A dingo, a new opera and one 'gutsy dame'

By KATRINA LOBLEY

It must have been strange for Lindy Chamberlain, as she sat in the dark of the Sydney Opera House, to watch the extraordinary tragedies of her life play out as entertainment.

The opera Lindy had its world premiere in Sydney just over a week ago but a few days before, Lindy Chamberlain and a coterie of 80 friends, family and supporters were ushered into a dress rehearsal.

The experience could not have been any more surreal than the high dramas that have filled Chamberlain's life since the day at Uluru in 1980 when she cried that a dingo had taken her baby, 9-week-old Azaria.

Whakatane-born Chamberlain became the focus of unprecedented hysteria in Australia in the weeks that followed Azaria's disappearance. The hate mail sent to her forms part of the huge Chamberlain archive at the National Library in Canberra. Chamberlain's publicly impassive demeanour didn't help - she quickly became reviled as the most evil woman in the nation.

In 1982, Chamberlain was convicted and jailed for the murder of Azaria and she spent three years in a Darwin jail before she was released and eventually cleared of any involvement in her daughter's death. Lindy and Michael Chamberlain's marriage, however, didn't survive. It broke down while she toured New Zealand in 1990 promoting her autobiography, Through My Eyes.

Michael Chamberlain was among the guests at Lindy's opening night, along with a key witness to events at Uluru, fellow camper Sally Lowe. Publicity-shy Lindy Chamberlain attended one of last week's three performances.

Yet even after she attended the rehearsal, no one seemed quite sure what she thought. Soprano Joanna Cole, who plays the title role, spent an hour with Lindy, her second husband Rick Creighton and two of her children after they came to her dressing room post-rehearsal.

"I was a bit nervous of her reaction and whether she would want to see me after seeing me on stage," said Cole. "It was quite good because she gave me some tips on body language - you know, how she sat in court.

"There are some things you can't do because it takes away from the action of the other singers on stage [but there were] little subtle things we changed, such as how she sat when she was pregnant, with her hands on top of her stomach, not both sides.

"I wasn't going to embarrass her with all the questions of, you know, 'Did you like it?' or 'Did you do this or do that?' That she gave her time to even bother to come and meet me was enough for me, because I just wanted to meet her, the woman, to put the icing on the cake. That she didn't criticise anything was a good indication."

In fact, it was at Chamberlain's insistence some time ago that Cole now sings, "The dingo has taken Azaria." The line (adapted from Chamberlain's famous words, "The dingo's got my baby") was cut entirely at one point because it was deemed inappropriate.

Yet on stage, from the moment Lindy spies the animal stealing away from the family tent - "A dingo, golden" - tension builds from knowing the dramatic cry that is to come. It's impossible to imagine Lindy without it.

That Lindy has made it to the stage at all seems a miracle. There have been times when composer Moya Henderson wondered if she would ever see it performed.

It was a decade ago that she, with poet Judith Rodriguez, finished writing the libretto. As it turned out, that was the easy part.

What followed was a litany of difficulties - trouble finding a director, the conductor (briefly) walking, and more creative friction than a rehearsal room could contain.

Henderson's original vision sprawled over 2 1/2 hours; the public sees a 90-minute opera with no interval. Imagine Henderson's anguish. An impasse ensued. Things became so bad an ultimatum was issued to bring Henderson back to the creative table.

Still, she remained philosophical. "I look on it as a particular approach, a particular production, an important first production," she said. "But there are other things that can happen in subsequent productions. Some bits will be cut and other bits brought back in."

Maybe those singing dingoes she envisaged - three furry beasts named Ding, Dong and Belle - will one day be part of another Lindy.

As it stands, the beastly behaviour in Lindy is divided between the media, known as the "Media Mongrels", and Lindy's nemesis and the villain of the piece, the prosecuting counsel (sung by Barry Ryan).

"I think it probably is a confronting work on all sorts of different levels," said Henderson. "The way it's written, this blending of different styles of music - cabaret style with a more traditional operatic style - and the mixing of pantomime and farce with the more conventional."

Certainly the 1980s camp-side fashions are one of the lighter elements - who remembers the last time anyone strolled about an operatic stage in a tracksuit top, short shorts, pulled-up socks and joggers, as tenor David Hobson (Michael Chamberlain) does?

But after a decade of living with Lindy Chamberlain in her head, what does Henderson think of her real-life heroine?

"I think she's an amazing woman. The way everything happened [at rehearsal] I was in bits, not Lindy Chamberlain. I was completely overcome with her being here - and there she was in the midst of it all, surviving. Still, still surviving. She's one gutsy dame."