Anne Power

The Eighth Wonder is a layering of stories…intertwin[ing] stories of the building of the Sydney Opera House and a young singer’s path to success. With the “flat” or “archetypal” character called the Architect, John’s concern is to convey or narrate an artistic vision. By contrast, a “whole” or “round” characterization is found in the young singer, Alexandra...Indeed, her wholeness completes the fragment, which is the Architect. …John confirmed that it was his intention for music associated with Alex’s vocal art to evolve from music about the shape of the building…Her story explains the building. She exemplifies its purpose.

The untold story here…concerns the original owners of the land the Opera House is built upon, Bennelong Point, where Bennelong, an Aboriginal man of the Camaraigal people of the Eora nation, lived after he had been abducted from the area around Manly by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788… While there is no reference in the opera to this history…there is reference to Earth and Sky at the opening of the opera. Aboriginal people were Australia’s first astronomers [and] the Dreaming stories associated with the constellations are used to explain Aboriginal laws…In Aboriginal Dreaming, Father Sky and Mother Earth created the world and all the plants and animals that inhabit it…The Prologue is concerned with a vision, in which Earth and Sky personified proclaim that the spirit of man is torn between them, searching for a space to inhabit. Earth and Sky return as commenters on the action in subsequent scenes and lead the chorus in the finale…

While the majority of scenes follow chronologically, contained in an urban naturalism, the second scene breaks that convention. An Aztec ceremony, happening five hundred years earlier in Mexico, opens the scene, with a sacrificial victim giving his strength to the gods. In the scene, the continuation of the ceremony merges with the year 1956 and introduces the Architect. As he studies Aztec structures, he is powerfully affected by the image of the Aztec people ascending to the clouds…

The Aztec scene is a pivotal one in the opera, providing the framework for the Architect’s design and for Alex’s vocal expression. John describes it as the richest source of musical themes for the whole work…The idea of “ascending to the clouds” takes musical shape in rising dotted triadic figures [and] becomes a metaphor for the architect’s future, as the High Priest proclaims the Aztec belief that the spirit flies out toward the sky as an offering to the visitor god, Quetzalcoatl. Attention to the act of singing prepares the audience for the introduction of Alex’s character, as the chorus state the purpose of the sacrifice is so that “dreamers on earth can sing one more song” …

The body at the centre of the experience of The Eighth Wonder is Alex. Her moment of becoming potentially represents this for the audience who discover the story of the creation of the building through her embodied connection to the place.

The most evocative writing in this opera is for [this] character…she represents performing energy, and, through her character, memories of the period of construction of the Opera House are coloured with positive qualities of enthusiasm, humour, and pride, mixed with some regret…[T]he music of Alex is expressive of curves and soaring natural shapes [which]…defines the design approach of the building: functional strength and power transformed in the beauty of the shelled roof. Feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray writes that “everything should be rethought in terms of volute, helix, spiral, curl, turn, revolution” and that the properties of such shapes disconcert attempts to view them as static. The character of Alex, without written text and from the music alone, can be read as having properties of these shapes mapped on to her identity. These properties include a resistance to being seen as “static” and a capacity for transformative power and strength. It is also noteworthy that motifs which are introduced by other characters, and which are shaped in curves, are often developed in Alex’s music. From her first appearance in Scene 3, many of the musical motifs that are developed in her part take to completion motifs established in the Aztec scene.

The first scenes of Alex musically establish some of her attributes: her determination, her fear of being submerged, her awareness of her special gift, her dream of success, and her confidence released by the design image. The first impression of Alex, in her music and her gestures, is of a young singer on a journey of discovery. Light tone colours of vibraphone and violin surround her with sound that has a quality of enchantment. Alex is aware of the quality of her voice, and her fear is of being “buried alive” (Example 7.3)before she can “climb the steps” and set her will free.[The] “buried alive” motif recurs at significant moments, such as when Alex chooses marriage and family over her career plans, and when the Premier fears that his project will be ambushed if it is delayed.

In Scene 4, …the winning design…is the catalyst for her, and her spontaneous response “There’s a change in the air” signals the release of her will…” The dream awakens” develops in rhapsodic lines. It explores rising curves which derive from the style of melodies in scene 2 at the Architect’s moment of inspiration; but Alex’s aria also extends them vivaciously, for example at the melisma on “glory”( Example 7.4) Over the top of the “buried alive” motif she claims the road as “mine to follow”. Dotted rhythms retranslate the architect’s idea of the climbing Aztec people into the energy of “bringing alive the dream within me” as soaring lines of the final bars project the image of the voice reaching to the stars…It also resonates with Irigaray’s idea of arcs and curves having properties of transformative power and strength.

