Stabbings, toast and Vegemite – it’s all in a night’s work for this operatic couple

3 months ago 20

Operatic husband and wife Peter Coleman-Wright and Cheryl Barker have shared a stage many times over their long careers.

But perhaps never quite so memorably as in a 2002 English National Opera production of Tosca. Soprano Barker was singing the title role and baritone Coleman-Wright that of the evil Scarpia, who gets his comeuppance in Act Two at the point of a knife.

“When we started she came at me with this knife and it was so vicious I said, ‘No, we’ll have to get a fight director’,” says Coleman-Wright, wincing theatrically. “She didn’t just want to do one stab, she wanted to …”

Here he mimes a frenzied attack.

Cheryl Barker and Peter Coleman-Wright play a husband and wife in Trouble in Tahiti.

“Up and under,” agrees Barker gleefully. “It was my vengeance and I got all my frustrations and fury out and left it on the stage. It’s so cathartic.”

Then they both dissolve into giggles.

Maybe there’s something to be said for attacking your partner on stage night after night – the couple have known each other for more than 50 years and been married for 41.

Their careers have taken them to many of the great opera houses, singing many of the most iconic roles in the repertoire.

This week they take the stage again to play another warring couple in Leonard Bernstein’s two-hander, Trouble in Tahiti.

The one-act opera tells the bleak tale of Sam and Dinah, locked in a loveless marriage with no way out, set to a characteristically jazz-inflected Bernstein score.

Paired with Arlecchino, a one-act opera by Ferruccio Busoni, Trouble in Tahiti is being staged at Darlinghurst’s Eternity Playhouse by Endangered Productions.

“It does leave you a little depressed at the end because they are wanting to get together but they can’t,” Barker says. “But there’s some great music. It’s worth it just for the music.”

Barker and Coleman-Wright first played opposite each other aged just 14 in a production of The Boy Friend at Geelong’s Belmont High School.

“It’s almost like we planned to meet each other from a past life or something,” says Coleman-Wright. “Our souls just absolutely had to be together. We fight and people would say, ‘They won’t last five minutes’ and we still soldier on somehow.”

Barker says that being in the same demanding industry has been a boon to their relationship.

“I think that’s why we survived, really,” she says. “We understand how difficult it is.”

Both look back on their long careers with fondness.

“We were really lucky that we were able to go from job to job to job,” says Coleman-Wright. “Whereas these days you might get a job and then six months later here’s another one. Consequently, you can’t stay match fit. You can’t keep yourself on top form.”

So, after a torrid night on stage that might even involve the occasional stabbing, how hard is it to go home and wind down?

“Well, we’re usually starving,” says Coleman-Wright. “You don’t tend to eat before a show, so we’d crack open the wine and Vegemite and toast.”

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