'orb.IT' may be a modern opera about technology and the future, but its composer is no techno freak
Estelle Pizer is in Shed Two at Victoria Dock. In a few minutes, she will hear her score for the modern opera orb.IT being performed for the first time. She's not too sure what to expect.
This venue is nothing like the quiet recital rooms of Melba Hall where Pizer studies composition. And the reverberating spaces of this overblown tin shack pose a very different kind of acoustic challenge to the beery pub venues in which she cut her musical teeth playing thrash guitar.
"You could park a couple of airplanes in here," Pizer shouts into a mobile phone as she runs through the space. Off in the distance, clusters of people are busy installing the sets for orb.IT, a show designed by students from St Martin's Youth Arts Centre, and set to debut as part of the Melbourne Festival.
It's an ambitious work. Pizer's brief was to reinvent opera for the 21st century and make it accessible to youth. Appropriately enough, the orchestra has not been invited. "It was clear when we first saw the space that most of the music would be pre-recorded; live instrumentation just wouldn't' work," says Pizer. "But I've written something very lush, and I'm curious to see how that contrasts against the harshness of the tin."
The 28 performers, aged between 15 and 25, who created this opera have no formal opera training. But they do have ideas as big as the venue. With director Brett Adam, they workshopped the question "what does the future hold for humanity?"
Never mind that this question has consumed the entire lives of philosophers throughout the ages, this fearless crew devoted a solid five months to the task. What they came up with was an ambitious work about information technology and globalisation. They chose opera because they wanted to use the emotion of the artform to offset the perceived sterility of technology.
Pizer, a former primary school teacher and business trainer, used to play guitar in what she calls "terrible girl thrash bands" in Melbourne and Sydney, the kind that form and collapse almost as fast as their songs; the kind that never seem to land a recording contract. "I had this mistaken impression of myself," she says. "I wanted to be Suzi Quatro, but my music is really much softer, very tender and lush."
She left rock'n'roll behind five years ago when a near-fatal asthma attack saw her in intensive care, fading in and out of Ventolin-fuelled visions.
"I had a dream where all I could see was Melba Hall and my big black piano," she says.
"When I recovered, I rang the conservatorium, and flew down to see (teacher and composer) Brenton Broadstock. He said 'why don't you write something?, and I did, and that's when it all happened."
Since then, Pizer has been studying composition under Broadstock at Melbourne University, and working on a range of commissions. She's written for string quartets, for cello and flute. She's composed film scores and ballets.
In 1997, she wrote her first one-act opera, The Blackened Pearl, based on her great-aunt's truly operatic story of post-war love and loss. This was directed by Brett Adam, who has now commissioned her for orb.IT.
At 36, Pizer is a generation older than the performers, and she has a slightly different response to those bit hairy questions of life, the future and everything.
"A lot of the script is really serious, and there's all this pessimism," she says. "I wanted the music to add a little hope and humor."
Although there will be rock elements in the performance, you wouldn't call it a rock opera. It begins with what Pizer calls "a wordless prayer", a solo voice, then a trio, then sad strings and French Horn.
Then Pizer brings in a "wild piece, hard loud and fast" that turns into a thrash song called Product Slut. It's a moment straight from her rock'n'roll youth.
There are also doo-wop girls, tango, acid jazz, classical music and a Latin chant - as in ancient Roman rather than Ricky Martin.
Pizer admits she doesn't have the technical mastery and music-theory background that some composition students do, and she still doesn't know many classical composers. "Before I did this course, I didn't know there were modern composers."
However, she's learned to use the sketchings of earlier pop songs to develop here classical pieces, and a pop influence remains in her work. "I write music with melody, very accessible," she says. "I need a human feel."
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