English superstar Netia Jones is directing NZ Opera’s Macbeth… and she’s also designing the set, costumes and video projection. Cityscape grabs her in a rare free moment to talk Shakespeare, Verdi, and modern tech.

It seems you’re doing everything in this show except writing the theme tune. How do you manage all of that? Because I work with a studio called Lightmap, and that means that I have a team of super talented freelancers that I work with and so it makes it possible to do the directing and designing roles as one thing. And also when you’re making an opera, the things happen in stages. An opera is planned sometimes up to four years, but at least two years in advance. The set happens, and then the costumes happen, and then the video happens and then there’s the rehearsals. It’s totally doable, and the reason for doing it is, it just makes a very kind of holistic approach, you know, you get something that is joined up, but in the end it is still a team making an opera, it’s never one person that makes an opera. It’s the most collaborative possible endeavour. For that reason I think, it is a very life-affirming thing because it really is several hundred people often putting an opera together.

Does that free you up to do something special and different? I think what it means is that the design is very central to the process, and so it all is the same thing at the end of the day, all of the storytelling is kind of coming from the same place. But they are very different processes and I think that’s the reason why I enjoy doing it, because there’s two different sides of my brain. And I’ve been like that all my life, in that I’ve quite often liked to do quite opposite things. I was always studying sciences and arts at the same time. It’s also only quite recently that we have decided that we specialise in one thing. In the 18^th Century, for example, people were often doing more than one thing, and especially in theatre, you know, people would often cover multiple roles in theatre. So it’s really only in the 19^th Century that there’s this idea of very individual tasks. And it’s become ridiculous, it’s become as if they’re really separate, but they’re not really separate. It’s all part of the same process of storytelling.

What can we expect visually from Macbeth? I’m not setting Macbeth in exactly Scotland. It’s really an amazing play, it’s always been one of my absolute favourite pieces of theatre, I think it’s just an extraordinary source material. I am so enamoured of Shakespeare. Although we’re not really dealing with Shakespeare. When you’re working on Verdi’s Macbeth you do obviously go back to the Shakespeare, which is like pure pleasure. And it seems so timeless to me, this piece, and also because it speaks to us as a contemporary audience in a very immediate way. And so I’m setting it in quite an abstract way. It’s modern, but it’s timeless. So it’s not in a specific place or at a specific time. And the actual set itself is quite abstract. It’s quite sizeable, but it’s like an empty vessel. I’m using a lot of projections, so the set itself is actually quite minimal. We’ve got a rake, which is always a challenge for performers, but also looks very good. It’s quite monochrome, the production because it’s a place which is fairly inhospitable, this land where we’re finding these characters inhabiting, and it seemed quite dark and gloomy and monotone to me. And then also it draws on the ideas of early experimentation in film and theatre. Because Verdi, he loved this kind of theatrical experimentation, and he was quite a keen proponent of using projection techniques and clever lighting techniques in theatre. In a way he could be seen as a forerunner of using technology in live performances.

Obviously you’re a big proponent of using multimedia in classical performances. What are your thoughts on that? My feeling is that in any kind of music or other storytelling, it makes sense that it takes part in the world that we actually live in. It doesn’t make sense that it’s like a museum and you go back in time when you’re doing it. You have to live fresh and new every single time. The world that we’re living in is very full of media. That’s how we communicate with each other, that’s how we reach out to each other. My whole career, I’ve included it in my theatre work and in my work in classical music. And the challenge with any kind of multimedia is that you’re dealing with something that is inherently live with classical music. It must feel totally live and be totally live. It can’t have a sense of being fixed and film or projection is quite often a fixed medium in terms of time. And so my challenge through my whole career, and in fact what I’ve spent most of my time on probably, is finding software and methods and techniques that allow the film to feel very embedded, very live and very fluid and fluent, like the music is. But this is just our modern version of electric light. You know, there was a bit of a furore when electric light was introduced into theatre and it was ‘going to ruin everything’. You know, we just adjust, and we adapt and we absorb all the technologies that are available to us for storytelling. You can use projection and media in theatre in so many different ways, and people are. Whereas when I began there weren’t so many people doing it, but now I think it’s more common than not. We accept it. It’s just another tool for our storytelling. It doesn’t even have to be the main event, it’s not necessarily the main event, it’s just another arrow in the quiver. I love it because it’s something that I’m very fluent in and I have practiced a lot. So for my way of thinking and for my way of making theatre, I use it. That’s not to say I think it’s essential or I think it’s dangerous. It’s neither. It’s just a possibility.

What other tools do you have to achieve contemporary-feeling performances? I’d actually say that the music itself feels contemporary. I mean, it isn’t, it’s 19^th Century and it’s Verdi. But it’s really experimental and kind of exciting in that way. And so I don’t think you could say that necessarily of all operas, but this opera specifically feels very contemporary. I also think the same of the play. I think Macbeth the play feels so extremely contemporary and somehow very exciting still. So once you can accept the language and you accept the poetry of the language, the drive of the play feels hyper modern to me. It doesn’t feel like a struggle.

