The Unruly Tourists: an opera, a composer and a departing director
Thomas de Mallet Burgess, General Director of New Zealand Opera, with composer Luke di Somma
In August, Englishman Thomas de Mallett Burgess leaves his role as General Director at New Zealand Opera to become Artistic Director at the Finnish National Opera. This month he has directed The Unruly Tourists, a new opera produced by NZ Opera in the Auckland Arts Festival, one he initiated, with an unlikely operatic plot.
Undoubtedly an “unruly tourist” himself, de Mallett Burgess has been disruptive while shaking up opera in Aotearoa. When New Zealand Opera announced the commissioning of The Unruly Tourists, with its story of a badly behaved, unrepentant group of British visitors and Kiwi reactions to their rubbish-strewing antics, it became something of a flashpoint for the company.
No-one should have been surprised. Since taking up his New Zealand role in 2018, de Mallett Burgess has been explicit about his ambition to “re-imagine opera in Aotearoa, embracing the cultural and social identities of our diverse communities”. He’s also been determined to attract new audiences and maintain NZ Opera’s viability, challenges for an art form with a long history in New Zealand of financial crises alongside artistic successes.
The very public resignation of three of NZ Opera’s board members coincided with the announcement of the new opera and, though they claimed their concerns with artistic direction were broader than one production, the impression was of a company in a decidedly operatic conflict.
Luke di Somma, composer of The Unruly Tourists, admits to ten minutes of consternation at the time. But he moved on quickly. “I thought,” he says now, “you know what? This is what change looks like. You have a clash of ideas, and someone prevails. The rest of the Board backed Thomas’s progressive agenda, and this is the direction of the company now.”
Composer Luke di Somma, conducting his new opera, The Unruly Tourists, in its premiere season in Auckland
Photo credit: Andi Crown
I talked to Melbourne-based di Somma while he was in Auckland to conduct his new opera at its premiere in the Auckland Arts Festival. That premiere had waited a year since the pandemic cancellation of the 2022 Festival, but he thought the work had benefited for the delay and enjoyed collaborating with director de Mallett Burgess in the rehearsal room. “There’s a real sense of energy. We’ve made changes – it’s shorter, we’ve punched it up a bit, ‘all killer, no filler’ has been our motto.”
Audiences here will remember di Somma’s hit show, the rock musical That Bloody Woman about Kate Sheppard, which premiered at the Christchurch Arts Festival in 2015 and, after seasons in Christchurch and Auckland, toured New Zealand, reaching 30,000 people.
For the new opera he collaborated with the musical comedy duo The Fan Brigade, Livi Reihana and Amanda Kennedy, who devised the libretto. “For me,” he says, “it was about the story and the characters and elucidating the text, while developing musically satisfying themes. It’s satirical, comedic opera - my job has been to set the lyrics in a way that the jokes land and give the audience time to laugh.”
The cast and set of The Unruly Tourists - “satirical, comedic opera”.
Photo credit: Andi Crown
The cast included ten trained opera singers and five singing actors, and the band had 11 orchestral musicians and a pianist. Is The Unruly Tourists an opera? “Yes,” says di Somma “and also music theatre. It’s performed by opera singers, composed for an opera company, has an operatic scale. And the stakes for the “unruly” family are operatic. Opera is a super-heightened language - there was no shortage of passion when these people came to New Zealand.”
De Mallet Burgess saw an operatic story in New Zealanders’ outrage towards the uncouth visitors and the ensuing media beat up. “Thomas had an outsider view,” says di Somma. “The characters are larger than life. It’s a saga, a caper, there’s a madcap vibe to their road trip, they’re something of a vaudeville travelling troupe. The characters want to sing, both public and media are vocal; it feels like a hot show.”
William Kelly (Bunnings Hat Kid) and Andrew Grainger (Paddy Murphy) - “larger than life characters”
Photo credit: Andi Crown
The reception for the opera, staged last week at the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna in Auckland, has been largely enthusiastic. Audiences have roared with laughter as the jokes have indeed “landed”. Reviewer William Green, writing for Theatreview, described it as “a fast-paced show, sparkling with action and irreverent, down-home Kiwi wit”. One senior composer said it was “huge fun, unlimited unruliness and some very moving moments”. Sam Brooks in The Spinoff had some reservations, however: “The media jumped on the family looking for a few clicks. The opera jumps on that same family, rehearses their story, dresses it up and sells tickets. This show uses the family as puppets, speaking our truth back to us, but not their own.”
I’m hoping to have an opportunity to make up my own mind; it’s possible the show, like the family in the story, will travel to other New Zealand centres.
But back to the composer of The Unruly Tourists. Di Somma comes from a music-loving Christchurch family, playing flute, piano and saxophone at school. “I was one of those kids with a rehearsal every lunchtime, concert band, orchestra, stage band, barbershop, choir - a very enthusiastic and, to be honest, probably very average musician growing up.”
It took a while for di Somma’s eclectic musical tastes and his studies to “jive” together at university. “I had a love-hate relationship with classical composition,” he says. “I hankered to write songs. For my final assignment at Canterbury University, I wrote a musical.” His lecturers possibly looked down on music theatre, but he gives them credit for being open to his desire to write “glorified show tunes.”
Honours studies at Victoria University provided important skills for his work today. “Arranging The Unruly Tourists for twelve-piece orchestra, I was really grateful for Michael Norris’s orchestration class. The musical zeitgeist wasn’t really to my taste, but the craft was incredibly useful.” First class honours led to a Fulbright Scholarship, and he moved to New York in 2008 for a two-year master’s degree in musical theatre at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
His musical tastes? “I love everything from Shostakovich to Shihad – and everything in between. I’m drawn to things that are a mash-up.” In New York he was impressed by a production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the Met. “And I’m a big fan of Sondheim, Bernstein, Kurt Weill. I work in that middle place.”
Di Somma’s Italian great grandmother sang at La Scala in Milan before moving to New Zealand with her husband in 1916. “I think it’s amazing that over a century later her great grandson has composed an opera for his national opera company.” He grins. “Of course, I think she’d probably hate The Unruly Tourists.”
Alongside main-stage productions like last year’s acclaimed Macbeth by Verdi and Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte later in 2023, NZ Opera has recently attracted new audiences with other small-scale productions from outside core repertoire, plus many commissioned works from New Zealand composers. The Strangest of Angels about Janet Frame, children’s opera RED!, Ihitai ’Avei’a - Star Navigator and Eight Songs for a Mad King have garnered more praise than outrage.
Ihitai ’Avei’a - Star Navigator by Tim Finn - NZ Opera’s productions from outside the mainstream have garnered more praise than outrage
Photo credit: Stephen A’Court
Di Somma is “gutted” de Mallet Burgess is leaving. “It took Thomas, a middle-class Englishman, to bring “New Zealand” to New Zealand Opera. The company now has a radically different culture. He’s been ambitious for both change and excellence.”
In his departure statement, de Mallet Burgess was characteristically unrepentant about his “unruly” tenure. “Leading New Zealand Opera has and continues to be a powerful journey. I am hugely proud of the many strides we have made as the national opera company for Aotearoa, and of the strong position I will be leaving this company in.”
This feature story is a modified version of the article The rebellious stage, first published in NZ Listener issue 25 March 2023.
The Unruly Tourists was produced by New Zealand Opera and Auckland Arts Festival, with creative team The Fan Brigade - Livi Reihana and Amanda Kennedy, (librettists), Luke Di Somma (composer), Thomas de Mallet Burgess (director) Tracy Grant Lord (designer) with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Takapuna 22-26 March 2023