The Parrot Factory | note
Having taken 10 years to write our first opera, 18 months didn’t seem a long time to come up with a second. It is ostensibly a children’s opera, but we always wanted to write a piece that operated on more than one level, engaging an adult audience at the same time. The result was a fantastical world of hidden diamonds, hot air balloons and talking birds, which also dramatised adult concerns such as freedom and control, emotional honesty and the compromises we must negotiate between respect for the environment and the role of money in our lives.
People sometimes ask what comes first – the words or the music? We usually start with a story and the characters that drive it. The words are always first, though as we get deeper into a work the music increasingly suggests additional (or more commonly, fewer) words. It’s a collaborative artistic tango that results in a true ‘musical drama’ – an opera.
We would especially like to thank Frederick and Mary Davidson for their profound generosity in commissioning a totally new opera and to Richard Gill for leading a company with the courage and foresight to promote new Australian work.
Stuart Greenbaum composer
Ross Baglin librettist