Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
There is a certain irony to promoting an opera about artistic poverty in a venue devoted to high-end consumerism.
At Melbourne’s Emporium shopping centre on Tuesday, Opera Australia singers regaled lunchtime shoppers with arias from the company’s new production of La Boheme.
Surrounded by an illuminated Nike swoosh, Tommy Hilfiger signage and a Nespresso store, bass David Parkin sang the part of philospher Colline, selling his only coat to pay for medicine.
“I do think we live in a very consumerist world, so if the message of the value of art is delivered wherever, that’s fine by me,” Parkin told AAP.
It was also fine by the crowds of shoppers who stopped in their tracks to see the brief concert, to promote Opera Australia’s first new main-stage production of the Puccini classic in 15 years.
Directed by Constantine Costi, La Boheme opened Friday night at the Regent Theatre and its Melbourne shows will be followed by a run at the Sydney Opera House.
With regular tickets costing up to $295, Opera Australia offered $70 tickets to the lunchtime audience.
Theatregoer Byron Chitaranjan was among those planning to take advantage of the cheaper tickets.
“It’s all about being financially prudent, you know, how much am I getting paid this week? Is it worth it?” he told AAP.
Major musical theatre productions such as Beetlejuice and Waitress have been forced to cut short their Australian runs in recent times, while a production of Aida was cancelled entirely as production costs soared.
Parkin was also joined at the free Emporium show by tenor Iain Henderson and sopranos Valeria Sepe and Jane Ede.
The main lovers of La Boheme, Rodolfo and Mimi would never be able to indulge in luxury shopping said Ede, who sang Musetta’s Waltz.
It was a lot like life as a musician, the soprano said: “Sometimes it looks fairly glamorous and still everyone’s kind of hustling to to make a buck, so it’s not unusual to have that kind of dichotomy.”
Former stage manager Pamela Foulkes has seen La Boheme dozens of times and said as a pensioner, theatre tickets were expensive.
But she endorsed free pop-up shows as a way of introducing opera to people who are unfamiliar or might find it elitist.
“One of the things it does is actually demystifies the art form because there are people who have not been to an opera before who go, ‘That’s elitist, not for us’,” she said.
