When Alexander Briger AO gestures to the ANAM Orchestra for their well-deserved applause at Katya Kabanova’s curtain calls this October, it will bring to a close nearly two years of work between Victorian Opera (VO) and the Australian National Academy of Music on this one project. Opera is a spectacle and a marvel for all involved, and a mountain of administration for those behind the scenes.
The wheel starts rolling well before I get brought into the project, with a tandem dance between ANAM and VO administrators and artistic directors each trying to find the best ways to collaborate. For each project that does make it to the stage, there are countless others that ANAM’s artistic director Paavali Jumppanen and director of the training program and operations, Lucy Ericson, take hours of meetings and calls, budgeting and schedule drafting, just to fall over on any number of impasses. But knowing how frequently orchestral musicians perform operatic repertoire, and the number of opportunities in opera house orchestras, the artistic team at ANAM were glad to have VO equally on board for ANAM Musicians to once again train in an opera environment, another production in a long and valued partnership between the two organisations.
The collaboration is agreed to in principle, contracts are signed, and then comes the email: “Alex, we’re doing an opera!” A sentence that could strike fear into the hearts of music librarians. Before their eyes, weeks of workflow swallowed. Piles of cash set aflame. Pencils worn down to stubs. And the scariest thing: working with singers! (Full disclosure: as someone whose degree is in vocal performance, I’m the only one at ANAM allowed to make that joke.)
This time, sourcing the score materials was the responsibility of Victorian Opera. Their incredible Head of Music, Phoebe Briggs, organised everything with Universal Edition in Vienna: grand rights and hire of orchestral and vocal materials, to be couriered halfway across the world.
Hiring music is a frequent occurrence at ANAM, and I’m regularly sending and receiving packages of print materials from Sydney, London, Milan and Vienna. Works in copyright can be ‘hire-only’, and certain editions of out-of-copyright works can also have preferred editions where the performance materials are hire-only. It also makes sense for us not to be buying things that may play at most once a decade in Australia. Whilst fees are usually charged according to the duration of the piece and number of instruments (and thus parts); opera, ballet and other works performed in dramatic contexts have their own licensing process which are called ‘grand rights’, a significant outlay for opera houses across the world. But copyright law is an important mechanism to compensate composers, librettists, typesetters, printers, couriers and publishing administration – anybody involved in creating a print score before it gets to a performance librarian.
Prior to the materials’ arrival in Melbourne, my worries about the opera were minimal. I’d spent some time poring through a digital copy of the full score to double check the instrumentation scene-by-scene so that a rehearsal schedule could be made, and to make sure ANAM rostered all 58 musicians correctly – nearly all current ANAM Musicians.
The materials arrived in mid-June. The weight of a Janáček opera turns out to be 30kg of print materials, which caught the attention of most of the ANAM office when the boxes arrived. 30 string parts, 30 wind/brass/percussion/harp parts, and a mighty A3 bound full score. Just between 5 string parts, all the other instruments, and the A3 bound score, that’s over 1,800 pages. Since ANAM Musicians primarily work on iPads, you can figure out how I came to know that number.
The performance materials that arrived in Melbourne weren’t just any printing – they were clearly marked as the ‘Charles Mackerras Set’, each score heavily marked up, with blanked out passages, new pages inserted, and little greetings from past performers, signed from the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, the Met and more over fifty years of performances, most of these under the baton of the late Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras. Fifty years of performances takes its toll on a part, and these storied pages were yellowed, tattered and kept alive by copious tape and sheer will.
What’s fascinating about preparing a work as unique as Katya Kabanova is that there’s generally one way it’s performed by the orchestra – and that’s a family affair. The musical world is indebted to Mackerras’s work codifying the performance versions of Janáček’s operas, championing them and ensuring their place in the repertory of opera houses globally. The Janáček tradition has been passed down from Mackerras to his nephew, Alexander Briger. He and I have bounced emails around the globe as we’ve assigned the many intricate string splits and ensured his uncle’s work interpreting the piece shines through.
By the time this article is published, no unforeseen chaos withstanding (which, with working in the arts, should never be discounted), my job will largely be complete, and parts will be in the hands of our musicians, diligently familiarising themselves with the lush orchestral language of Janáček and the peculiar conventions of opera scoring. At the end of the day, a librarian’s job is to make sure any rehearsal questions are pre-empted and answered before they get to the rehearsal room. When Maestro Briger takes the podium this October, the work (and the brilliance) will be all that of the musicians.
Kátya Kabanová
14 and 15 October 7.30pm
Leoš JANÁČEK Kátya Kabanová
Based on The Storm by Alexander OSTROVSKY
Alexander Briger AO Conductor
Heather Fairburn Director
Savanna Wegman Set And Costume Designer
Niklas Pajanti Lighting Designer
Robert Brown Video Designer
Ben Sheen Assistant Director
Alexander Lewis Boris Grigorjevič
Antoinette Halloran Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanová (Kabanicha)
Michael Petruccelli Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov
Desiree Frahn Katya (Katerina)
Douglas Kelly Váňa Kudrjaš
Emily Edmonds Varvara
Adrian Tamburini Dikoj
ANAM Orchestra
Venue Palais Theatre
Tickets from $39
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This article was first published in volumne 57 of Music Makers.
Words by Alex Owens, ANAM Music Librarian, Robert Salzer Foundation Library