Have you ever wondered how an opera gets made? Which comes first – the words or the music? What inspires the writer? Opera Australia Principal Soprano Jane Ede talks to SoundsLikeSydney about an opera she is writing based on award-winning author Trent Dalton’s novel ‘All our Shimmering Skies.’
In a small rehearsal studio at Opera Australia’s headquarters in Surry Hills, a small troupe of soloists and chorus, conductor and repetiteur, gathered last September for an exciting reveal.
It was the first that the world heard of an opera in the making. The intimate audience comprised a coterie of family, supporters and OA staff.
Jane Ede, a significant presence on the opera stage has turned her talent to composing an opera based on Trent Dalton’s second novel All Our Shimmering Skies, a two-act piece, planned for the boards in just over a year.
The creation of art, transforming intangible ideas from the mind into tangible experiences, is a mystifying and miraculous process. Whether it is a painting, a book or a performance, the arts define us humans, elevate our being and record our culture.
Transforming one art form into another is yet another intriguing process. The cross-fertilisation from one modality to another, throws open exciting new possibilities and brings new fans. So it is with books that are brought to life on the stage as plays, musicals and operas.
Opera starts with a story. In fact, the libretto of Jacopo Peri’s Dafne, from 1597, widely regarded to be the first opera, was adapted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Since then, operas based on novels run into the 100s. There’s the ever-popular Carmen, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Brett Dean’s Bliss from Peter Carey’s novel, numerous operas based on the plays of Shakespeare, Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, Britten’s Death in Venice and Billy Budd. The list goes on.
Soprano Jane Ede is a Principal with Opera Australia. She has performed regularly with the company since winning the inaugural Moffatt Oxenbould Young Artist Competition in 2009. Her roles have been varied and many. They include The Witch in Humperdinck’s Hänsel & Gretel in 2026, Berta in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Musetta in La bohéme, Wellgunde and Gerhilde in the Ring Cycle, Frasquita in Carmen, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte and Alice Ford in Falstaff as well as a substantial portfolio of appearances in recitals and oratorios.
Composition is another gift of this polymath who holds a double major in music and acting as well as a Master of Business Administration. Speaking to SoundsLikeSydney, Ede describes how her idea came about. “A couple of years ago I was working a bunch of different jobs because opera contracting was changing and a lot of people had to find second string employment. I was tired and burnt out and I decided that I wanted to do something creative for myself.”
“At that time, I was reading Trent Dalton’s second novel, All Our Shimmering Skies” she continues in her beautifully modulated voice. “As I read it, I realised that I recognised the characters, loved the journey and loved the emotions. Not only was it connecting with me profoundly, but I could also see and hear this novel as an opera.”
Giving herself a month to come up with the first scene, Ede showed the draft to ‘Team Ede’ who encouraged her to go further. Now, the first of two acts is nearly complete, and the second act is in the silo.
All Our Shimmering Skies is a 2020 novel from multi-award-winning Australian author Trent Dalton, also the noted writer of the hugely successful novel Boy Swallows Universe which was the fastest-selling debut novel in Australian history, selling more than a million copies worldwide.
Set in Darwin in 1942, the city is under siege from Japanese bombers. Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter is 12-years-old, poor and motherless. She looks to the sky for guidance, deciding to seek out Longcoat Bob, the “deep-country sorcerer” to persuade him to reverse the curse he has placed on her family for an ancient wrong. As she journeys through Australia’s vast kaleidoscopic landscapes of deserts, sultry rainforests and rusty mining country, she learns love and hatred, fear and comfort, abject loneliness, friendship and loyalty; she discovers her own iron-clad will to survive and find redemption from Longcoat Bob.
Ede herself has adapted the libretto from the novel. “I wasn’t thinking commercially when I chose this novel” she confides, “I’ve been a fan of Trent’s for years. The text just leapt out at me. It’s so vibrant and immersive and evocative. I’ve also kept an eye on things like the dramatic arc, what is achievable on stage and what is not” she adds, with the insight of an insider.
Importantly, she has Dalton’s full support. After a lengthy initial phone conversation, they have communicated regularly via email throughout the creative process. “I email Trent every time I’ve finished a section or have a question or ask what the inspiration was behind something in particular, and he always comes back to me with an answer. I finished the libretto in November last year and he’s read the whole thing.”
