Marianne Thamm
Until he attended a rehearsal of La Bohme: Noir, Hal Shaper’s reworking of Puccini’s tearjerker La Bohme which will premiere with an all-black cast in Cape Town in December, Brian Williams had never seen an opera.
The former trade unionist and once- unskilled building worker, now provincial director of the Department of Labour in the Western Cape, was deeply moved by the experience.
“It was stunning. It had an incredible life force,” he says, recalling his initiation to the opera that has been set in Soweto, 1976.
Although Williams is now essentially a civil servant, he is also a cultural worker who has published three volumes of poetry, the most recent in a collection titled The Seventh Whisper.
Perhaps it was Puccini’s sad tale of four almost-destitute, struggling artists (a poet, a painter, a musician and a philosopher) that did it. Or maybe it was just William’s insider’s view. But whatever the inspiration, the agreement between the Department of Labour in the Western Cape and Capab opera to fund unemployed cultural workers in the region is what really matters here.
Although everyone is quick to credit minister Tito Mboweni and director general Sipho Pityana, it is clear that Williams was behind it all.
“I suppose you could say I had the inclination because I am a poet but it is part of the Department of Labour’s policy to create employment and no distinction is made about who falls into that category. We have a wide-open mandate and because of that our capacity is enhanced.” Williams says Mboweni and Pityana gave him the “operational space” to go ahead with the initiative.
The agreement with Capab is the first of its kind in the country. Never before has a government department not directly involved in arts and culture recognised that artists are workers, that they offer a legitimate form of labour and that they too need formal employment.
La Bohme: Noir, which will also tour internationally next year, will expose artists to world standards as well has have a “multiplying”effect, he says.
“The marketing possibilities of the show could turn it into black gold. Already there is an exhibition of paintings linked to the opera and there are television rights. This has to do with opening up new markets to music and opera.”
Williams says it is Cape Town composer and librettist, Hal Shaper’s, brilliance that has brought to this production a quality that resonates through the ages. “It cuts across divides. It shows how you can take 1976 and its pain and turn it into hope for the future.”
Williams adds that opera cannot be considered as elitist and what it can do, as is the case with La Bohme: Noir, is open up new worlds to the performers and the audience.
Mike van Graan, an arts and culture consultant and editor of The Cultural Weapon thought the Cape initiative was fantastic.
“In the South African context,”he says “it’s a strange thing to have happened. But at last artists are being recognised as providing a legitimate form of labour; that we’re not just a bunch of bohemians and that we do make a significant contribution.”
Thanks to the grant, two choral groups, one from St Mary’s School and the other from The Choral Training Programme, will perform with the chorus of La Bohme: Noir. Mimi will be sung by Soweto-born Sibongile Mngoma, and others in the lead cast are Fikile Mvinjelwa, Thokozani Ndlovu, Agos Moahi, Marcus Desando and Xolela Sixabla.
The December 17 premiere will be in aid of the President’s Arts and Culture Trust