It’s been an award-winning play, a best-selling novel and an AACTA Award-winning film.
Now The Drover’s Wife, Leah Purcell’s retelling of Henry Lawson’s story through a First Nations female lens, is shaking the rafters of Brisbane’s new Glasshouse Theatre as a brand new Australian opera.
Co-commissioned by the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Opera Australia, the production has music by NSW high court judge-turned composer George Palmer, and is directed by Queensland-born Purcell.
Purcell said that opera was an ideal medium for the story because Palmer’s music “heightens everything”.
“It heightens the drama, it heightens the world around it, it broadens the boundaries of what you can do on stage,” she said.
Palmer said his score is melodic in the western tradition, with an additional element of First Nations music and dance.
“The two streams are running side by side and commenting on each other … this is a story about the confrontation between the colonial powers and the First Nations culture.
“I think it works pretty bloody well.”
Set in 1893 in the Snowy Mountains, the story of Molly Johnson is a powerful outback tragedy tackling domestic violence, racism and family connection.
While Purcell has won multiple accolades for playing Johnson on stage and on screen, the opera’s Molly, Nina Korbe, is a Queensland-born soprano who has sung lead roles for Opera Queensland and in Opera Australia’s West Side Story.
Appropriately for a story about survival and bloodlines, she also is a blood relation – Purcell’s first cousin once removed.
Korbe said she grew up inspired by Purcell, and that singing the role was a “weighty responsibility”.
“Molly’s story is so deftly woven with real stories from the women in our life, not only aunties, but also the other matriarchs in our line. You want to represent these women with truth and honesty,” Korbe said.
“It’s a great responsibility, but one I’m very grateful to have.”
She said Molly reminded her of great operatic heroines like Tosca (from Tosca), Violetta (from La traviata) and Mimi (from La boheme).
“Opera can often be criticised for painting women in a light that shows them oppressed or vulnerable or abused, but what I think is often at the core of these women is a great deal of personal strength.”
The opera’s other lead role is Yadaka, the Indigenous man hunted by troopers who appears on Molly’s property and forges a fateful connection with her.
A singer-songwriter from far north Queensland, Marcus Corowa (Bran Nue Dae, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) said playing the role involves singing in two different modes.
“Yadaka walks both worlds, he has this understanding of blackfella culture and whitefella culture,” Corowa said.
“The operatic stuff is very open with long [notes], but the blackfella stuff is at the back of your throat and sharp, so it’s that kind of contrast where I’m like, how do these worlds mix?”
Palmer, who also composed the opera version of Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, got the idea of adapting The Drover’s Wife when he found Purcell’s novel on his wife’s bedside table.
When he first met with Purcell their artistic chemistry was instant.
“Five minutes after our first coffee we were saying ‘let’s do this’,” Palmer said.
The Drover’s Wife – The Opera concludes the launch season for QPAC’s new Glasshouse Theatre, which included the ballet Messa da Requiem and Sting’s musical The Last Ship.
QPAC chief executive Rachel Healy said the opera was visceral, unflinching and stirringly Australian.
“It’s a fitting beginning for a theatre built to hold the weight of powerful stories and thrilling performances,” Healy said.
Although the opera was in English with some Aboriginal language, audiences at the first preview were responding in the same way as audiences responded to Italian opera, Purcell said.
“They laughed, they oohed and ahhed in the right places, they went silent in the right places, boos for the bad guys – it was opera!”
The Drover’s Wife – The Opera runs May 13-22 at the Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC, and the Sydney Opera House, August 7-15.
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