A series of discordant notes marks the opening of a new and enticing Australian operatic production based on Murray Ball’s 1998 novel Eucalyptus.
It won the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Eucalyptus The Opera is set in the country in the early 1960s.
Ellen, a beautiful young woman, has led a sheltered life.
She has been carefully watched over by her obsessive father Holland, a widower who lost his wife in childbirth in Sydney.
Photos by Charlie Kinross
Holland won a small fortune predicting that the couple would have twins.
After that tragedy, which also claimed the life of Ellen’s stillborn male sibling, he bought a sprawling rural property, where he felt they would be safe.
Then he set about planting every species of eucalypt he could lay his hands on, while Ellen grew up without a mother or brother.
Now, everyone who sets eyes upon Ellen is besotted by her.
Her father makes it clear that none is good enough for his daughter, whom he doesn’t want to lose.
He devises a bizarre competition – which draws global attention – to find her match.
He determines that the man who can correctly name, on the spot, the hundreds of types of eucalypts on his property will be gifted her hand in marriage.
Ellen is naturally horrified, but he presses on.
From Holland’s almost impossible requirement emerges a front runner, a middle-aged tree inspector named Mr Cave.
He is relentless and accurate in pursuing the task at hand, but Ellen wants nothing to do with him.
She retreats into the forest, where she chances upon a stranger who has been sleeping under a tree.
An ardent storyteller, he begins to weave a series of mysterious and, at times, disturbing tales inspired by trees.
Ellen is intrigued.
Eucalyptus is an exciting and highly creative new work, in which the mood shifts as Ellen finds her voice.
In short, Holland is emasculating her and she comes to recognise that she has to forge her own path, but not before a descent into madness.
Soprano Desiree Frahn impresses, not only vocally, but with her transition of the lead from compliant to frustrated, dejected to joyous.
Baritone Simon Meadows gives depth to a father that steadfastly refuses to tear down the wall he has built around himself and his daughter.
There is an attractive vigour about Michael Petruccelli, as the stranger who mesmerises and courts Ellen.
What sets Samuel Dundas apart as Mr Cave is the rigidity that is also evident in Holland. In the former’s case, he is a compliant automaton. Dundas quickly moves into character.
Also making their mark as Holland and Ellen’s busybody neighbours, known as the Sprunt Sisters, are Natalie Jones and Dimity Shepherd. Their interplay is fabulous.
They are ably supported by a resounding chorus and the talented Orchestra Victoria, conducted by Tahu Matheson.
I greatly appreciated the distinctive sound, look and feel of Eucalyptus The Opera.
Composer Jonathan Mills and librettist Meredith Oakes have drawn upon the solitary and the imaginative.
Director Michael Gow has capitalised upon the mythical elements in the story.
The set is very much of the moment, a giant image of a eucalyptus tree broken into a series of ceiling to floor panels being a dominant feature.
Set and costume designer Simone Romanuik has excelled, aided by Trudy Dalgleish’s lighting design.
Stage left, a large video screen provides visual representations of the landscape, the family home and local watering hole, as the plot unfolds.
Black and white gives way to colour, as Ellen’s life starts to open up.
So, too, there is noteworthy light and shade in Victoria Opera and Opera Australia’s memorable production of Eucalyptus The Opera.
Two hours and 20 minutes (including interval), it is on at Palais Theatre in St Kilda until 19th October, 2024.
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