The next scenes in which Alex appears alternate public and personal events. On the one hand, there are stages in completion of the Opera House; on the other, there are Stephen’s career plans, which conflict with Alex’s. As Alex promises to stay in Australia and marry Stephen, the “buried alive” motif emerges in orchestral accompaniment figures.

At a family barbecue with her father, Alex reveals something of her aspiration, the realization of which has been delayed by marriage and family. The two singers who portray Earth and Sky reappear in this scene as Alex’s aunts. {Significantly in Aboriginal culture, the aunties are wise women who are guardians of respect and rules of behaviour}. When her father sings “You could’a’been a star” his music echoes the motif of the rising steps and, in the orchestral accompaniment, the motif of the awakening dream is heard. He expresses regrets that Alex has not put into words. As they duet, Alex sings of her “other child”, her voice (Example 7.5) …

While the end of Act1 celebrates a stage in the completion of the artistic vision in the external realization of the building, the second act follows the successful arc of Alex’s artistic ambitions and the decline of those of the Architect. Alex’s aria in the opening of Act 2 describes Sydney cove as a “port of dreams”. This aria focuses attention on place and its importance to the initial “framings” of dispossession of Sydney tribes. Their essence and their place change Sydney’s history and the historical sign of Bennelong Point, the “place” that has become the Sydney Opera House. While the aria draws attention to Alex as a singer, it allows the composer to focus upon the act of singing, through phrasing, exploration of register, and opportunities for expressive contrasts. It functions as the entertainment on the royal yacht and, at the same time, it reveals the development of the singer, the journey that has been travelled since the singing lesson in Act 1. It looks back to previous moments in the opera and looks forward to the opera-within-an-opera in the final scene.

The aria also represents the composer’s acknowledgement of other musical styles in Euro- Australian composition. Its opening bars are a conscious tribute to the style of Malcolm Williamson, with echoes of his studies and work in England. With relevance to Australian music of the 1960’s, the second part of Alex’s aria then evokes Peter Sculthorpe’s engagement with Indonesian gamelan music by using using a Balinese scale that removes the tonal centre and creates a moment of stasis, while the text reflects on the timelessness of the harbour.

In its entirety, the aria musically establishes that Alex’s identity as an opera singer is dormant. The text has the harbour “watch[ing] a city grow and tread[ing[ time”. Marking time was also a focus of the Architect’s first solo. When the aria closes, celebrating the harbour’s waking, it signals a second catalyst for Alex deriving from the Architect’s encouragement.

Before the resolution of the final scene, there are a series of arguments and crises. In the argument between Alex and Stephen, his taunt, that she is a true prima donna, only strengthens her determination to claim that status. While Alex tries to decide on her future direction, orchestral commentary is made through the return of motifs of the awakening dream, “buried alive”, and “another logic”; the last motif, with the design of the building, leads to the final meeting of the Architect and Alex. Both stand on the platform-metaphorically close to the gods-and Alex acknowledges that the vision of the building has possessed her and promised fulfillment and purpose. Similarities in their dilemmas are shared, and their duet celebrates the achievement of the artist in the phrase “we’re halfway there” …

Alex’s…final verdict on the building, in the penultimate scene, sees it as “a wonder it was ever finished, a wonder [they] couldn’t see what it would’ve been if [they] trusted the Architect.” The final scene is a revelation of the identity of Alex as acclaimed singer and an intensification of the Aztec scene, celebrating an inspiration becoming reality. Into this scene, prominence is given once more to Earth and Sky… bringing the natural world into focus once more. [David} Tacey writes of the deep world of the psyche, which is “nature” inside of us, as being directly influenced by the forces of “nature” outside of us; and he argues {in Edge of the Sacred, Harper Collins, 1995} that, in Australia, “where land and aboriginality are fused, white Australians are slowly aboriginalized in their unconscious”… While this opera does not overtly refer to the immediacy of local aboriginal history or to Aboriginal spirituality, it implicates Aboriginality in creative expressions of wonder…and a strong emphasis on the cosmology of Earth and Sky…

Alex’s presence in the final scene signifies a continuum with the energy to be “freed from the commonplace” that was the catalyst for the architect’s design in which she performs…[H]er music is the completion of the motifs and phrase shapes that began in the scene of his inspiration.

From The Eighth Wonder: Explorations of Place and Voice (London, Ashgate,2011)

Anne Power is Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney in the School of Education. Her musicological expertise is in the field of contemporary Australian Opera. She is also deputy Chair of the NSW Chapter of Australian Society for Music Education and is a representative to the Australian National Council of Orff Schulwerk.