These are challenging times for Australia’s national opera company, and not just because many critics and operamanes question whether Opera Australia is in fact remotely ‘national’ in terms of programming.

Since 2020 the company has recorded consecutive operating losses. Recently, it lost its artistic director (Jo Davies) and its CEO (Fiona Allan). Reviews of some of its 2024 productions were lukewarm at best. The ill-fated production of Sunset Boulevard – presumably a loss-making venture – has reignited concerns about OA’s commercial reliance on musicals and led many to ask whether an ‘opera’ company handsomely funded by Creative Australia should be dependent on such repertoire.

OA’s appearances in Melbourne are few and tokenistic, reviving old resentments about the loss of the much-lamented Victoria State Opera in 1996. Smaller companies around Australia – some of them unfunded by government – are providing innovative programming, to critical acclaim.

Currently, Creative Australia is undertaking a review of OA’s management and operations. The review will be led by Gabrielle Trainor, a lawyer and former journalist. Creative Australia has told ABR Arts: ‘As we do with many organisations, Creative Australia is working alongside Opera Australia to strengthen its sustainability. To this end, we are commissioning a review of its governance frameworks, which will identify any potential areas for improvement based on leading practice. The report will not be publicly available.’

ABR Arts wonders why a taxpayer-funded review of such importance for the art form will not be made available to opera lovers and arts professionals. Why should it be a purely internal process, without public feedback? Transparency, surely, is a good thing.

In this special feature, ABR Arts has invited leading arts critics, editors and professionals to comment on OA’s present exigencies and how the company should operate in the future. It seems timely to reflect on what kind of national company we need and can sustain, with reference to scale, funding, repertoire, artistic vision, leadership, and national scope.

                                                Peter Rose, ABR Arts

Michael Shmith

The chronology of Australia’s national opera company stretches back for almost seventy years, with several changes of name along the way: The Australian Opera Company; The Elizabethan Trust Opera Company; The Australian Opera; Australian National Opera (this was swiftly changed after it was pointed out ANO means ‘anus’ in Italian); and, in 1996, Opera Australia.

At one time, these two words – ‘Opera’ and ‘Australia’ – were accurate, denoting the organisation’s principal function and where it performed. Now, those words ring hollow: ‘Opera’, supposedly still at the forefront of OA’s activities, remains under threat from the company’s frequent forays into musical theatre; ‘Australia’ could be loosely interpreted as ‘Sydney and environs’. In terms of influence and reach, the company has lost its way

I have just been reading Stephen Mould’s masterly book about the Italian conductor Carlo Felice Cillario, who worked with OA for thirty-five years and led more than one thousand performances. Cillario, along with many of those he worked with, deeply respected the purpose of a national company (when that actually meant something) and knew full well what those words entailed. For example, in 1956, The Elizabethan Trust Opera Company performed four Mozart operas in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, and Melbourne. Among the cast were the young Australian singers Geoffrey Chard, Neil Warren-Smith, and John Shaw, all of whom would grace the company for decades. This was indeed opera and Australia in the one breath.

The vital thing this nascent company achieved was the establishment and consolidation of respect and trust from the very people without whom no cultural circuit can be completed: the audience. The true art of maintaining this relationship lies in bringing your audiences along with you – for performance after performance, generation after generation. Therein lies the beauty of the endless replenishment of an art form which has existed for centuries and should never be allowed to die.

Now what? Given OA’s recent series of ruinous governmental, financial, managerial, and artistic upheavals, it is rhetorical to enquire if public confidence has been maintained. It is also pointless, since OA presently lacks an artistic director and a chief executive and is also awaiting the results of Creative Australia’s review into its culture, morale and structure. Meanwhile, scuttlebutt rages, with talk of OA abandoning Melbourne entirely, and a rumoured proposal to replace the artistic director position with a triumvirate of music director, opera producer, and commercial director. That’s two more salaries, by the way.

What OA must do, somehow, is to begin to regain the trust and respect of its audiences, or putative audiences. This cannot be achieved simply by preparing reports or by deploying weasel words such as ‘audience engagement’. Trust and respect are precious things that must be earned.

Meanwhile, the greater casualty of this whole messy saga is the art form itself. The so-called flagship company is doing little to assuage a growing public apathy towards opera. The answer, let me quickly say, is not simply to do fewer operas and more musicals, or to transplant operas on to the water or into the middle of a tennis court. It comes back to restoring faith – for the good of Opera Australia and for opera itself.

Michael Shmith is a former arts editor of The Age and co-edited The New Pocket Kobbe’s Opera Book (2000).

