BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
What’s the point of opera? To entertain audiences?
Of course, all music aims to entertain. But why? Because, as formalists of generations past would say, art exists for art’s sake?
For Sydney soprano Menila Moineaux, there’s more to opera than entertainment: opera “can – and should – change the world”.
What started as her frustration at politics quickly sparked a desire to launch an opera company that performed politically and socially relevant productions. And thus, The Cooperative was born.
We chat to Menila, founder and artistic director of The Cooperative, about her new Sydney arts initiative.
Hey Menila! Thanks for taking the time for this interview today. So, what is The Cooperative?
Thank you so much for interviewing me, Jessie! The Cooperative is a brand new, Sydney-based opera-company-meets-social-justice organisation. We’re a diverse collective of performers, musicians, and creatives; our company is open to all, and we especially encourage involvement from those otherwise underrepresented in opera, although we love and welcome all interest in our company.
Our aim is threefold: to create politically and socially challenging and relevant productions, to make them accessible to all, and to use opera to benefit the world around us. To do this, we stage productions of new, canonical, and rare works alike, which focus on issues pertinent to our society today.
Our performances are open to all on a pay-as-you-feel scale, thus removing the barrier of a ticket price, which deters many prospective audience members from opera in our society.
We also believe that art should quite literally benefit the world around it, and so the majority of profits from our performances go to charities connected thematically to the ideas we explore on stage.
Our name is simultaneously a terrible pun and a reflection of how we intend to function – not as a company, but as an organisation beneficial to both those within and without.
Why did you decide to start this project? Was there a particular event that triggered it, which you would feel comfortable sharing?
I have wanted to start my own opera company for as long as I’ve dreamed of a career in this field, but the exact trigger for The Cooperative’s foundation is rather unusual! I’ve always wanted to direct productions alongside singing, and had always planned to start a company eventually. Making opera accessible and relevant to a wider audience has been my goal since I realised how inaccessible this universal art form is in Australia.
However, I’d thought this would happen after I’d more-or-less finished the performance side of my career; that it would be something I’d explore later in life. But, on the evening of this year’s election, I’d just finished a performance, was appalled to tune back in to real life and see the results, and probably conflated my political rage and strong post-show feelings (it was a very emotional piece!) somewhat.
An Australian election might well be a ridiculous catalyst for an opera company’s foundation, but it really was [the catalyst]; for a few days afterwards, I felt despondent that this country had re-elected a government which had proved how little it cared for so much of our society and the world we live in. […] I t didn’t take long for me to feel the need to ‘do something’ in reaction. And for me, art is the most instinctive and the most powerful means of protest I can imagine.
So, in a way, I suppose we can thank the people of Australia and their – at least, to me – questionable political choices for The Cooperative’s existence!
The Cooperative aims to “use art to explore, confront, and challenge injustices”. How does it do that?
Art can’t tangibly change the world, but it can do so impalpably: when we enter the theatre, we enter a space of public dreaming, a collective consciousness, from which – if it’s theatre done well – it’s very difficult to emerge completely unchanged.
Opera is, to me, the ultimate artform. It combines drama and storytelling with music, the power of words and spoken language with the power of universal sound, and the unspoken language of feelings. Add in visual art, staging, and the incredible power of the human voice, and you have a wonderfully diverse, beautiful means of communication, which not only entertains us but also reaches directly into our hearts and souls.
My hope is that The Cooperative will do this, through excellent and powerful musical and dramatic performances.
What sorts of productions are made at The Cooperative?
Diverse, exciting, relevant, evocative, and necessary ones.
The Cooperative’s aim is to produce productions which ultimately explore, confront, and challenge social and political injustices; however, within this mission, our performances can be incredibly diverse – we’re open to anything which meets this criteria!
We are presenting our inaugural production, Menotti’s The Consul, in early 2020, which is an absolutely wonderful opera, and incredibly poignant today, even 70 years after its premiere.
The Consul explores our lack of humanity via the setting of a nondescript consulate from which the desperate and imperiled seek refuge, but are met only with paperwork and the assertion that ‘you’re not of our people…you’re not our concern’; sadly, a quote which echoes sentiments expressed by governments today, both in Australia and globally.
As is fitting for this piece, audiences can expect a bleak, dark, and minimalistic setting, and in keeping with the work’s strong relevance and importance today, this setting will also be contemporary.
More importantly, in The Consul and in anything The Cooperative presents, I hope audiences can expect to be confronted, challenged, enriched, and inspired to change their world a little.
How do people become a part of this project?
There are so many ways to get involved with The Cooperative!
We welcome expressions of interest from all singers, instrumentalists, performers, and creatives, and involvement in our productions is open to all. We hold auditions for singers for each project, but also encourage expressions of interest between shows […] Our website is a great place to start, and our email is open to all submissions and inquiries any time.
We are also fundraising currently to cover the many costs of bringing our first production before an audience; these include performance rights, lighting, and set. We would really love to provide at least a stipend for our artists, in recognition of all their time, passion, and commitment. So, if you’d like to be involved financially, we have just set up a page through the Australian Cultural Fund and a GoFundMe, and will likely hold some more fundraising efforts later this year.
Give us an idea of what The Cooperative has coming up!
I’m so excited about our upcoming projects! We’re presenting The Consul in February 2020, and have just finished auditioning for this show; more details will be announced soon, but we are very fortunate to have a phenomenal cast of singers and instrumentalists working with us on this project, and it should be an incredibly powerful and moving production.
After that, I have some more exciting projects in the pipeline for The Cooperative in 2020, so do stay tuned for more information!
And before you go, what do you think us professionals in the music world can do more of to necessitate social change?
Music is both a wonderful power and privilege, and we have a duty as practitioners in this field to use our craft to benefit the world around us.
Intrinsically, the art we create can explore issues pertinent to our society and challenge the status quo through themes and ideas we present. Extrinsically, and more importantly, we can make our art available and accessible to all. I’d love to see many more projects with low or no entry fees, in different and unusual spaces, in regional areas, or in some way reaching audiences usually excluded from operatic performances in Australia.
I don’t think anyone embarks upon a career in the music world without a rather high dose of passion. It’s an incredibly fulfilling but also an incredibly demanding path, and not something one would usually approach with ambivalence. However, in our quest for continual self-improvement, the amount of time we spend self-developing and self-promoting, and the hard work involved in a musical career, we can sometimes lose sight of that passion, and can also become a little self-obsessed. It’s important for us to remember that our music is ultimately only really impactful when it can get out of our heads and our practice rooms, and be shared with an audience.
Social change is similar; we can think and obsess over it theoretically as much as we like, but it does infinitely more good if we put those thoughts into practice.
I think the single most important thing we can do as music professionals, to necessitate social change, is to make and share music we’re passionate about, with anyone and everyone.
Learn more about The Cooperative on the website.
Say thanks to our writer Jessie Wang for facilitating this conversation
Thanks for supporting Jessie as she volunteers her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
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