NZ Opera has taken serious flack—complete with hate mail—from New Zealand opera-goers for daring to veer away from the standard repertoire and providing a mix of classic and contemporary offerings.

Proving true circus impresario P. T. Barnum’s dictum that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” the company’s ticket sales are thriving despite the dust-up.

The opera currently causing the vehement reaction is “The Unruly Tourists,” a tale about an obnoxious group of U.K. tourists who ran amok during a 2019 visit to the country. A Sept. 25, 2021 article on Radio New Zealand’s website stated that “a third of the board resigned in apparent protest against the company’s new artistic direction.” The show is currently in rehearsal.

However, the hullabaloo is less about the opera’s subject than the controversy regarding staging new operas at the expense of the standard repertoire, a balance many companies wrestle with as they seek to challenge the boundaries of the art form while not alienating fans of the canon.

Thomas de Mallet Burgess, NZ Opera’s General Director, believes not all standard rep operas should remain in the rotation, particularly as the corpus of high-quality new opera grows. Something has to give, and Burgess’ view is that some of the old must yield to the new for the art form to remain alive and vibrant.

“I acknowledge that within the available resources some established opera audiences want the Company to prioritise what’s familiar over new works. A political and social commentary such as “The Unruly Tourists”—which is about reflecting aspects of us back to ourselves—has triggered a never-before-seen level of discussion because it seems on the face of it to be wildly different and somehow ‘anti-opera.’ In fact, it builds on the foundations of opera and honours the tradition of satire dating back to ancient Greece, as it looks at how New Zealand reacted to this group of people as an anomaly that just arrived on our doorstep,” stated De Mallet Burgess in an opinion piece provided to OperaWire. He goes on to say, “There is a balance to be struck, however. It may be a controversial view, but I believe some operas, even beloved ones, should be shelved, at least for the time being—even though a lot of people simply want productions they already know and love. I’m sympathetic to that, but Opera as a global form must be supporting the writing of new operas if the art form is to remain relevant to time and place.”

The shade being thrown at NZ Opera is extreme, considering it’s not De Mallet Burgess’ intent to throw the baby out of the bathwater; rather, it’s showing that classics can stand alongside the modern, and by incorporating the traditional and the contemporary, NZ Opera can raise a robust local opera scene. For those up in arms about De Mallet Burgess’ controversial views, the thought of beloved opera standards being cut seems a bridge too far.