Celebrating the diva, from Rihanna and Kylie to Cate Blanchett

4 hours ago 2

Being described as a diva started out as being the ultimate accolade, the word coming from “divine”. At a certain point, it became a negative, used to describe famous women who were deemed demanding and melodramatic.

Now, its meaning has come full circle, an idea explored in a show coming to the Australian Museum of Performing Arts later this year – together with an array of stunning costumes worn by divas over the years, from Marilyn Monroe to Rihanna.

The show features more than 250 objects, including 60 spectacular costumes plus jewellery, photography, art and music drawn from London’s V&A museum, Arts Centre Melbourne’s Australian Performing Arts Collection and loaned items from around the world.

“Divas throughout history are a creation and a fantasy, by turns intriguing, complex, exuberant, delicate and political, but always individual, self-made, enduring and creative,” says V&A senior curator Kate Bailey.

“As we redefine the diva today and reassess the performer’s legacy, we must shift the negative to the positive: the unpredictable becomes creative, the aggressive becomes powerful, the self-obsessed is worshipped, the materialist is an entrepreneur, the narcissist is self-aware, the control-freak is a perfectionist, the rebel is a game-changer and the exhibitionist is an artist.”

Bailey argues the negative connotations came about when women started to demand equal rights: Bette Davis for example, in the 1940s and ’50s, trying to negotiate with the all-powerful studio system.

“Due to her demands for equality, status and respect, a performer like Davis was projected as difficult on and off screen in an attempt to undermine her power and influence,” Bailey writes in the show’s catalogue.

“With the artist’s increasing boldness and drive to rock the status quo came an increasingly negative depiction of the diva, as many female performers were forced to work within the power structures of the studio system,” she says. “This negative attitude and control gathered momentum later in the 20th century and endemic misogyny has taken generations to unravel, finally given traction and attention with the #metoo movement.”

Margot Anderson, head of curatorial at Arts Centre Melbourne’s Australian Performing Arts Collection, devised the local content of the show, coming up with an additional 16 items, including the frock worn by Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler and the whoopee cushion costume worn at a recent Sidney Myer Music Bowl gig by Amy Taylor of Amyl and the Sniffers.

While Australians such as Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Joan Sutherland were already featured in the V&A line-up, Anderson says it was a joy to come up with extra local inclusions.

The costume Kylie Minogue wore in her 2023 Padam Padam clip is great up close, she says – the detail isn’t clear in the video but the design is superb.

Curator Margot Anderson with a jacket worn by Olivia Newton-John during one of her Vegas residencies.

Likewise, the outfit worn by Kate Miller-Heidke for Eurovision – Australia Decides, on the Gold Coast in 2019, designed by Melbourne-based Gwendolynne Burkin.

“Kate has that amazing quality of making art out of who you are, straddling the world of opera and pop with that amazing voice and sound that is quite unique to her, then looking at how she was able to take that to the world stage,” Anderson says.

The scarlet red Linda Britten-designed gown worn by Deborah Cheetham to perform at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 2010 is part of the show, along with Olivia Newton-John’s rhinestone-studded leather jacket worn for her concert residency at the Flamingo Las Vegas between 2014 and 2016.

Cher, Elton John and Diana Ross at a rock awards show in Santa Monica, California, in 1975.

As well as the performers, the show provides insights into the people behind memorable outfits, like Sydneysider Orry Kelly, who became chief costume designer at Warner Bros, and was the first Australian to win an Academy Award. He designed Marilyn Monroe’s costumes for Some Like It Hot.

Anderson says it’s only fitting that the Australian Museum of Performing Arts, housed within Arts Centre Melbourne, opens in December with a show that speaks to the power of performance.

“The public will really enjoy all these incredible stories that sit at the heart of our history and also all these costumes coming from the acclaimed V&A. It’s quite breathtaking really.”

“There are over 850,000 items in the collection, so you can imagine how many stories sit behind that and how it can help us understand how we got to where we are today.”

One of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century, Maria Callas is often described as the ultimate diva.

She articulated the reality for divas past and present, when speaking about her dedication to her work.

“I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles,” Callas said. “But I am not a devil, either. I am a woman and a serious artist.”

Diva opens at the Australian Museum of Performing Arts on December 11.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.