Cultural dimension of tomorrow’s leadership — FUTURE SUMMIT 2007 – CREATING A BETTER FUTURE: [1 All-round Country Edition]
Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 17 Mar 2007: 26.
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Abstract
Victorian Opera’s general manager [Anne Frankenberg], 39, says technology is helping elite art forms such as opera assume their rightful place in the lives and living rooms of ordinary people. Frankenberg was one of 50 people given a Future Summit Leadership award last year.
To demonstrate her thesis that opera has often been revolutionary and remains so today, Frankenberg points to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and to Australian Richard Mills’s The Love of the Nightingale. The Marriage of Figaro, which packed in the crowds like an AFL match, was radical for its day because it was about servants rather than royalty: servants who were smarter than their bosses.
Centuries later, Mills’s Nightingale has also been packing in the crowds. It is, says Frankenberg, a powerful, shocking and transcendent opera about violence, revenge and the silencing of innocence that creates astonishing emotional effects and leaves the audience wanting to change the world. Yet it is a reworking of an ancient Greek story about a young woman who is raped and then has her tongue cut out to stop her revealing the name of her attacker.
Full Text
Opera will continue to transform lives, Anne Frankenberg tells John Stapleton
THE flickering hi-tech lounge rooms of the future will have one thing in common with the simple mud-floored rooms of 5000 years ago: music. Art has always transformed and enriched people’s lives, and that is not about to stop any time soon.
Victorian Opera’s general manager Anne Frankenberg, 39, says technology is helping elite art forms such as opera assume their rightful place in the lives and living rooms of ordinary people. Frankenberg was one of 50 people given a Future Summit Leadership award last year.
She holds a bachelor of music and bachelor of arts from the University of Melbourne, a graduate diploma in musical performance and an MBA. She was manager of OzOpera for Opera Australia until taking on her present role last year, starting the company after a spirited campaign from Victorians for an opera company of their own.
Frankenberg says the Future Summit, an outflow from the World Economic Forum, has provided opportunities for intense interactions with people in leadership positions. “When you work in the arts it is easy to have most of your contacts with others in the arts: it can be a little enclave.”
Being among so many high achievers challenged her own views about the place and importance of art and, indeed, of her own job. “Whoever I sat down beside had opinions about everything,” she recalls.
On the summit’s first day last year, there was a session on Australian identity, without a single representative of the performing arts on the panel. “It made me think about the ability of the arts to give you a different frame for identity. You only have to think of theplays that Australians have written, the paintings, the music, the films.”
Frankenberg is a believer in the transformative and revolutionary power of all the art forms. She thinks this power will spread and deepen as new technologies make art accessible to everyone. She says it is impossible to take art away from Australia: even if all funding for orchestras, galleries, museums and opera companies were to stop tomorrow, art would continue to transform lives.
“The surveys all show that Australians are widely involved in and value cultural experiences, from singing in a community choir to going to see a movie. You don’t have to be an opera performer. You are not going to stop people drawing or putting on a community play in someone’s drawing room. People have a fundamental compulsion to express themselves.”
Part of the power of art in a complex, multi-ethnic society such as Australia is its ability to force the appreciation of other people’s viewpoints. “To have creative people who will not necessarily accept what is put in front of them makes for a better country.”
To demonstrate her thesis that opera has often been revolutionary and remains so today, Frankenberg points to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and to Australian Richard Mills’s The Love of the Nightingale. The Marriage of Figaro, which packed in the crowds like an AFL match, was radical for its day because it was about servants rather than royalty: servants who were smarter than their bosses.
Centuries later, Mills’s Nightingale has also been packing in the crowds. It is, says Frankenberg, a powerful, shocking and transcendent opera about violence, revenge and the silencing of innocence that creates astonishing emotional effects and leaves the audience wanting to change the world. Yet it is a reworking of an ancient Greek story about a young woman who is raped and then has her tongue cut out to stop her revealing the name of her attacker.
“Music has a power to speak to people and that power is not going to fade,” Frankenberg says. What will change, of course, is thetechnology. Cheaper access via radio and television has changed the demographics of music and art consumption over the past century, but technology will change the way it is experienced.
“Art is part of enriching a culture and telling that culture’s stories … Opera’s appeal will continue to broaden. Technology … is creating new ways for people to experience those cultural activities. Art will be disseminated in different ways.
“Recently there was the first live telecast of an opera performance on the steps of the Opera House and at Federation Square in Melbourne at the same time as it was being performed inside a theatre. That’s an example of how the technology is spreading and changing the experience.”
The Future Summit 2007 will be convened by the Australian Davos Connection and supported by The Australian. It will be a platform for the discussion of strategic trends and directions by Australians across all sectors of society. Dubbed New World Order 2.0, the summit will be held on May 14 and 15 at the Melbourne Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Each year the Future Summit announces leadership awards for rising stars in their fields. Nominations are invited by March30 and can be emailed to [email protected]. Further information can be found onwww.futuresummit.org/summit2007-lsawards.htm.