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WA Opera’s Noongar opera Wundig wer Wilura at His Majesty’s Theatre to open Perth Festival 2024

The drive back to Perth in Jarred Wall’s car following the York photo shoot for this interview featured a profoundly unique road trip playlist. From the speakers poured music inspired by an ancient Noongar story, intrinsically linked to Ballardong Noongar Boodjar (Ballardong Noongar Country) that he and Jess Hitchcock had just been captured on. The pair were practising their duets for WA Opera’s Wundig wer Wilura, the commissioned Noongar language opera composed by award-winning songwriters and storytellers Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse, premiering on February 9 to open Perth Festival 2024. The opera follows star-crossed lovers Wundig (Wall) and Wilura (Hitchcock) who, after breaking the bounds of lore and custom, have their souls forever banished and separated to Wongborel (Mount Brown) and Walwalling (Mount Bakewell). “Essentially it’s a forbidden love story based around the two mountains that are out at York,” Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Hitchcock explains. “We are from different tribes and we come together and end up falling in love, but we’re wrong skin, so that means that we’re not allowed to get married. That ends up causing really big problems within our family groups.” With heritage from the Torres Strait Islands and Papua New Guinea, Hitchcock is one of only a few non-Noongar cast members in Wundig wer Wilura, invited by Ghouse after they worked together on Mission Songs Project in Melbourne. “He messaged me sometime last year and was like, ‘Jess, do you want to come over and be in our opera?’ and when he told me the story was about two cousins falling in love, I was like ‘Oh, OK, sure’,” she laughs. “I really respect Guy and Gina and their work, and their work ethic as well, so I definitely wanted to jump on board. The timing really worked out for me to come over too.” Raised an hour south of Sydney, Hitchcock’s enviably diverse schedule sees her defying genres across the arts scene, from singing with her own band and lending her mezzo-soprano skills to opera companies around Australia, to collaborating with Aussie icons including Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Tina Arena and Kate Miller-Heidke. Coming from a musically inclined family meant piano lessons from a young age showed Hitchcock’s aptitude for music, but it was not until Year 11 that she started singing. After jokingly impersonating Louis Armstrong, a friend suggested she try performing the Ella Fitzgerald part of the duet instead. “She was like ‘I think you can actually sing, let’s give this a go’, so I auditioned for School Spectacular (the New South Wales student variety show),” Hitchcock says. “I got in as a soloist and also as a backing vocalist, which is important because half of my life now is doing backing vocals for many different people, which I really enjoy.” Indeed, being a backing vocalist took Hitchcock all the way to Eurovision 2019 to accompany Miller-Heidke’s performance of Zero Gravity. “But I wasn’t on one of those bendy poles, thank goodness, because I get horrible motion sickness so that definitely wouldn’t have been good for me,” Hitchcock shares. “I was the only other musician who came with her and then we got two other backing vocalists from Israel. It was a crazy and really fun experience.” Less fun was the response Hitchcock received after wearing a Yes campaign dress while singing a rendition of Waltzing Matilda with leading didgeridoo player William Barton at the 2023 AFL Grand Final. “That was definitely scary, but also really important,” the 32-year-old says. “I think that’s probably the most amount of people I’ve ever performed in front of, over 100,000 people, and then of course, it was televised. There was a lot of very horrible backlash from that, but also really positive things happened out of it, and lots of support, obviously. It was the right thing to do, or what I thought was the right thing to do.” Hitchcock’s first foray into opera was at age 19 in Deborah Cheetham’s Pecan Summer, the first opera written by an Indigenous Australian and involving an Indigenous cast. Its success led to the creation of Short Black Opera company in Melbourne, who Hitchcock has since collaborated with to create children’s book Dhungala Choral Connection Song Book, incorporating nine different Aboriginal languages in song, mostly from the east coast. She admits learning Noongar for Wundig wer Wilura has proven a little bit difficult, purely because learning any new language is tricky. “But it’s definitely been a challenge that I’ve really enjoyed and I feel myself learning so much more Noongar,” she says. “Noongar is such an ingrained language into the people that are over here, they use it in everyday life, so I’m finding myself being able to understand just passing words that they use amongst each other now, which is really cool. I obviously can’t speak fluent Noongar or anything, but I definitely am understanding little bits and pieces here and there, which is kind of surprising and really lovely. I’m definitely loving it and obviously you get more and more familiar with it, the more and more you sing it.” Wall, a proud Noongar man of the Wardandi Bibbulmun tribe of the South West of WA, is familiar with that feeling, delving deeper into his own language when he took on his first opera role of Wardong (Crow) in Koolbardi wer Wardong, Williams and Ghouse’s debut Noongar language opera for families in 2021. Journeying back to the Nyittiny, the time of Creation, Koolbardi wer Wardong wove a magical tale of Koolbardi (Magpie) and Wardong, whose jealousy warns of pride always coming before a fall. Premiering at His Majesty’s Theatre, it has since toured regionally, including seasons