A trajectory from actress to visionary of the opera stage Opera director Elke Neidhardt on the set of her acclaimed 2004 Ring cycle. OBITUARY Elke Neidhardt Opera director, actress. Born Ludwigsburg, Germany, July 5, 1941. Died Sydney, November 25, aged 72. SHE was beautiful, she was blunt, she was funny, and she had a voracious appetite for ideas, for art and for life itself. These defining characteristics suffused the work of opera director Elke Neidhardt. Neidhardt was born in Ludwigsburg in 1941 and studied at the State University of Music and the Performing Arts in nearby Stuttgart. She had a taste of opera, assisting on a production in Zurich, but was initially drawn to acting. She based herself in Vienna and was quickly in demand for stage, television and film work. Her star was rising fast in the German-speaking world when fate intervened. She met an Australian TV director, Christopher Muir, on assignment in Europe, and in 1967 moved to Melbourne to marry him. After Vienna, the aridity of Melbourne was a shock. An experimental theatre scene and local film and TV were just finding their feet; Neidhardt won a role on the TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. The couple intended to move back to Europe before long. But one year morphed into another and, by the time they split in the early 1970s, they had a son, Fabian. Neidhardt continued to get some acting roles, including in emblematic films of the era such as Tim Burstall's Alvin Purple, but her strong accent and bombshell looks limited the possibilities. In 1977 she spotted a job advertisement for a resident director at the Australian Opera, precursor to Opera Australia. She had never directed before, but her wit, intelligence and experience of European theatre convinced Moffatt Oxenbould, its artistic administrator and later its artistic director, to give her a chance. She moved to Sydney and put Fabian into boarding school so she could throw herself into the job. She remained 13 years, assisting, restudying and eventually directing a wide repertoire. She also had formed a new relationship, with musician and actor Norman Kaye, best known for his roles in Paul Cox's films. Although their partnership segued into friendship, and they didn't always live together, they remained close for 35 years and Neidhardt nursed him to his death. They were "soul mates," her son says. In 1990, Neidhardt scratched an itch. After almost 25 years in Australia she was curious about Germany. Did she belong there? Headhunted by Michael Hampe, who had come to Sydney to direct Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in 1988, she took the job of principal resident director of the Cologne Opera. Six years later, a new management team made a clean sweep and Neidhardt found herself without a job. She returned to Australia. "She related deeply to German culture and the concentration of culture that's available in Europe and you just can't find that here," Fabian Muir says. But I think deep down, in terms of day-to-day life, interaction with people, the sense of humour, she realised that Australia was home. She still had good friends in Germany, but not that many; not as many as she had here. Neidhardt was passionate and gregarious. Like many whose birth families are dysfunctional, she considered her friends her family. She had a wide circle and was deeply loyal to those she let in. She was articulate, witty and intellectually curious. She was interested in ideas, the visual arts and photography, and literature. She belonged to a high-wattage book club. She loved dogs. All these things, as well as her German training, came out in her theatre work. Kaye's dachshunds had walk-on parts in her Tannhauser. Back in Australia in 1990, she starting working again, freelance, for the national opera company. She was, says Oxenbould, a consummate professional. She was well-organised, a note-taker and a list-maker, but flexible enough to deal with the inevitable, sometimes daily, crises of theatre: a star taken ill, a technical hitch, even the cancellation of a cherished project. "She respected that decisions had to be made," Oxenbould says. She also had respect for craftsmanship, for the carpenters, dressmakers and electricians. A constant searcher after truth, Neidhardt was blunt and uncompromising to the point of stubbornness sometimes. Many people admired her for it and knew that when she paid a compliment it was sincere. It also led to spectacular artistic collisions. The most famous was with French conductor Philippe Auguin on Tannhauser in 1998, which almost brought the production to a halt. Neidhardt collaborated regularly with theatre designer Michael Scott-Mitchell and lighting engineer Nick Schlieper, who became close friends. Scott-Mitchell says she was generous and collaborative, always giving them space in which to develop their ideas instead of imposing her own. And she liked to be challenged. "I know you're going to say no to this," he would start, and she would fire up to find a way of implementing his wildest ideas. "As a designer, there are few directors you really connect with," he says. It was with Scott-Mitchell and Schlieper that Neidhardt devised her crowning achievement: the first complete Australian production of Wagner's four-opera Ring cycle in 2004. It was a nerve-racking adventure. The production was staged by the tiny but ambitious State Opera of South Australia, which had to be bailed out financially and logistically before the curtain finally went up. People came from around the world and the response was ecstatic. Talk of reviving the Adelaide Ring was finally scuttled when incoming Labor arts minister Peter Garrett ruled out federal funding in 2007. The triumph of the Adelaide Ring should have ushered in Neidhardt's glory years. Instead the opera world went quiet. It was two years before Opera Australia offered her another job. She was, her son says, disappointed and baffled. By then, however, she had other preoccupations. Kaye was in the final stages of a seven-year descent into dementia. Close friends had melted away, unable to deal with it, but Neidhardt was with him to the end. He died in 2007. A year later, she still couldn't restrain tears in an interview about her forthcoming Don Giovanni. Yet friends say Kaye's death after so many difficult years was a kind of liberation, too. She moved into a new apartment, made peace with the Australian opera world, and learned to indulge herself. She gave classes at the National Institute of Dramatic Art and loved interacting with the young students, many of whom have written to Muir in the days since her death. Last year, she travelled to Iran. "It was an eye-opener for her: the architecture, the gentleness of the people, their hospitality," he says. This year they were planning to travel together again, to Myanmar, when she was diagnosed with brain tumours in August. Surgery stabilised her condition and Muir was able to return to Germany, where he lives, early this month, intending to return in December. Within five days he was called home again. Neidhardt died very peacefully.