Shower of sparks as singer serenades to the stars
Andrew Stafford |
Under an orange-coloured sky, in a postcode marked middle of nowhere, on a pop-up stage flanked by a couple of full-scale model dinosaurs, Verdi’s La traviata soars over the jump-up country and surrounding Mitchell grass plains.
Tenor Filipe Manu is performing at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum, half an hour from Winton in outback Queensland.
As darkness descends about 6.30pm, a meteor shower explodes overhead, splintering shards of light appearing between the dissipating clouds.
This extraordinary spectacle and atmosphere are why many members of the audience of about 450 huddled under blankets in the chilly night air have made the Festival of Outback Opera a bucket-list experience.
Manu, who is headlining this year’s festival, didn’t see the shower as he sang – even after the stage lights were dimmed to leave the singer, conductor Richard Mills and the University of Queensland school orchestra performing in near-darkness.
But for the 33-year-old singer – who has already ticked Covent Garden and the Royal Albert Hall off his own bucket list – Winton’s Serenade Under the Stars is right up there.
“Taking opera out of the theatre and into a beautiful setting such as this, you know, I couldn’t say no,” he tells AAP.
For Manu, it’s been the proverbial long way to the top. Born in Armidale, NSW, to Tongan parents, he was raised in Auckland and, by his own estimation, barely spoke a word of English before he was 10 years old.
Now living a peripatetic gig-to-gig life in Europe, his accent is borderless, fluent in English, Swiss-German and German, with a working understanding of Italian and French.
“The bare minimum (of opera) is that you understand what you’re singing and what others are singing,” he says.
Manu says he had “a typical Kiwi upbringing”.
There was rugby and, with three older brothers, plenty of pop and rock music – but with his family still speaking Tongan around the home, popular music was as foreign a language as opera.
One artist who impressed was Prince.
“He was such an electric performer and so multifaceted, and he could have done classical music or any other genre because there are some people that are just bestowed this gift from God,” Manu says.
Manu’s own gift revealed itself after he won a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in Auckland, where he was offered singing lessons.
His first exposure to opera, he says, was “a bit of fun, an opportunity to get off campus”.
He loved pop but “I couldn’t quite belt it out the way my friends could”. His singing teacher saw something more.
“She said, ‘Well you’ve tried The Lion King route, why don’t you try a bit of opera?’ And somehow my voice melted into it like a glove.”
Pretty soon, he was hooked. The fact that Manu had no idea what anyone on stage was singing about didn’t matter. Opera, with its gestures and mannerisms, spoke to him in a way that bypassed words.
Learning the language, instead of shattering the mystery, only deepened his appreciation.
“I love unpicking languages and how they’re able to convey different things in such beautiful ways … It’s just imagery,” he says.
His dream, he says, is to perform in the first, as-yet-unwritten Tongan opera.
“There are so many different languages in the Pacific and to have an opera that has all those different languages and tell those stories.”
Rehearsing among the dinosaurs at Winton, he says, the first thing that struck him was the stillness and silence.
“We have to try our best not to disturb anything. It’s like a beautiful, serene body of water that reflects the stars and moon.”
Singing under the stars, especially in winter, has its challenges. The air is dry and cold, especially high above the plains, and wind whistles through the microphones.
Moths and other insects attracted by the stage lights are another potential distraction.
But that’s also part of the appeal.
“It’s something you won’t experience in a theatre but that gives it its own special feeling,” Manu says.
“These performances are living. They only happen for that brief amount of time and then it’s gone.”
Andrew Stafford was a guest of Opera Queensland.
AAP