Put some Opa! into Opera

Last week I attended the beautiful launch of the Opera Australia 2008 season. It was a memorable evening for a number of reasons, some of which can't possibly be mentioned here, but there is one disappointment I have with OA...

Bryce Hallett expressed disappointment that there isn't a new Australian opera premiering next year... well I'm disappointed that there isn't a new Balkan opera premiering! (and I am probably the only one... but that could change!)

I just came across an article in the International Herald Tribune (that stable of a newspaper for ex-pats lying on tropical island beaches) which has a huge profile on a new Paris Opera production of Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies!

Why oh why isn't someone doing that here!!!???

Nicole Alexander - where are you? You may well be putting on Dead Man Walking - but what about some Gypsy-Punk Opera?! Now that'll get an audience out of their chairs. Just imagine Teddy Tahu Rhodes blinging it up for a bit of Gyprock Opera action!

For those of you who don't know who Emir Kusturica (Емир Кустурица) is you deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered. The man is a genius and directed the film's Black Cat White Cat, Underground, Arizona Dream, Life is a Miracle.

"The opera is going to be how Monty Python could have imagined opera," Kusturica, 52, told IHT during rehearsals. "Sometimes it is a parody of opera, sometimes it is a self-parody."

IHT also states that opera music is no stranger to Kusturica. "For the past 20 years, between making movies, Kusturica has played guitar in a punk and techno rock group called The No Smoking Orchestra. For this occasion, the 10-man band shares the pit of the Bastille Opera with The Garbage Serbian Philharmonia which, despite its bizarre name, uses classical music instruments."

Now surely there is no more evidence needed to bring this opera to the shores of Australia! The No Smoking Orchestra is surely reason alone! Not to mention The Garbage Serbian Philharmonia!

I can see it now... whisk those violins and violas out of the hands of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra - and whack - here's an accordian and a broken piano! Have a crack at that! Marvellous.

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