On the exterior of Sydney Opera House, constellations are being projected on to the sails. Inside, things are equally cosmic as Kate Miller-Heidke takes the famous stage. Above her hang disembodied nightdresses stuffed with lights, bringing a Miss Haversham element to proceedings. The Brisbane singer is wearing a shocking pink top, a tiered skirt resembling a lampshade and a tiara that tooks like a gold plate sticking out of her head.
Her band consists of three other female vocalists and her husband, Kier Nuttall, who can whip up quite a sonic souffle with just a guitar and some looping pedals, over which Miller-Heidke lets fly a few piercing, reverb-drenched soprano notes. As surely the only person ever both to have had an Australian No 1 hit and a role in an opera at New York’s legendary Met to look forward to (she’s performing in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer this October), Miller-Heidke manages to marry the drama and high technique of opera to the directness and sweetness of pop, usually avoiding the pitfalls of self-consciousness or self-congratulation inherent in this approach.
She’s also a great lyricist when on her game, notably in Caught in the Crowd, expressing guilt about a school misfit she turned her back when he was being bullied, and Sarah, a compelling story about a girl who went missing during the Big Day Out in 1997.
Many performers fall down on the between-song chat, but Miller-Heidke is very funny. After Lose My Shit, she describes her previous appearance at the Opera House in Jerry Springer the Opera, in which she played Baby Jane, a woman who had a fetish for dressing in baby clothes. “My big number was called Mama Give me Smack on the Asshole. I was going to say I’d gone up in the world,” she points out, “but then I just sang a song about shit.”
As well as her formidable musical talents, her ability to create a feeling of intimacy with the audience no doubt enabled Miller-Heidke to crowdfund her latest album O Vertigo! in just three days. The Abba-meets-Owen Pallett title track is one of many highlights; others include a guest appearance by Josh Pyke for the touching love duet Share Your Air; and a shiver-inducing reading of the Divinyls' I'm Jealous.
Proceedings conclude with a truly baroque version of Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, which takes in a detour involving the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. It’s a fittingly bonkers end to a night in which Miller-Heidke's singular talents were displayed in all their gaudy colours.
