Festival Music
SOAP Opera
Y B S U B F F E J : O T O H P
An opera version of Peter Carey’s Bliss, set in 1980s Australia, explores the culture of greed, the paralysis of the suburbs and the pursuit of happiness. Utilising modern instruments, lighting effects and language, it’s a production that isn’t afraid to take risks, explains Carol Main 36 THE LIST 26 Aug–9 Sep 2010
B liss. What is it? Perfect happiness? And who achieves it? Maybe not as many people as think they do. Sometimes a life that seems blissful may be far from it and the search has to start again. Enter Harry Joy, the main character in Australian author Peter Carey’s 1981 novel, Bliss, which provides the basis for a new opera by Brett Dean and Amanda Holden first seen in Sydney earlier this year.
Joy – bliss by another name – feels that he has a good life. That is, until he has a heart attack on his front lawn and wakes up thinking he is in hell. His wife is having an affair, his son is a drug dealer, his daughter a prostitute who extends sexual favours to her brother, and the advertising company Joy works for is promoting products that are responsible for cancer. ‘In some ways,’ says the opera’s composer, Brett Dean, ‘the novel is autobiographical, which is not that uncommon in a first novel. Carey already had a career in advertising behind him and had moved from Sydney to live the good life in the country in rural Queensland.’
He hadn’t entirely given up the commercial world, but it was time to take stock. ‘It was the 80s,’ says Dean, ‘and “greed is good” was the culture of the time. When Harry comes back to life after his heart attack, he is in a kind of living hell and becomes completely dissatisfied with the trials and tribulations of modern living.’ At this point, he takes up with Honey Barbara, a prostitute and soulmate in the search for nirvana. ‘They are trying to discover together what it is to be good, so Bliss is both a love story and a critique on coming to terms with the world around us,’ says Dean. ‘It was the Thatcher years, but there is an aptness and timelessness to Carey’s book which makes Bliss still topical in 2010, especially as things have now come full circle with the banking crisis and environmental degradation.’ The germ of the idea for Bliss was planted by Opera Australia ten years ago and Dean worked on the score, his first opera, for three years. In adapting the story for the libretto, writer Amanda Holden has chosen to concentrate on Joy’s wife, Betty, so that the opera is not only about Harry’s striving for bliss, but her downward trajectory at the same time, producing a pull in two directions. ‘The libretto is very