Pinchgut Opera was set up by accident. One day in early 2000, Alison Johnston, Anna Cerneaz,
Erin Helyard, Anna McDonald and Liz and Ken Nielsen were talking, over coffee, about music. This was not unusual. We often did that. Someone wondered if there was a different way of doing opera. A way of putting the music first and having the other elements -- sets, costumes, production -- support the music but not get in its way. By the second cup of coffee we had agreed to set up an opera company.
City Recital Hall Angel Place had recently opened and we thought
it would be perfect -- a fairly small space, where the audience would
feel close to the musicians, and with a lovely acoustic for voice. Antony Walker, the already very well-known conductor, came on board, so we reckoned we had all of the artistic and business skills needed to produce and sell an opera.
We had no strategic plan, just a rough budget for the first production. No government grants, just confidence that we would find enough people who wanted to help us.
It was not intended that we would concentrate on Baroque opera. We wanted to give audiences the chance to hear Australia's young singers and musicians, many of whom live overseas but are happy to return here to perform. We started with Handel's Semele in 2002 -- because we had some musicians who were very experienced in playing on period instruments in Baroque style.
That was followed by Purcell's The Fairy Queen (2003), Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (2004), Rameau's Dardanus (2005), Mozart's Idomeneo (2006), Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans (2007), Charpentier's David et Jonathas (2008), Cavalli's L'Ormindo (2009), Haydn's L'anima del filosofo (2010) and Vivaldi's Griselda (2011). All our productions have been broadcast by ABC Classic FM and all but one recorded for CD -- originally by ABC Classics but recently by our own label Pinchgut LIVE.
More operas were composed before 1750 than after. Except perhaps
for a few from Handel, very few are performed these days. We think there is a huge treasure trove of marvellous works that Australian audiences have not seen. Cavalli, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Rameau and Charpentier are almost unheard of, as opera composers,
in this country. Other companies do the more familiar operas excellently; we want to help audiences discover something new. Perhaps in the future we will take the Pinchgut approach to works from the 20th or 21st century.
Our aims have not changed much since the beginning. We've been joined along the way by Andrew Johnston, John Pitman and Genevieve Lang. We know that artistically we are working in a
very fertile area and achieving very worthwhile things. We continue to be extremely grateful to our audience who buy tickets, to all those who very generously donate both time and money, and to our sponsors who have helped us out enormously.
If you believe in what we are doing and are able to help, please get in touch. We call our supporters 'Heroes of Pinchgut' because without them we could not have got this far.
