Andrew Schultz’s opera The Children’s Bach, based on Helen Garner’s novel to a libretto by Glenn Perry, is being presented again – this time by Lyric Opera of Melbourne in August-September, 2024.
Prior to that, at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on Thursday 22 August, Helen Garner will discuss the operatic adaptation of her novel with librettist Glenn Perry, host Sian Prior, and composer Andrew Schultz. Musicians from Lyric Opera of Melbourne will also give a short performance of an excerpt from their upcoming production of the opera.
Helen Garner’s beloved 1984 novella The Children’s Bach has been described as her masterpiece. Centring on a small suburban family and the unexpected bohemian visitors who puncture their seemingly comfortable bubble, the story and prose incorporate musical references and motifs throughout — that was one of the things that first drew Andrew to the novel.
The Children’s Bach is also well-known to musicians in Australia for another reason — as the collection of piano sheet music containing short pieces by Bach and his sons anthologised by E Harold Davies (photo below). In the opera, one of the little pieces in that original collection plays both a dramatic and a musical role as, indeed, does the on-stage upright piano.
Music provides a window into the vulnerable world of domesticity that Helen Garner captures so beautifully in her novella.
The Children’s Bach opera was commissioned and premiered in Melbourne in 2008 by Chamber Made Opera, directed by Brett Kelly and Nicholas Carter, and was subsequently performed and recorded by the Canberra International Music Festival directed by Roland Peelman. The forthcoming new production of the work is presented by Lyric Opera of Melbourne, directed by Patrick Burns, from 30 August to 7 September at Theatre Works.
Here is what Theatre Works and Lyric Opera say regarding the opera’s forthcoming season
“Given the metaphorical weight music is given in Helen Garner’s work, containing many references to music, both classical and popular, it is no wonder that the novella lends itself so well to becoming an opera. The music is beautiful, powerful, complex, and haunting. It faithfully recreates the novel’s inner-suburban world. The score plays on the book’s musical references while remaining utterly original. It employs everything from jazz-inspired riffs to fugal structure to accompany the progression of romantic entanglements. Performed by seven singers, and a chamber orchestra of six players, in the words of Michael Halliwell “the opera is an evocative meditation on the messiness and complexity of human relationships…” It is a profound and masterful contemporary chamber opera that is engaging and thought-provoking.”‘
More information about The Children’s Bach in Melbourne
The Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/events/adapting-the-childrens-bach/
Lyric Opera: https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2024/the-children’s-bach
More about the opera: https://andrewschultz.net/program-note/childrens-bach-opus-74/
Reviews of the opera: https://andrewschultz.net/review/the-childrens-bach/
Helen Sullivan’s recent New Yorker article about Helen Garner: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-startling-candor-of-helen-garner