Pearl jam

By LINDA HERRICK arts editor

The plot of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers is a hoary old operatic cliche: the lovers' triangle. Dressed up in a hothouse of exoticism - old Ceylon, ancient temples, dancing villagers, a scary high priest, execution by pyre - The Pearl Fishers' momentum is predicated on the friendship between fisherman Nadir and the village's elected chief, a Frenchman called Zurga.

But they're in a jam: Nadir and Zurga's loyalty to each other is tested by their mutual yearning for a mysterious woman, Leila, who is renounced by both to maintain the status quo of male mateship. Predictably, promises are broken and woe betides all as Nadir and Leila - at this stage a supposedly virginal priestess - succumb to their passion, and Zurga falls into the abysm of jealousy.

But exactly why is Zurga so steamed up? Is it because he has lost Leila - or Nadir? Opera Australia's interpretation of The Pearl Fishers, originally directed by Ann-Margret Pettersen of the Royal Swedish Opera and staged here by NBR New Zealand Opera, is certainly a love triangle.

But, as a reviewer of the Brisbane season put it, "It soon becomes clear that the baritone, Zurga, who traditionally vies with the tenor, Nadir, in loving the soprano, Leila, is in this production rather more interested in the tenor than the soprano."

"That's right, that's right," says Opera Australia resident director Luise Napier, who worked on the original Sydney production with Pettersen and was The Pearl Fishers' rehearsal director with the Perth and Brisbane stagings as well as the New Zealand season in Wellington and Auckland.

"Ann-Margret found an original production score and the libretto had dialogue in which the relationship was much more explained. She felt the point was that they had been childhood friends, that maybe they had had a relationship from that point of view, and then Nadir fell in love with Leila and withdrew from Zurga. The point was that Zurga lost Nadir, not Leila.

"I don't know quite where she found this information, but she didn't just pull it out of the air. She feels it's backed up by musical reprises a lot, the return throughout of the big duet ["Au fond du temple saint"] the two men have. It's definitely a valid look at it."

But this is opera, and plot - regardless of variation, interpretation and hints of possible gayness - is ultimately subservient to the stuff that really counts: the music and the performances. In fact, Bizet's librettists, Eugene Cormon and Michel Carre, admitted they had badly let down the 24-year-old composer when he was commissioned to create an opera for the Theatre-Lyrique in Paris in 1863. Le Figaro newspaper complained it had "no fishermen in the text and no pearls in the music", and the production closed after 18 performances. Its lasting popularity has proven the "no pearls" comment nonsense, but many commentators still hold it's a work which succeeds only if the audience can ignore the plot.

Napier agrees, sort of. "The original librettists eventually apologised to Bizet, saying that if they'd realised he was so talented they would have taken more care. But for this production, Ann-Margret has made a few cuts and straightened up the story" - "straight" might not be the right word here - "so the story is fine. It is easy to follow, it's quite sensible and it looks spectacular."

In this production, The Pearl Fishers opens with the older Zurga, back in Paris and looking back at his life in Ceylon. It is a brief, non-singing part, played in the Auckland season by actors' agent Robert Bruce.

"The first vision we have is of an old Zurga, a sad and lonely old man," says Napier. "He's been out for a night at the Paris Opera and he goes home, pours himself a drink and starts to remember. On comes the young Zurga and we realise what we're seeing is through the old man's eyes, and then we are in the present in Ceylon."

The opera was initially placed in Mexico, a country being used in the 1860s by French ruler Napoleon III and thousands of troops to try to create a "Latin league" in the Mediterranean and the New World. A decision to move the action to Ceylon may have been expedient in the diplomatic sense, but it is a fantasised, well-dressed Ceylon, as seen through the eyes of Westerners.

"That was what the audience was after at the time it was written," says Napier. "People were fascinated by these exotic places; they also thought people like natives in those far-off places would do things the Europeans wouldn't."

In some productions, Zurga is represented as a "native" fisherman, not a European. In some, Zurga is killed by the villagers at the end because he has mercy on Nadir and Leila; in this production, he lives to tell his tale of true love lost.

In the right hands, The Pearl Fishers' music can mesmerise and Opera Australia's production has had raves over its exquisite set design by John Conklin and costume design by Clare Mitchell. All British singers Mark Holland and John Daszak, as Zurga and Nadir, need to do is convince us of the perils of loving a woman (Deborah Wai Kapohe). It's a triangle all right - a pink triangle.

* The Pearl Fishers, with the Auckland Philharmonia, Aotea Centre, October 12, 16, 18, 20, 23.