Minimalist master’s flawed work sustained by an inspired production.

It’s almost unbelievable that Phillip Glass is still writing opera, at 77 years of age. You’ve got to give the man – he who defined and sustained a new generation of classical music through the 60s and 70s – credit for longevity. Even for those of us (like myself) who were never overly enamoured of his relentlessly repetitive style, he is and remains an icon. His first opera, Einstein on the Beach, premiered in 1976 and redefined the form; The Perfect American is his twenty-fifth operatic work. Is it possible for this new-age revolutionary composer to continue to create art that is genuinely creative and new?

Yes and no. The Perfect American is a deeply flawed work, from both a theatrical and a musical perspective. Despite the breathtaking stage design – it looks like an early mock-up of an animated cartoon, then it’s a huge film camera projecting onto a scrim, which then collapses like the end of a Loony Tunes cartoon – it’s an opera that doesn’t really go anywhere. Some really brilliant performances hold the show together, particularly Christopher Purves in the title role and Australia’s Kanen Breen in a great supporting role as an outrageously mincing Andrew Warhol. But does the show really say anything?

Well, let’s just say that I’m not ruining the ending if I tell you that Disney dies.

The title continues an old formula, in the vein of Greene’s The Quiet American, or The Ugly American. American cartoonist and “imagineer” Walt Disney has apparently earned “perfect” as his personal modifying adjective. It’s an ironic title. In just about no way is the troubled and disease-ridden, racist megalomaniac unflawed. He worries that he is losing his very identity to his company. Everyone will forget him as a person, he cries. Disney will become just another company name, like Westinghouse … or Ford. Cue uneasy laughter.

The tension in the show is really about what we think of Disney. Was he a good guy? A small-town apple pie popcorn innocent, as his apostles repeatedly tell us? Well, maybe. If so, how is he capable of treating his fellow humans so appallingly? He acts disgracefully, both in the abstract, through racism and other small-minded bigotries, and in person. At one point he beats up some poor kid because she doesn’t know who he is. People who would like to be paid a living wage by the hugely profitable enterprise they work for are evil communists who must be crushed. A poor employee who wants little more than recognition is mocked cruelly. You get the impression he despised his staff, who of course did all the work that made him a star.

If the intention is to build tension between Disney the person and Disney the artist, we see too much of Disney the tyrant – and we don’t see any of the beauty that tyranny created, the actual cartoons.

We can’t, of course; like everything Disney ever did, Mickey and Donald are copyrighted. Disney Corporation has no intention of allowing anyone to use their property in a way that might hurt their brand or their profits. So much for childlike innocence.

So the stage-show, written by Rudolf Wurlitzer after the book by Peter Stephan Jungk, is a bit underwhelming. How about the music? To a degree, it’s exactly what you’d expect – fast moving, rhythmical, pulsating. Mostly it’s all a bit samey – which probably should be expected from the minimalist master. But it becomes a problem. Near the start of the opera, the scene shifts from a nightmare hospital death-bed into the past to a memory of opening a pool in idyllic small-town America. The music barely changes.

There are a few surprises: there are a few incarnations of a particular really big chorale, ably and enthusiastically belted out by the Opera Queensland chorus (who were in great voice). It’s been noted that the music in the second half is better than the first.

Speaking of the music. Despite some fluffed rhythms and some questionable tuning in the harp, Queensland Symphony Orchestra did a pretty magnificent job with the challenging and relentless score. Conductor Gareth Jones deserves particular credit for holding the machine together – but I feel sorry for the QSO first violin section. By the end of this run, their right arm biceps will be the size of watermelons! This is tough work for the band.

Despite all these flaws it’s pretty impressive that the world premiere for the Southern Hemisphere happened in Brisbane. Little sleepy Queensland QPAC beat out the likes of the Sydney Opera House. Indeed, we had it even before the US, despite the American subject. QPAC’s Concert Hall (not the Lyric Theatre for some reason) was the very first performance outside Europe – Brisbane held the Southern Hemisphere world premiere. The technical side of the work is superb. As a work of vocal and athletic achievement, Christopher Purves’ The Perfect American is rarely matched anywhere in this country. It was a real pleasure to watch him dominate the stage in what is really a one-man show.

I can’t help wondering wonder what Disney himself would have thought of the biopic. He famously loved classical music (hence Fantasia, which is in my opinion one of the best things his minions ever produced). I suspect he would not have been pleased.

And yet Disney and Glass are such similar people in so many ways. They both overcame relatively poor backgrounds through the strength of a really specific artistic vision. To return to the question I asked at the beginning – can Glass sustain his vision, can he continue to create art that is challenging and provocative and new? I think he probably can, and I think he probably will. I just didn’t see it in Perfect American.