New Opera Australia director Amy Lane discusses challenges and opportunities
Without realizing it, I begin my interview with Amy Lane before sitting down to lunch at The Rocks.
On the way to the restaurant, I chat on the phone with Opera Australia’s head of communications, Janet Glover, and suggest that I ruthlessly interrogate Lane with hard-hitting questions like: pineapple on pizza? Yes or no?
After kindly letting me make a fool of myself for a while, Glover suggested I ask Lane; they were sitting in a taxi together and I was on the speaker.
Give one point to the interviewee and zero points to the harsh journalist.
Lane, who has recently been announced as Opera Australia’s director of opera, quickly makes light of my fruit-related mistakes when we finally sit down and launches into her own amusing anecdote about a pineapple featured in her 2022 opera. Siegfried.
It’s a very British moment from a woman who seems very British, belying the fact that she lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she has been artistic director of the city’s opera festival for the past seven years.
Prior to this, he played a variety of roles with companies including the Royal Ballet and Opera in Covent Garden, the English National Opera, the Polish National Opera and the Theater du Chatelet in Paris. It also has a lot Ring Cycle – the Everest of opera management – is under his belt. Not bad for only 47.
This record might be a little scary, but Lane is anything but. He is warm, passionate and genuinely open to discussing the challenges and opportunities facing opera in the 21st century.
But he now has a more pressing problem: making domestic arrangements for himself, his family and their three dogs when he arrives full-time to take up his post in September.
“I have a lot to absorb, including figuring out where to live,” he says. “This is a really nice problem to solve.”
Paddington is in the frame. Like Kings Cross and Kirribilli. He also heard good things about Glebe. But as long as his new home is within scooter commuting distance (he relied on his trusty Vespa in London and is considering something similar in Sydney) he’ll be happy.
Lane joins Opera Australia at a pivotal time. The company continues to dig itself out of various holes, some of its own making and others (not least COVID) that are far beyond its control.
Lane’s appointment is the final piece in the company’s artistic leadership puzzle, as he joins new music director Andrea Battistoni and Alex Budd, who was appointed chief executive in August.
It is hoped that this new team will provide desperately needed stability for the OA, which lost previous artistic director Jo Davies in August 2024 and chief executive Fiona Allan less than six months later.
As Lady Bracknell might have observed, losing one of the key leaders may be seen as a misfortune, but losing both in such a short space of time smacks of carelessness… or worse.
However, as I ponder the menu at the nondescript Harbor Seafood Restaurant on a classic Sydney spring day, this all feels like pretty ancient history. We have an outside table overlooking the harbor to Lane’s new World Heritage-listed workplace at Bennelong Point.
I love the Skull Island shrimp with butterflies, while Lane chooses the scallop crudo with yuzu sauce. Two salads and mineral water complete a modest but fresh and delicious lunch.
Lane grew up in North London surrounded by all kinds of music.
“Jazz, musical theatre, opera and pop… I grew up with everything and I never judged any type of music,” he says. “It’s just music. I have a 15-year-old daughter now and she listens to all kinds of music without question. It’s just music, and if you respond to that then great.”
Of all these genres that reached his young ears, it was musical theater that made an early impact on Lane.
“One of the first musicals I ever listened to The Phantom of the Opera on a tape in my father’s Volvo Estate,” he says. “I remember my mother saying, ‘I’m going to play you something.’ You’re going to jump, but it’s going to be amazing.”
“He put it on and turned it up and then these huge chords came out. I remember being terrified of my life, but it was so exciting. I’ve had an abiding love of musicals for as long as I can remember.”
But perhaps the most formative early musical experience, and the one that would determine the path his entire life would follow, occurred when Lane was just 10 years old.
He was in the ENO production of Wagner. Master Singers of Nuremberg and remembers his role in the pivotal riot scene at the end of Act 2 vividly as if it were yesterday.
“There were acrobats, tumblers and, of course, all the principals,” he says. “We were all given the same level of care and attention, and us kids were choreographed to fight right in front of the stage. And when I heard the chorus for the first time, I don’t think I could put it into words at that moment or understand what it was doing to my whole body, it was kind of an all-around adrenaline hit.”
“I knew this was what I wanted to do forever. I’ve been pursuing it ever since.”
Lane is clearly still strongly affected by the memory of that moment nearly 40 years ago. This is the passion he wants to share with the audience.
“That’s what drove me to the work I do as both an opera director and an arts administrator: creating and staging stories that provide people with a visceral experience that ripples through your entire body. And that’s what opera can do.”
Driven by his passion for music, he began studying music at the University of Bristol, which lasted only four days before switching to English (“The course was not suitable”).
During those Bristol years, he nurtured his passion for music with extracurricular projects involving percussion (“pretty good”), piano (“fair”) and flute (“terrible”).
“I was the worst one-man band,” he says.
When he realized that he could not make a living on stage, he started working as a manager after three years. An Inspector Calls In London’s West End. His career since then, including his final posting in Denmark, could almost have been designed to accumulate the skills and experience necessary for his new role in Sydney.
“I had been looking for a company for several years and was ready to run it and was waiting for the right company, the right country…” he says.
He spent much of his time in Copenhagen seeking new audiences, taking opera to places it was not usually expected to go.
“There is little point in us staging productions or any operatic events. [Copenhagen] opera house,” he says. “The opera house does this all year round and is very good at it, so that’s covered as well. “The whole point is to put the opera at eye level, to put it in places where you would never expect opera to appear on the streets, in places where people live.”
One of the most talked about productions was the 50-minute version. Conquest of Carmen, Incorporating academic research around the “eight predictable steps” of partner murder into the familiar, horrific narrative of Bizet’s opera. Then there was a production that lasted 15 hours. Ring It turned into a fun one-hour show for kids.
‘These classics can last forever through constant questioning, reflection and digging deep into the heartbeat of the story.’
Amy Lane
“It’s our job as directors to unravel these questions, to interrogate them, or to interrogate them and present them to the audience,” Lane says. “It’s not our job to come up with solutions and make things better, kinder, or calmer. We put away the work and say, ‘What does this make you think of now?’ “It’s our job to ask.”
But while Lane is clearly willing to innovate and take programming risks, he is also willing to offer Sydney audiences e.g. Ring Cycle The Opera House is adrift in its sails.
The classics are “incredibly important,” he says.
“These classics can last forever through constant questioning, reflection, and digging deep into the heartbeat of the story,” he adds.
He likens programming to offering a menu with something for everyone and a set of options that might encourage them to gamble.
“When you start to build a potential golden draft season, you ask, ‘So what are our classics? What are our underperforming gems? What are our new works? What are our family productions? What are our curiosity productions?’ you look at.
“You invite people to buy tickets to something they already know about and then say, ‘Try this, you might like it.'”
One of the major programming questions that has long surrounded The OA is whether it should produce musical theater or remain entirely operatic. This is especially relevant right now, Ghost They turn into gangsters on the stage on the water at the Miss Macquaries Pulpit and Anastasia (a co-production) seems to be a hit at Lyric. That’s enough to make any CFO’s heart glad.
This time Lane is in the large church camp, leaving the programming door wide open.
“Terminology is always interesting to me,” he says. “What makes opera opera? What makes musical theater musical theatre? And what makes it music drama? We’re all about encompassing visual, auditory experiences.”
Once we finish lunch, your opinionated reporter gets the chance to come back to that thought-provoking question about pineapple on pizza.
Lane’s answer is a resounding yes. Frankly, this is deeply disappointing.
However, despite this obvious character flaw, I get the feeling that Lane could be the person to help The OA continue to turn the corner.