in Esperance, Kalgoorlie, Bunbury and Albany, which Wall performed in between releasing his own music under stage name Boox Kid (pronounced Books Kid, as per suggestion from his eldest daughter Eva who was five at the time). “Performing Koolbardi, it was amazing and I think that in itself is a pretty special production,” Hamilton Hill resident Wall says. “Being able to sing in language and telling stories that are very old stories, they’re Dreamtime stories and they’re stories about connection to culture and connection to land, it’s really, really special.” While the themes are more adult in Wundig wer Wilura, Wall’s Koolbardi wer Wardong experience has made him feel more armed and ready to roll this second time around, despite there being many more songs to learn. “I’m a lot more proficient in the language than I was before, so that’s made it easier,” he shares. “The whole Koolbardi experience has made it a lot easier for me to kind of get in tune with what’s required, but there have still been moments in rehearsal where things might not come to you quite as quickly as you’d like it to. “In saying that, I’m working with a whole bunch of mob, everyone’s lovely, I love doing it and can’t wait for people to hear it all. “It’s a pretty contemporary opera in the scheme of operas . . . I think they’re going to be stunned just by how epic it’s going to be.” It is not only Williams and Ghouse who Wall has been reunited with on this second production; many of the creative team has returned, from director Matt Reuben James Ward, set designer Matt McVeigh and lighting designer Mark Howett to Dr Chris Stone on arrangement and orchestration and Aaron Wyatt conducting WA Symphony Orchestra. Wall says the prospect of playing with WASO is amazing in itself — Koolbardi wer Wardong featured WA Youth Orchestra — let alone the orchestra’s ability to take the opera to the next level with its instrumentation. Other new additions include choreographer Ian Wilkes, along with Peter Farmer and Rae Cottam on costume and cultural props design, who Wall says have created some beautiful pieces. “I say that word ‘special’ a lot, but it is really special,” Wall says. “It’s an all-Indigenous cast and, while we do have some from over east, it’s primarily Noongar cast and this is a story from Ballardong Noongar Country. Stories that are passed down from generations of families. “It’s a love story. You talk about Romeo and Juliet, and that being some 400 years old. This has a very similar context in terms of love stories, but this is thousands and thousands of years old and it’s right on our doorstep.” Wundig is from the Hills people family group in the region and Wall laughs as he describes his character as being a good hunter and, funnily, known for his “strong solid legs”. “That’s literally one of the things that’s said in the opera, so I’ve been making sure that I’ve been keeping up with my gym routine and made sure my legs are looking OK,” he says in good humour. “They’re not as skinny as they usually are.” Meanwhile Hitchcock explains that Wilura, a girl from another family group, the Grass people, is a bit flirtatious. She has worked with Williams a lot in rehearsals on the role, relishing watching her musical mentor performing it with a cheeky smile on her face as she demonstrates the part. “I’m trying to sort of incorporate that real cheekiness and happiness into my character as well, even though there’s a lot of serious parts,” Hitchcock says. “I basically just spend the entire show falling in love with Wundig, there’s a lot of looking into each other’s eyes. “Unfortunately, we don’t really care about what other people think and we are betrothed to other characters on stage. Wundig’s betrothed is Mandi, played by Bella McGill, and then Wilura’s betrothed is Gulambiddi, played by Jarrad Inman. I get yelled at a little bit in the show too, which is fair enough for falling in love with my cousin.” Hitchcock says she cannot stress enough to audience members how much the opera will pull at their heartstrings, and highly recommends they bring a stash of tissues for use as the spectacle unfolds. “I’m really looking forward to people coming and seeing it in all of its beautiful glory,” she says. “It’s entirely in Noongar so, as with other operas in Italian and German, there’s always going to be both surtitles, and you can either just enjoy the story knowing what it is or follow the surtitles along with the lyrics.” Wundig wer Wilura may be Hitchcock’s first big gig with WA Opera in a major role, but she had a taste of things to come in 2015 as a performer in The Rabbits, a Barking Gecko Theatre Company and Opera Australia production, presented in association with WA Opera. Starring Miller-Heidke singing her own compositions to Lally Katz’s libretto, the work featured additional music from Perth Festival 2024’s outgoing artistic director Iain Grandage. “Iain Grandage is a genius, I love to work with him on anything, so he is one of the other reasons that I’m here,” Hitchcock admits. “He called me up and was like ‘Jess, I’d really love for you to come and be in my last Perth Festival. Can you please come and do this role?’ and I was like ‘sure I’ll be there.’ You can never say no to Iain.” Wundig wer Wilura is at His Majesty’s Theatre, February 9 to 15. Tickets at perthfestival.com.au and waopera.asn.au. STM acknowledges the Ballardong people of the Noongar Nation, the Traditional Owners of the land where this photo shoot took place, and recognises their continuing connection to land, water, sky and culture. We pay our respects to all these people and their Elders past, present and emerging.

The West Australian exclusiveWA Opera’s Noongar opera Wundig wer Wilura at His Majesty’s Theatre to open Perth Festival 2024

exclusive
WA Opera’s Noongar opera Wundig wer Wilura at His Majesty’s Theatre to open Perth Festival 2024