True stories 'at core' of opera
A Opera’s new artistic director Brad Cohen says opera should go well beyond the Top 10 — operatically speaking, of course.
“Opera is a very broad church,” the Australian conductor says. “I have no real interest in doing obscure operas but we need to find out what WA audiences feel they are lacking and provide a balanced diet. There should be a diversity of offerings. But my main aim is to serve and entertain as many people as possible. I want audiences to come on a journey with us.”
It’s a journey that will see WA Opera celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017.
“I’m very excited about that,” Cohen says. “It will be a good time to look back and say ‘Ok, what have we done so far, where are we going?’ It will definitely be an opportunity for some kind of retrospective.”
Cohen is no stranger to Perth audiences. Reviewing The Magic Flute in these pages last year, Rosalind Appleby wrote: “Conductor Brad Cohen drew a fine performance from the WA Symphony Orchestra: joyful, coherent and synchronised.”
Of 2012’s Lucia de Lammermoor, yours truly wrote: “Cohen, a bel canto specialist, conducted a highly responsive WA Symphony Orchestra with the flexible precision the score demands.”
Cohen replaces New York-based Verdi specialist Joseph Colaneri who planned and cast the 2015 season before leaving after just three years as artistic director. His appointment comes with the WA Opera, along with three others, under scrutiny by the Federal Government’s national opera review into financial performance, artistic vibrancy and audience engagement.
He will be in residence for up to four months each year. This year he will conduct Gounod’s Faust, and will be present for at least some rehearsals of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and this year’s free Opera in the Park offering, The Barber of Seville, which former artistic director Richard Mills will conduct.
“(Opera in the Park) is a fantastic party and an opportunity for meeting a wide selection of the Perth audience in a more relax environment,” Cohen says. “It’s an opportunity for enriching the conversation about opera with the public.”
Sometimes that conversation can be less than amiable. In his 2014 arts round-up, The West Australian’s arts editor Stephen Bevis wrote: “Smoke got in the eyes of those involved with the WA Opera after it was revealed in October that the company had omitted Carmen from its 2015 season because of fears that scenes of people puffing on coffin sticks would jeopardise its Healthway sponsorship.”
Cohen had no involvement in the decision. Did he have any thoughts on the subject at all? “No comment,” he replies.
“My responsibility as artistic director is to make sure we are telling truthful stories.
“That reaches across all sorts of productions and you can, of course, have a truthful production that is controversial. The power of opera is that it tells us stories about ourselves. That’s at the core of what I do.”
Acclaimed for his conducting of French and Italian classical and romantic opera, especially in the bel canto repertoire, Cohen has an international career and works extensively in Australia and Europe conducting for opera houses, festivals and on the concert platform.
A graduate of St John’s College, Oxford, Cohen has also worked frequently in TV and is active as an editor and publisher of operatic editions.
His long involvement in the performance and commissioning of new music, both on the operatic stage and for television, includes Thomas Ades’ Powder Her Face (world premiere) and Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Australian premiere).
Cohen has no time for those who deem Australian audiences less sophisticated than their European or American counterparts.
“As an Australian I get impatient with this battering of Australian audiences, that they are somehow crude or their expectations are lower,” he says.
“I believe everyone just wants to see good stories well told and I really don’t think that changes, wherever you are.”
