It was opening night of Rigoletto in 2019 when an elderly man in the front row rose to his feet and began haranguing the audience with claims Opera Australia had mistreated him.
He alleged that Opera Australia had commissioned him to create a one-act opera in 1969, and 50 years later, it remained unperformed.
George Dreyfus’ opera The Gilt-Edged Kid will be performed at the Athenaeum.Credit: Eddie Jim
The man – composer and musician George Dreyfus, father of Australia’s Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus – delayed the performance for 10 minutes as ushers gathered impotently around, unsure what to do.
“Nothing worked,” Dreyfus says of his now infamous protest. “I brought the loudhailer, but I’m technically incompetent. It didn’t work, then the lights were switched off and I couldn’t read the text.”
Dreyfus went on to stage a few other protests at the State Theatre on opening nights, though on those occasions he stayed outside, handing out a one-page pamphlet. His sense of grievance over what he sees as a gross injustice has been undiminished by time.
Dreyfus studies a score in the courtyard of Goldstein College, University of NSW in 1972.Credit: Stuart William MacGladrie
“It’s the most famous Australian opera ever because it’s been persecuted by Opera Australia,” he says.
This week, Dreyfus will finally get a measure of closure when not-for-profit independent opera company IOpera gives The Gilt-Edged Kid its professional world premiere in a staged concert at the Athenaeum Theatre.
Dreyfus, who came to Australia as a Jewish refugee from Germany at 13, explains that he was one of five composers commissioned to write a one-act opera as part of a competition in 1969. The other works – including one by then-Age music critic Felix Werder – were all performed. “But George’s rather nice opera, they used every stratagem to stop themselves playing it,” Dreyfus says.
I was in the audience that night at Rigoletto, and so was IOpera artistic director Peter Tregear, who has championed the work that will finally have its premiere on July 22 – Dreyfus’ 95th birthday.
Does Dreyfus feel vindicated? “No, it’s too deep-seated. I appealed to never-ending chief executives. I wrote a book about this, Brush Off, now 10 years old. I was pretty mild; I expected them to respond to the book and play the opera. Wrong, George, wrong!”
‘This is a gift to George ... to acknowledge his enormous contribution to Australian musical culture.’
Peter Tregear, IOpera artistic director
His theory is twofold: that Opera Australia does not want to be told what to perform, and that he is a “nobody”.
“I wrote the theme for [popular 1970s TV series] Rush, the only orchestral piece people in the street can sing, if only the first bar. How much can people sing of Felix Werder, you tell me!”
Opera Australia declined to comment on the history of the opera, but said the company “sends best wishes to Mr Dreyfus ahead of this long-awaited staging of his opera and his 95th birthday”.
A noted composer for film and television, Dreyfus composed two other operas performed in Germany.
IOpera’s Tregear says the company is performing The Gilt-Edged Kid as a gift from Melbourne musicians to Dreyfus.
“Everyone is pushing the boat out for George on this one, as a mark of respect for George himself as a person and his contribution to music,” he says.
George Dreyfus conducts the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in September 1969.Credit: John Patrick O’Gready
Tregear says the fast-paced satirical work about a political leadership contest is “a piece of Australian agitprop” which is challenging to mount because it has a cast of 10.
“The music is classic Dreyfus, a humane modernist. It’s not unfriendly to listen to,” he says.
Of the 2019 protest, Tregear says he and many found it affecting that a 90-year-old man was five decades on still fighting what he believed was a genuine wrong.
“He feels it so strongly because he has such a strong sense of justice and of being an outsider,” he says. “I can’t but help having a grudging respect for someone who is prepared to embarrass himself for what he feels is a matter of justice, and part of me thinks that the world would be better off if there were more people like him rather than fewer.
“As I said, this is a gift to George at a grassroots level and to acknowledge his enormous contribution to Australian musical culture and the singular life accomplishment of being at 95 as fiery and wily as he ever has been.”
The Gilt-Edged Kid will be performed at the Athenaeum on Saturday, July 22 as part of a weekend of related performances which include The Dictator by Ernst Krenek on Sunday, July 23.
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