Ede is inspired. “It’s fantastically exciting and has been a really wonderful experience. It doesn’t feel like I’m composing something because it feels like it already exists and I’m just writing it down, bringing together everything I know about opera and everything I’ve studied. It’s a really beautiful, uplifting piece with huge operatic scope.”
Ede’s first step was to choose the words for the libretto. “I literally took my daughter’s yellow highlighter, went through the novel and marked anything that I thought was essential to the plot or to building the characters. Then, I assembled that into the libretto, moving some things around and compressing others, but trying wherever possible to use Trent’s text verbatim, because I think that’s where the real power of the story lies – in the text.”
“When I sent completed parts to Trent and Harper Collins, the publishers, to have a look or a listen, a couple of times Trent came back saying I could change more and didn’t have to leave it exactly the way it is, but Trent is so good at world building and character building that it was really important for me to preserve the essence of the story through his words.”
In the studio, there was a sense of anticipation as the opening bars of All Our Shimmering Skies, the opera, introduced Molly and her mother in a heart-tugging scene in a graveyard. Leitmotifs drew out characters, places and events; the word-painting was vivid, like the cascading phrases of bombs raining down on Darwin. The melodies were flowing and the harmonies were engaging. The singers’ diction was so flawless I was able to recognise passages from the book.
Chad Kelly, Siro Battaglin, Principal cast, Chorus and audience.
Ede explains her vision. “It was the lead character Molly, who really sold this to me as an opera. She talks to the day sky and the night sky. The skies give her advice and gifts to help her along the way. It was the image of the lone, innocent voice in dialogue with the chorus that made me think that this has to be an opera. I can hear the impact that this will have as an opera.”
Ede describes her musical style as “definitely tonal, but minimalist and modern” adding “I grew up absolutely adoring Puccini, Sondheim, Britten and pop, so it sounds like it was written by someone influenced by that diet of music with sweeping melodies and interesting harmonies. I’ve also deliberately tried to leave room for the artists to add their magic.”
“Occasionally I’ve performed a modern piece that has been so difficult that you just have to concentrate on getting the notes and rhythms right. I’ve tried to make this so within the grasp of what I know singers can do, that they are able to bring their own artistry to it to make it better and that’s something I’m really vested in – leaving room for it to grow in its performance.”
Ede’s bubbling enthusiasm and drive are tinged with pragmatism, realising that adaptability is a critical element for companies to include it in their repertoire. “There are soloists and a chorus, and for now, I’m writing it for a chamber orchestra of 20 instruments, because I want it to be flexible. It is an Australian story set in 1940s Darwin, and I want it to be accessible to everyone from the large opera companies in Australia to universities and the other, smaller, wonderful companies. Some of the soloist parts can be doubled so that it can be performed with a cast of eight or 16. If it gets performed at a major company, we could make the chamber orchestra bigger to fit the resources. Costs are so high, sometimes that prohibits programming, so one thing I’ve tried to do in this economic climate of opera is to make it as easy as possible for a company to put on.”
For the workshop, Ede faced the challenge of reducing her manuscript of 16 staves for chamber orchestra to a piano score which is how she had started to write. Finding the textures getting too dense and crowded for the piano’s two staves and 10 fingers, she made an early switch from writing for voices and piano to writing for voices and chamber orchestra, only to have the reverse challenge of reverting to a piano accompaniment for rehearsal and the workshop.
Mindful of practicalities, Ede is carefully shaping the length of her piece. “It’s looking like it will come in at two-and-a-half hours which is quite long. Once you add an interval it becomes a three-hour night and there’s a lot to pack in to Act Two. I am a little bit concerned about keeping everything that is essential in Act Two as well as achieving a run time of just over an hour, to match Act One. From the point of view of audience fatigue but also for companies logistically, I’m aiming for under three hours.”
The next step for Act One is to workshop the orchestration and like the voices, check that the music fits in ranges, is comfortable to play and creates the textures that Ede seeks. Meantime, Ede will continue composing Act 2, doing much of her writing on the train as she journeys to and from work, seeking her own gifts from the skies.
Shamistha de Soysa for SoundsLikeSydney©
Main image: Jane Ede addresses the audience with conductor Chad Kelly, Principal cast and chorus.
The September workshop of All Our Shimmering Skies received funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund and would not have been possible without the generous support of Trent Dalton, Opera Australia, Northside Opera Group and all of the donors to the ACF project fundraiser.
