Opera in the Pub: a love story sung over several schooners

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Classically trained singers Rae and Murray Dahm fell in love with each other and opera while doing the young artists program with New Zealand Opera. The bass and soprano had trained privately with tutors in New Zealand and New York, and while both took their singing seriously, they recognised, as an art form, opera had some serious issues.

“Sometimes it does take a long time for someone to die,” Rae said. “You also have to get all dressed up and pay lots of money [to see it], and often they are in foreign language with a convoluted plot.”

Performers Eliane Morel and Murray Dahm in Opera in the Pub about to resume at the newly refurbished Harold Park Hotel after a 10 year hiatus.Credit: Steven Siewert

So they formed boutique opera company Opera Bites, and played one of their first Opera in the Pub shows at the Harold Park Hotel in 2010.

Now after a COVID-induced hiatus, the co-founders are returning to the Glebe pub, where it all began, and from May 2, will perform on the first Tuesday of every month with a troupe of seasoned opera performers.

The pub is the perfect place to democratise what can often be seen as an elitist art form, said Rae.

“People feel that they have to know what’s going on to be allowed to go, and it’s just not the case. Opera is not for everyone, but it can be for anyone.”

“We love returning to those roots in an environment where people can come as they are.”

Operas have long been played in every conceivable location, from the world’s most prestigious opera houses and amphitheatres to barns, sheds and laneways, said the duo. But they gave up on competing with the big end of town a long time ago, believing that the great equaliser for opera has always been the environs of a raucous pub.

When Murray sees someone walk into the pub gigs wearing thongs and a flannelette shirt, having no clue of what they’re in for, and then suddenly they’re smiling and singing along to opera, it lights him up.

“It was always an art form for the people, it was the popular music of the day back in the 1600s. So we love returning to those roots in an environment where people can come as they are,” he said.

The show promises to serve up tunes that you’ll recognise. There are no nosebleed seats in a pub either.

“People always know more about opera than they think,” Rae said, citing advertisements from British Airways to Looney Tunes cartoons, which use music from operas like Wagner’s Ring Cycle, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.

With new publican and actor Jason Wu at the helm of the Harold Park, it has just undergone a renovation that has seen an extension on the old bars, fresh carpet, slick new furniture, a revamped beer garden, and in a move popular with the locals, a much condensed pokies room.

Now Wu is on a mission to bring the artists back.

“I have a personal stake in this because I am an artist myself,” he said.

”After COVID, artists were struggling for a long time and I am very aware of how much the arts community really struggled to find work, and many of us started working other gigs. Now that I am in this position as a publican, I can help to bring the arts back so I am jumping at the chance. Arts is an integral part of any community and it should always be celebrated and watched.”

“Around the World of Opera” starts May 2.

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