E

...is for Emma, E-reserve and Exhaustion.

For the first time in my life I managed to book the closest thing Opera Australia has to a really cheap seat, one of the balcony box seats that can only be bought on the day of performance. The view is theoretically worse up there even than from D-reserve, but I'm not sure that's actually the case. Certainly it wasn't an issue for this production, wherein nothing very visually interesting happens and all the important bits are centre-stage.

This re-visit did not spring from my usual compulsive tendencies; I just thought it would be interesting to see how it had come on since opening night. The answer was that it hadn't. Now that's not exactly a catastrophe, because opening night was pretty good. I just hoped that maybe, once the jitters of such an important and long-anticipated opening night had calmed down, Emma's Lucia would seem a bit more like a character and less like a concert performance. No such luck. The exception, as on opening night, is the mad scene, where we finally get the sense of a personality other than Emma's own, but even then, it's more like watching Emma playing Joan playing Lucia, if you get my drift. And you can blame the John Copley production, a Joan vehicle if ever you saw one, right down to the big-shouldered frocks, to a certain extent, but not all the way. If this really is THE role of her career, and she seems to consider it as such, then I hope she has both opportunity and capacity to put a personal stamp on it.

As for her singing, there's not a lot I can add to what I've said already. She's what she is, no more or less. You can't say she's not consistent; there are things Emma can always be relied on to provide — precision, sweetness of tone (in the right parts of her voice), solid coloratura and a willingness to take the optional high note. What I suppose bothers me is that while she doesn't sound strained, she also doesn't sound as if she could go any further. Part of the thrill of Joanie's Lucia is the extraordinary vocal reserves on which she draws, the sense that this is a limitless voice. Whereas I feel always aware of Emma's limits. My feeling about Lucia is that it offers two pathways for triumph. There's the drama, and there's the vocal virtuosity. You can be extraordinary in one, or both, or switch between them, but the point is that you need to be somehow extraordinary. Emma is lovely and certainly very talented, she brings gifts to the table which perhaps no other member of the company could currently offer, and her commitment is unquestionable. At her best she can be breathtaking (cf her solos in the Mass in C minor, which left me a blubbering mess) but for me, in this role, she isn't extraordinary. So it's a good thing that I'm a minority up in my cheap seat. Down below, they went nuts for her.

Meanwhile, I have a bone or two to pick with stage management. There are some strange things happening with the curtain. Otello set the precedent, with Dennis, Cheryl and Jonathan taking bows in front of the curtain before it was raised for everyone else to run on for their solo bows. That worked well enough. In Lucia it goes haywire. First of all, Emma takes a solo bow immediately after her mad scene, before Edgardo's final aria and scene. I've no doubt that this is quite a long running Lucia tradition, but I find it jarring to say the least. I suppose in a production so unconcerned with creating dynamic, persuasive theatre, it doesn't really matter if the illusion is so totally shattered, but just the same, it makes the end of the opera even more of an anti-climax than it already is and is no doubt responsible for the number of people I spotted picking up jackets and handbags before the lights went down again. Then, when the opera really is over, the four principals (Lucia, Edgardo, Enrico and Raimondo) and then Bonynge file out in front of the curtain. They bow, and bow again and eventually disappear. The applause continues for a few seconds, then gradually fades. On opening night it had almost stopped when at last, the curtain was raised and the whole of the cast given a chance to take their bows, by which time some of the audience was already on its feet, about to leave. Last night they were too late. The applause stopped. The lights went up. And the chorus, Rosemary Gunn (Alisa), Kanen Breen (Arturo) and Graeme Macfarlane (Normanno) were never seen again. Not nice, Opera Australia!