“Trees are mnemonics for more and more trees.” It isn’t a line from Murray Bail’s 1998 novel Eucalyptus – it’s from Thea Astley’s A Kindness Cup – but it easily could be. The maddening fact of trees, their ubiquity and strangeness but also their tendency to both suggest and withhold meaning, sits at the centre of the novel – and this new operatic adaptation, by composer Jonathan Mills and librettist Meredith Oakes – as if taunting us.
Certainly they taunt Ellen (Desiree Frahn), raised on a rural New South Wales property surrounded by hundreds of species of eucalypt, a result of her father’s peculiar obsession. Holland (Simon Meadows) has coped with the death of Ellen’s mother by embarking on a grand scheme to plant as many species of eucalypt as possible. And when faced with the prospect of marrying off his daughter, he concocts another scheme: only the man who can name every species will be allowed to wed her. It’s a story ostensibly set in the aftermath of the second world war, but its roots go far deeper, into the realm of fable.
In adapting the story into an opera, Mills and Oakes face a singular problem, one that seems embedded into the fabric of the work and therefore difficult to shake. As men line up, drawn either by Ellen’s acclaimed beauty or the novelty of the challenge, our heroine can do nothing but wait. She is horrified by the man who seems most likely to succeed, the plodding and priggish Mr Cave (Samuel Dundas), but she is hopelessly impotent to change her situation or choose for herself. She’s fundamentally a princess in a tower.
Her knight in shining armour has no name, referred to throughout as The Stranger (Michael Petruccelli). He wanders aimlessly on to the property as Mr Cave is busy naming her father’s trees, and bewitches Ellen with stories. Short, pithy tales of thwarted love and romantic obsession, they seem to suggest other worlds, other lives to be lived. They are crumbs The Stranger leaves so that Ellen can find her way, not home but out into the world and freedom.
One of the principle joys of Eucalyptus the opera is the sheer beauty of Mills’s music, its richness and colour; like Bail’s prose, it shimmers and pulsates with the rhythms of the bush. It opens with the word Eucalyptus sung by the Victorian Opera chorus in groups of four, drawing out its musicality and its oddness. The score has a tremulousness about it, a jagged quality that increases tension, but also moments of full lyricism and churning power that act like a frightening undertow. It’s Mills’s most luminous achievement.
Frahn is sublime, even if she can’t quite bridge the gap between Ellen’s gumption and her lack of agency. Her voice is wine-dark in her lower register, brilliant for conveying disgust or despair, and supple and sure in her higher register. She effortlessly dominates the space – so much so, we find it difficult to believe any man could be good enough for her.
As her taciturn father, Meadows is terrific even if he’s years too young for the role. Holland is a curious character in many ways, deeply dedicated to but ultimately clueless about his daughter, whom he torments in a kind of motiveless fugue. Meadows is careful not to let him become merely an obstruction – the kind of stock character you find in Shakespeare’s comedies or French farce – and even allows for moments of clarity and regret. His baritone is full and warm, inflected with the tragic inevitability of the landscape itself, as if he’d been carved from the bark of one of his beloved trees.
From the beginning, it’s patently clear which of the two suitors is going to win Ellen’s heart. Dundas is a rather endearing clod, stripped of any backstory but still able to convey a sense of decency and honour. Petruccelli makes the most of The Stranger’s vivacity and charm, with a ringing tenor and tremendous physical energy; he quickly establishes and then maintains a fierce hold over the opera’s action. It’s a pity his fables, so memorable in Bail’s novel, are slightly botched, truncated or just missing.
This semi-staged co-production by Opera Australia and Victorian Opera, directed by Michael Gow, makes the most of its simplicity, although a future production might employ the medium’s full potential to more stunning effect. A rostrum and a curtain, a few rather obvious projections and a tuft or two of native grass are all we have here (designed by Simone Romaniuk). Orchestra Victoria, under the baton of Tahu Matheson, play with real precision and care, so that the production sounds better than it looks.
There was a time, a few years after the novel’s release, when Eucalyptus looked like becoming a film starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. It would have been fascinating to see, although it may have locked in a visual representation of the work that, like Mr Cave’s naming of trees, pinned and diminished the original somehow. This opera does something far better; it opens out the novel and suggests some mysteries of its own. It doesn’t solve the text’s fundamental problem – even on publication, Bail’s novel felt oddly retrograde, its heroine suited to medieval tales of chivalry – but it does sound wondrous, like an echo out of myth.
Eucalyptus: The Opera is at Palais Theatre, St Kilda, until 19 October.