Do you hold to the tradition of not saying ‘Macbeth’ in the theatre? No, we say it all the time. We were talking about that today, apparently it’s not a thing in opera, thank goodness, because otherwise we’d have to run out and turn three circles every hour.

It’s a funny concept, performing an English play as an Italian opera to a New Zealand audience. What makes people connect to this work? It’s a really nice thought, because it is true that there are so many lines of disconnect there. And the interesting thing is, it does speak to every audience everywhere. It really isn’t limited to a certain place and it also doesn’t belong to a certain place. Shakespeare is so global. Shakespeare is owned as much by New Zealand as it is, for example, by the UK. He is everybody’s. Ironically and interestingly, when I first listened to this opera, it does sound so Italian to me. It doesn’t sound anything like Macbeth as I would imagine it, because I know the play so well. We’re talking about something completely else. It’s not like a musical version of the play, it’s really not. It’s totally different. It’s so compelling, it does feel very Italian and I’m kind of allowing it to. It’s hyper dramatic, and rather than mute that down, I’m really leaning in to it. Because it’s a very theatrical very melodramatic piece with these huge choruses, and that’s going to be really thrilling and exciting. It’s going to be really interesting to think about what it means in New Zealand. Would that mean something different somewhere else? But what I’m finding, and particularly with New Zealand opera, is we get these fantastic local choruses. It’s a very chorus-led opera, so I really feel that will make a massive contribution, because a huge part of the performers in the opera will be local. And that’s so nice. You’ve got 48 singers on the stage who are local to that city. It’s magic, it’s great.

How does Verdi’s music affect the story? It affects it very much. You’re left with kind of the skeleton, kind of the bare bones, and you’re left really with the themes. But the themes are very profound. So there’s the theme obviously of power, there’s a very big theme of gender, and there’s a very big theme of nihilism, kind of what is fundamentally life for? You find them in both the play and the opera. Shakespeare’s is so short and lean, it’s only got 2000 lines in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and there’s no line too many. It’s very dense, and it’s thrilling for that reason. Verdi cuts loads, he obliterates whole scenes, whole acts and then he really extends on moments because he needs a big rousing chorus. So it’s very different, but each of them has this huge impact on you. It draws you in and it takes you somewhere fairly dark, and really makes you self-reflect and reflect on these big themes.

What can you tell me about the cast? We have an amazing cast. We have our Lady Macbeth, Amanda Echalaz, who is astonishing. The rest of the cast are New Zealanders. We have, as Macbeth, Phillip Rhodes, who is born to play this part, he’s completely amazing. This is a very complex character with so many layers, you know it’s not at all clear, it’s not a black and white hero-and-villain type thing, and so he’s amazing. And the rest of the cast as well, are just fantastic. They’re so talented, and there’s also a fantastic feeling of camaraderie. It’s really nice to be in the room with these guys.

What do you do in your downtime? It’s going to sound a bit ridiculous or sad, but it isn’t ridiculous or sad. My job is amazing, and I do my job. It’s really difficult to describe to somebody that does a different kind of job, but when you’re doing a show, you are fully on that show, morning, noon and night. And so I am doing that. You love to do it. Because I’m doing all these different parts of the job, it’s never boring for me. I might be going to the set to visit the set builder, or I might be in the wardrobe talking about cuffs and collars, or I might be in something really complex with my video team looking at some bit of software programming, or I might be interacting with singers. My day-to-day life is so varied, so it is uptime and downtime at the same time. And then what I tend to do when I’m not actually working is I am travelling, because obviously I have to travel a lot. The massive bonus for me is taking a few days at either end of a project, because if I’m not working on a project I’m very gratefully exploring the country where that project is happening. I took a few days before rehearsal started here to visit New Zealand a little bit. We’re in Covid and obviously that’s a big deal to do a show in Covid, and so my first priority was my and everybody else’s health. But I was by myself in my car, and so I could drive, and even driving in New Zealand is stunning. And so that was a great pleasure.

What’s next for you? It’s a slightly crazy year, actually. I’ve got four other projects before the end of the year. I’m going straight to Paris to do an opera called The Outcast which is based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and then I’m going to The Barbican in London and dong a project called The Anatomy of Melancholy, then I’m going to Los Angeles and I’m doing a project called Electric Fields, which is an amazing show based on the music of Hildegard von Bingen. And there is a fourth project in there, Verklärte Nacht, which is Schoenberg. And then I start work for early next year on an early Lully opera called Phaëton. And Pelléas and Mélisande by Debussy. So it’s a bit jam-packed for the next few months. With Covid, a lot of projects were postponed and then bang bang bang bang bang, they all happen at the same time.

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