Sitsky and Dreyfus, move on to the very successful National Opera Workshops and follow through to Voss, and Sitsky's The Golem, commissioned in 1974 and eventually, after many acrimonious and often ignorant arguments in Board meetings, brought to the stage in 1994 and worth the wait. Proceed to the almost forgotten Rites of Passage, to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, the history making and history reconstructing Eighth Wonder, Mer de Glace (such a let down after Meale's first go at opera, the strongly written and even more strongly cast Voss) and Batavia. Not a bad record

Oxenbould is frank but tactful about the squabbles between artistic directors and conductors, and sanguine that the show would always go on, despite some sensational, and often quite misleading headlines. The strongest theme that rides through the whole narrative is his faith in teamwork. Ensemble is referred to in many contexts, and no doubt he is right that the loyalty that existed between colleagues and management, and which he helped to engender both by precept and example, helped the company to focus on the business of giving the public its moneysworth, whatever mayhem was going on backstage and in the boardroom. Here again I and others might look for the devil in the detail. But many of the offstage villains are still alive and libel laws are pretty tight.

The writing is at its most restrained, but the passion burns through anyway, when dealing with the so-called 'merger' between The Australian Opera and Victoria State Opera. 1996 began well with the formation of Ozopera and their jolly Adelaide Festival romp through Magic Flute in the mainland's oldest theatre, Queen's (not King's, Moffatt). Angus Wood's Papageno made history by kissing Dame Roma Mitchell, SA Governor, sitting in the front row. When told who she was, he said 'She smiled at me, so I kissed her'. Next day, Dame Roma, still thrilled, said 'I think he thought I was his granny'. But the smiles and the kisses soon faded. Ten years later, anyone who was in Melbourne in 1996 when the 'merger' that Oxenbould thought was still at the discussion stage was suddenly announced on October 7 as a fait accompli will remember their outrage. The Melbourne Festival was on. Everyone was in town, including Peter Hemmings with his Los Angeles production of Die Frau ohne Schatten. At a farcical meeting, the announcement was made to subscribers, critics, members of The Australian Opera National Council and journalists that the new 'merged' company was to be called Australian National Opera. A small derisory roar arose, with someone pointing out that the initials ANO mean arse in Italian, a common opera language. On the trot, the then TAO board chairman Graeme Samuels airily decided that Opera Australia would be the new title. 'Can't do that', said Margaret Whitlam and I in unison. 'That's the name of our national journal.' But Samuels prevailed. Oxenbould's account ends with a rare glimpse of his true feelings - 'anger, hurt, outrage, sadness and the slow, pervasive emergence of grief.' He does not say, but I can, that this self-interested, ill-informed decision was the worst ever made in the history of opera in Australia. Its repercussions are still resounding.

This remarkable book ends with Moffatt Oxenbould's retirement from the opera company, but not from opera, still his passion after more than sixty years. The generosity of his final words is deeply felt and deeply moving. He has enabled hordes of singers, conductors, directors, designers, audiences and writers who have been 'the good companions of my journey' to travel all over again the highways and lowways of our country's endeavours in this most rewarding, most heart-breaking of all art forms.

Music Forum Vol 12 No 3