Longwood Life Lessons

Woefully unprepared when she left the bright lights of Featherston for the land of Bier and Bratwurst, soprano Georgia Jamieson Emms landed on her feet (or was it roller-blades) in Hamburg, Germany. With a similar population size to Auckland, Hamburg has four professional opera houses with performances almost every night of the week during the season. It was at one of these houses, the Junges Musiktheater that Georgia made a living as a professional singer, racking up close to 60 performances alone as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

On returning home to raise a family she realised there was no sustainable career to be had as an opera singer in New Zealand. Furthermore her particular (peculiar?) set of skills ensured she could never get a “real job.” But inspired by what she’d seen on her German stint, where an enormous educational focus and significant government funding is dedicated to opera, she knew that there was a need in New Zealand for the creation, development and production of affordable, accessible shows if opera is to survive. On the smell of an oily rag she launched a theatre company, Wanderlust Opera.

From the audition horror stories to a 90-minute all-female Ring cycle, the glitz and glamour of Kiri Te Kanawa’s final Rosenkavalier at Cologne Opera to an unprecedented sell-out Marriage of Figaro and a standing ovation in Palmerston North, Georgia’s journey from Greytown Little Theatre to operatic entrepreneur is unorthodox and endearing.

Tickets for this lecture, Sunday, March 24^th, 4.30pm at Longwood, Featherston can be purchased from Eventfinda.  

Marguerite Tait-Jamieson