On Sunday (appropriate, but accidental) P, V and I trotted off the the Opera House to see Handel's Messiah performed by the Sydney Philharmonic. I didn't really know that much about it beyond the 'Hallelujah' bits but the prospect of hearing all those voices in a purpose built concert hall was too much to resist.
I had never actually stepped inside the Opera House before, though I stare at it every day. I expected it to be a bit more velvety and chintzy and generally trashy inside, but that's probably just because you've had to battle through the tat of Circular Quay to get there. I didn't expect all that starkness and concrete and clean lines. On the inside, at least of the bit we were in, it was smaller, as well. Given the huge clean grandeur of the outside, it kind of seemed oddly cramped, like a reverse tardis. In a nice, industrial chic kinda way. The toilets sported plywood doors with a very groovy curve and steeply sloping ribbed concrete cielings.
I realised as soon as they began that I should reminded myself to prepare for all that christian praise palaver. Not a difficult thing to remember you would have thought, what with being called 'The Messiah' an' all, but that slipped my mind in all the excitement of the prospect of a 300-400 strong choir. Not least because of the subject matter, I had never listened to the whole thing before, so I was also a bit unprepared for the frequency and length of the solos.
I may be the only person on the planet that didn't know this, there are a
lot of them, and a great many of them comprise of saying the same phrase over and over again with a different emphasis. I had understood that 'He was despis-ed' after the first or so ten repetitions and was ready to move on. Or just listen to the orchestra.
The tenor seemed to be doing a fine job, but the haughty tilt of his chin as he gazed at the audience like some low-rent prophet while he waited to be needed again was really getting on my nerves. The soprano was kind of like an upper middle-class kindy teacher who had finished her training before she realised she disliked small children. She was a little like an unfriendly version of Juanita from Playschool, only not as saucy. The bass, my favourite, reminded me of my brother's school friend Gareth, who none of us have set eyes on for decades. I couldn't help thinking that these reflections were not quite the kind of transcendent contemplation that Handel and those who commissioned him had quite intended to elicit. Mostly, I just wanted them all to shut up and let the choir have a go.
All of that was secondary to the real problem, though, which was a distracting Powerpoint - sorry,
multimedia - presentation that was flashing above us all, presenting a bizarre gum-leaf and drenched sheep interpretation of the whole passion play. Opening with the dog on the tuckerbox. I kid you not. At first I though it was going to be some frightfully clever po-mo pastiche of christmas kitch, but when the indigenous theme was introduced my ability to go cheerfully with the flow pretty soon evaporated.
I cannot even begin to tell you the mish-mash of stuff that went on, but there seemed to me to be a number of images that were open to a very limited and rather unpleasant interpretation. For example, presenting a pair of young indigenous men with the 'lost' who apparently needed to be saved from darkness by a little glowing jesus appearing above his head? I would have thought that a long term view of the 40,000-odd thousand years of Australian residency would suggest that they were doing just fine on a spiritual level thousands of years before anyone had even dreamt up the christian idea of god, and given the various events that have occurred to communities and families since (with church involvement for ill as well as for good), the claim is dubious at best.
Later, the same young indigenous man superimposed over a crucified christ with barbed wire silhouettes across him while everyone sang. "And with his stripes we are healed". I'm sorry? We are now claiming that the suffering imposed on the indigenous community was a
necessary part of "our" salvation? While I have no problem at all in acknowledging that the various assaults - both deliberate and accidental - inflicted on indigenous people in this country over the last few centuries clearly qualify as "sins", claiming that the whole sorry mess has any redemptive value is another thing altogether. Its pretty hard to see the idea of equating the story of Australian colonialism with the story of a man/god put on earth
in order to redeem us as anything other than cruel and offensive.
Everyone stood up when they got to the 'Hallelujah' bit.
We move on to "And we like sheep", and lo and behold, we have a bunch of sheep being mustered for a good drenching by the look of it. A little literal, perhaps, but I see the point. Then a picture of a crowd shot. All white faces. When I was in South Africa recently I was struck by how every white south african I spoke to (some of whom were nuns, by the way) unfailingly spoke about their black compatriots as 'them'. "
They like to do this... "T
hey have a strong tradition of...". Hundreds of nations and family groups and different cultural traditions reduced to a single Other. This slide-show didn't seem much different. 'We' as Australia, 'they' as....what? Not 'Australia'? A
symbol?
Maybe I just missed the point, and it was some clever-clever pastiche poking fun at exactly the types of things I complain about above, and I was just too obtuse to get it. But when the final group of shots appear incorporating a whole lot of national flags being waved, its hard to think positively about the interpretation.
I know that I've been away a while, but I have been fondly imagining that the fact that both our Prime Minister and our Opposition Leader are avowed church-goers of the christian variety was a pure co-incidence. Now I'm not so sure.
As for the four hundred people singing at the top of their voices, fucking fantastic.
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Occupied City by David Peace
