Opera Australia

Opera Australia which is based in Sydney, is Australia's major opera company. Its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne, Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, attended by more than 294,000 people.

Like most opera companies, it is funded by a combination of government money, corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, and ticket sales. The proportion of its revenue from ticket sales is considerably higher than that of most companies, approximately 75%.

As well as the traditional classical repertoire, a number of Australian operas have been premiered by the company, including the recent Lindy (2002), by Moya Henderson, which is based on the Lindy Chamberlain case. Opera Australia will be giving the first performances outside America of Andre Previn's opera A Streetcar Named Desire in its 2007 Sydney season.

The company is perhaps best known internationally for its association with Dame Joan Sutherland, one of the most famous sopranos of the 1980s, and Baz Luhrmann's attention-grabbing production of Puccini's La bohème in the early 1990s.

By the end of 2004, Opera Australia provided employment to approximately 1,300 Australians. OzOpera (Opera Australia's education, access and development arm) presented the La bohème production in Victoria, Northern Territory and Western Australia, attended by 13,350 people, while OzOpera's Schools Company performed to over 63,500 primary age children in more than 360 performances in urban and regional New South Wales and Victoria. Many thousands of Australians also experienced the work of their national opera company through television, radio, video, compact disc, DVD, and the annual free performance of opera in the Domain in Sydney.

Australian Opera Company 1956-57

In 1956, the Australian Opera Company was formed in Sydney under the auspices of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. It commemorated the Mozart bicentenary by presenting four Mozart operas in all capital cities, travelling more than 10,000 kilometres, and giving 169 performances. A truly national company was in place.

Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company, 1957-70

By 1957, it changed its name to the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company.

In the years before 1970, the company gave its first regional tour with Rossini's The Barber of Seville using a small chorus and reduced scenery with only a piano accompaniment. However, by 1963 a permanent nucleus of singers and staff was retained throughout the year and the company had made appearances at regional festivals, including Adelaide. It also was able to establish the first Elizabethan Trust Orchestra for the company by 1967 with additional government aid.

While not yet appearing with this company, Joan Sutherland, then an internationally known Australian soprano, and her husband, Richard Bonynge, the conductor, by the mid-1960s helped the cause of opera in general in Australia.

Another milestone was a television recording of Puccini’s Tosca for broadcasting. This starred internationally-known baritone, Tito Gobbi in addition to two Australian singers, the soprano Marie Collier and tenor Donald Smith.

The Australian Opera, 1970-96

In 1970, the company became known as The Australian Opera. The 1970s saw considerable changes both in administration and location. In 1972, Edward Downes, formerly associated with London’s Royal Opera House, became Musical Director, and his first new production was the Australian premiere of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, followed closely by Prokofiev's War and Peace as the opening night performance of the brand new Sydney Opera House.

The Sydney Opera House, as well as quickly becoming a distinctive cultural landmark in that city, gave the company a permanent performance home and thus helped to expand its repertoire and develop local audiences. Audiences were certainly boosted by Joan Sutherland’s performances with The Australian Opera in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. In addition, in the 1974 season three Australian works were performed : The Affair by Felix Werder, Lenz by Larry Sitsky, and Rites of Passage by Peter Sculthorpe.

By 1976 Richard Bonynge had become Musical Director and he led the company on its first overseas tour to New Zealand with Verdi's Rigoletto and Janáček's Jenufa. This was followed in 1978 by the first Australian Opera country tour with orchestra to north-western New South Wales and Queensland.

During the 1980s, after many years of recording performances by the Australian Opera for television, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and The Australian Opera presented their first live simulcast, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, and it was seen by more than two million people. Over the following years a series of simulcasts reached millions of Australian homes.

On the popular front, a big box office success was the appearance of Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House in 1983, with the Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge. This nationally simulcast performance broke box office records for an indoor event. Another successful concert with Sutherland and Marilyn Horne was held in the Concert Hall.

In addition, several innovative features characterized this period of the 1980s. The first “Esso Opera in the Park” in the Sydney Domain quickly became an annual event, and it is now called “Opera in the Domain”. Typically, it attracts almost 100,000 people each year. A similar annual outdoor event, which attracts more than 25,000 people, is held in Melbourne. The second was the establishment of “The Esso Young Artists' Development Program” for the Australian Opera under the direction of soprano Cynthia Johnston, while the third was the “Australian Compositions Program” launched with a new production of Brian Howard's Metamorphosis.

Also, at this time, the fourth of these innovative programs began with “The National Opera Workshop”, established to enable selected Australian composers present works in workshop form with artists from the Australian Opera. Lastly, “OperaAction”, the “Youth Education Program” established a program of events, including three Youth performances of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and, in 1986, Winds of the Solstice, an original youth opera created by 70 students working on libretto, music, choreography and orchestration and presented at the Sydney Opera House.

In 1988, in association with the Australian Bicentennial Authority, the company toured Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and the National Opera Workshop in Melbourne with The Ra Project, a music-theatre work composed with the direct participation from the earliest stages of the singers who performed it and marking director Baz Luhrmann's first association with the Australian Opera.

When she retired from the operatic stage, Dame Joan Sutherland gave her farewell performances for the Australian Opera in 1990 in a production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Two years later, the company named its major rehearsal studio after Dame Joan.

The early 1990s were to see two important changes in the way that the company worked: firstly, in 1991, with the formation of the “Artistic Associates of The Australian Opera”, a body of people was created which comprised some of the most important figures in the Australian musical and performing arts world. Secondly, the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra was integrated with the Australian Opera to produce a permanent opera and ballet orchestra for the company.

In its first performances outside Australasia in 1994, the company performed Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Edinburgh International Festival. In addition, the Baz Luhrmann production of La bohème was screened over more than 300 North American television stations, followed by worldwide video release.

Opera Australia, 1996 to present

Opera Australia was formed by the merger of the Australian Opera and the Victorian State Opera (VSO) companies in 1996, following a major review, commissioned by the Australian Government, of the government-supported performing arts companies in Australia. At this time Lindy Hume, then Artistic Director of the VSO, was appointed Artistic Director of OzOpera. Richard Gill succeeded her in 2003.

It undertook a "pilot" regional tour of Mozart's The Magic Flute to four states. Following performances at the Adelaide Festival, OzOpera performed The Magic Flute in The Barracks at Queenscliff, the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra, and in a cinema in Mudgee.

The first few years of the present century saw the retirement of Moffatt Oxenbould, Opera Australia's Artistic Director for 15 years, and the appointment of Simone Young as Musical Director-designate. She assumed the position fully from 2001. To honour the retiring director, the Young Artists' Program was renamed the “Moffatt Oxenbould Young Artists' Development Program”. By 2003 Richard Hickox was appointed Music Director-designate, which became fully effective from January 2005.

Educational Outreach

In 1977 Opera Australia's younger parent company, Victoria State Opera (VSO), which itself was established as a successor to the Victorian Opera Company created the Schools Company which remains a cornerstone of Opera Australia activity. Now performing in New South Wales and Victoria, the Schools Company is administered by OzOpera which tours smaller centres and performs in non-traditional settings (for instance, for school groups). Its music director is Richard Gill, and it is administered from Opera Australia's Melbourne office. Esso and its successor Exxon-Mobil have sponsored the Schools Company regularly since 1984 under the direction of soprano Cynthia Johnson. With the establishment of an Education program, Opera Access, in 1978 secondary students were able to attend opera.

External links

• Opera Australia
• Reviews, articles, production photos and future schedules for Opera Australia from The Opera Critic
• The Australian Opera - the operas performed during (1970-1996)