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The
Trial of the Cannibal Dog
was commissioned and produced by the New Zealand
International Arts Festival and premiered on March 2, 2008.
One
of the greatest and most startling of all human journeys is
revisited in The Trial
of the Cannibal Dog, a contemporary operatic and
theatrical adaptation of Dame Anne Salmond’s award-winning
history of Captain Cook’s South Pacific voyages of
discovery.
The
Trial of the Cannibal Dog
combines operatic and non-operatic voices, European and
Maori instrumental performance, a chorus of dogs and live
digital audio and video processing to create a unique form
of musical theatre that blends contemporary and 18th
century English styles.
Vividly
recreating Cook’s Pacific voyages, it revolves around the
reverberations of one dramatic event that would eventually
decide Cook’s fate. The
mock trial and execution of a native dog is enacted by
Cook’s crew, but who is really being judged – the Maori
warrior who murdered 10 of their fellow explorers on a
previous visit to the South Island?
Or Cook himself?
The resulting cultural collisions between Europeans
and the indigenous people of the South Pacific leave the
crew as much changed by what happens as the islanders they
meet.
With
a cast from New Zealand and Australia, The
Trial of the Cannibal Dog traces Cook’s downfall in a
story that still has resonance to this day.
Further
commentary:
William
Hodges’ painting ‘Captain James Cook of the Endeavour’
(National Maritime Museum, London), which appears in
Anne’s book, and, for a time, hung at the Yale Center for
British Art captures the great navigator in an unguarded
moment. It is a
rare informal portrait – pensive, wigless, his jacket
unbuttoned, one senses from his oblique gaze all that has
tested his endurance and forbearance.
If I could bring this moment to life through a
singing voice then that would be the achievement of this
opera. We hear
the Captain in this moment at the top of Act 3 in “Much
Credit is Due”.
My
relationship with Anne’s book is almost accidental. I was
looking for holiday reading before a family Christmas trip
to Cairns in 2003 and having just read a review of her book
in the New Zealand Listener I thought The Trial of the
Cannibal Dog sounded just the thing.
Flying across the Tasman I was struck by the operatic
scale of the story. This
is hardly surprising as at the time I had just completed my
first professional opera project, Don Juan in Prague, and
Mozart’s Don Giovanni was bouncing around in my head.
Out of Anne’s book stepped these fully-formed
Mozartian roles, at least in my imagination: the grieving
wife, the dilettante officer, the scheming queen, the rough
crew, and, of course, our complicated captain.
At the New Years Eve party at a local yacht club just
outside of Cairns, perhaps because of the marine setting and
too much “jollity”, the Cannibal Dog came alive again
before my eyes through Cook’s celebrating ancestors.
The reverberations of the Captain’s story are still
resounding today and that palpable quality I found in
Anne’s writing was the source of inspiration to write this
opera. I wrote
to Anne early in 2004. “Marvelous”,
she said. And so
I began to compose my first opera.
Although
the actual formal composition of the opera did not start
until February of 2007 when the first draft of the libretto
was complete there were sketches done as far back as 2005.
One such piece was setting of the Tauparapara in both
English and Maori that Anne quotes and the end of her book.
While the setting itself find a place in the opera
material from the setting in the form of a Kokako birdsong I
transcribed plays an important function throughout.
Writing an opera I have discovered is like managing a
good kitchen – nothing goes to waste.
In
2005 I received a development grant from Creative New
Zealand enabling the creative team to workshop concepts for
the opera. Soon
after John Downie joined the project as librettist.
In June 2006 workshop was held to work with Janet
Roddick, our Wife. The
aria “Husband, husband” was written overnight during the
workshop and has not changed since!
In
November 2006 we were invited to present work in progress to
the New Zealand International Festival.
By this stage Peter Scholes as joined the project as
conductor as had singers Philip Rhodes and Mere Boyton.
The Festival then sponsored a further workshop in
July 2007 with full cast and ensemble, presenting Acts 1
& 2 to an invited audience at the Illot Theatre.
From the beginning of the project I had always
envisioned incorporating Taonga Puoro and Rangiiria Hedley
joined the ensemble for that performance to add her special
voice.
A
further workshop in November that year was held to refine
the libretto culminating in the first run of the opera.
Rehearsals for this production began in late January
2008. I stopped
composing soon after.
As
a footnote to finish, Anne mentions in her book a pantomime
called Omai or, A Trip round the World performed in Covent
Garden in 1786 by William Shields the original overture of
which is quoted in “Pretane is Island”.
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