“Each day there are emails, auditions, discussion of the next season, how much it will cost, what can we afford, what can’t we afford, who are the singers, the conductors, the designers, the directors, who’s even available, or maybe I’ll go to one of the performances we do in schools – since we performed for 70,000 kids last year,” he reveals. “Or there might be a musical that’s in one of the other capital cities so I may need to fly there and make sure all is going well. I’m usually working around twenty hours a day.”Both Napoleon and Winston Churchill were rumoured to operate on just four hours sleep a night, so Terracini is in fine historical company.
La Bohème has long been an enduring favourite for both opera connoisseurs and casual listeners alike. While it’s inclusion in the Opera Australia oeuvre has become almost synonymous with its staging at Opera House, the upcoming season at the State Theatre will spare no excess – and indeed, excess is key; this is nothing if not a particularly decadent production, nudity and all. “It’s a gorgeous Bohème, but when certain [patrons] see it, it’s very much, ‘Oh dear! I brought my grandchild to this! Someone cover their eyes,” he laughs. He is very conscious, though, of not trying to simply replicate the success of Sydney.
“The culture of each city and for that matter, each town in Australia is different. If you think about Perth compared to Melbourne – where you’re playing to audiences living different cultures – then the sort of production you present to them affects them differently. I often think about that. In Bohème, I don’t necessarily make it radically different, but subtly so. For instance in Melbourne this year, we’ve got two fantastic singers who differ from Sydney, one of which is Lianna Haroutounian who just sung at the Met with Placido Domingo and was the star of the show, and she’s coming to sing Mimi. There’s also the time of year. The sort of operas you do in winter you might not do in summer, since the expectations from what they’ve been doing during the day – whether they’ve been down at the beach or inside from the rain – are brought into the theatre very differently. Usually in the winter audiences want to see something more serious, while the summer they just want to have a fun time and enjoy themselves.”
Having seen this production multiple times, and finding no two productions the same, it is safe to assume the Melbourne season will prove just as seductive. Terracini and his crew, however, have no intention of simply sitting back and keeping their fingers crossed.
“We sold more tickets than any other opera company in the world last year, over 650,000. We’re in very serious planning for 2018, but we’re also already looking all the way up to 2020 at the moment. Now we’re getting some of the front line singers and conductors to play, and audiences are really responding to them. They may not know them, may not have heard of them, but once they come to the show and see for themselves, they’ll always want to come back.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