Eucalyptus, a joint production by Victorian Opera and Opera Australia in 2024 (photograph by Charlie Kinross)

Robyn Archer   

Opera? There’s plenty of it about. By the end of 2024 we had seen Jonathan Mills’s Eucalyptus in Perth, Brisbane, and Melbourne. This new opera was commissioned years ago by Opera Australia but not produced by it: that necessary outcome came about through a collaboration between Victorian Opera and the Perth and Brisbane Festivals.

Melbourne Opera has just presented Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Pinchgut Opera will present Purcell, Pergolesi, and Handel in Sydney this year. Richard Mills’s passion continues in Brisbane, where the Bel Canto Festival presents Rossini’s Cinderella, while Sydney Festival presents an international production of Massenet’s version. Queensland Opera’s program overall is diverse and regionally spread. Victorian Opera’s strong season has Mozart sitting next to Janáček, Martin Wesley Smith, Sondheim, plus a season in Ballarat. State Opera SA (known in recent years for its diversity) has a small program this year but begins bravely with Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence for the Adelaide Festival (the most outstanding presenter over the last few years of significant international opera productions). WA Opera has been more conservative.

All in all, there’s quite a lot on offer, and that doesn’t include smaller outfits like Co-Opera in South Australia. While traditional works still attract older audiences, younger theatregoers seem happy to turn up for the more adventurous programming presented by smaller companies and major festivals. No doubt the aficionado will immediately question quality and authenticity, since this is one of the age-old games – who sang it best? which production rules? etc. – but the fact is that the form is alive, even if everyone is scratching around for more funding.

So where does a national company fit in?

Significantly, in the two capitals without an opera company, Hobart and Darwin (both have festival platforms that could present new contemporary small-scale opera – and Ten Days on the Island certainly has in the past), Opera Australia presents La bohème in Hobart and The Barber of Seville in Darwin. This goes against my grain: touring old classics to Hobart and Darwin will not guarantee the genre’s future. I believe that preservation and development of the form should be a strong part of any national company’s responsibilities. I would like to see a national opera company presenting Eucalyptus in those capitals, even in concert form, as it has in Perth.

What is a national company anyway? For me, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Bangarra are good examples: they tour quality work which explores past traditions in a contemporary context. Both have significant international reputations and followings, they are distinctly Australian, and inherent in their work is a desire to support and enhance their genres. Does Opera Australia currently measure up?

When trying to assess its qualifications, and therefore funding, as ‘national’, the inclusion of musicals comes into question. If the programming of musicals has been about access, and if the company has demonstrated serious efforts to entice that audience to explore the greater depths of opera – especially the newly commissioned and produced Australian kind – it might make sense. But musical theatre is everywhere. There has been no demonstrated crossover from Sydney Harbour to the Joan Sutherland Theatre, and if the only impetus in presenting musicals is to make money to support opera, what happens when the musical makes a loss? It simply results in greater debt and even less inclination to take the unavoidable risk of supporting and commissioning new opera and ensuring that it reaches the widest possible audience. A low-range flight to the predictable middle of the path usually results in a downward spiral and ultimate crash. Time and again, the vehicle is patched up and allowed to wobble along.

The instinct to play it safe comes from a mistaken idea that real opera can only mean traditionally staged Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, and a bit of Mozart. Along with imaginative stagings of classics, contemporary opera is a genre that many artists want to explore and that younger audiences want to see. I think of just some the Australian artists I was privileged to support in my role as a festival artistic director: David Young, Liza Lim, David Chesworth, Moya Henderson, Andrew Ford, Jonathan Mills, Andree Greenwell, Paul Grabowsky, and Allan John. All of them have chosen the operatic form from time to time. I have no doubt there are many younger artists who are turning not just to musical theatre but to the generally more serious operatic form.

A national company has to shine a bright, invigorating light on that form, to inspire artists and challenge widespread audiences, as well as entertaining them. If it can’t do that, we should allow other opera companies large and small to share the wealth and do the job.

There is no national opera company in France, Germany, or America, yet those countries produce excellent work. They rely on individual opera houses, complemented by companies producing smaller-scale and experimental works. The quality and diversity of British output also depends on regional contributions such as those of Scottish Opera and the Welsh National Opera. Perhaps, in Australia, we need to consider a dispersed and perhaps healthier ecology, allowing Sydney to take its place among a rich national diversity. If the argument runs that no single company can afford to produce a lavish all-star production, collaboration is surely the answer. The basis of the Major Festivals Fund is to get extra federal funding for big projects. and that requires the cooperation of at least two major festivals. An opera model could work in the same way: two or three companies, plus festivals, to create a new production that would then tour. This is precisely what happened with Eucalyptus. Such collaborations would ensure that more of us would be able to experience the art form.

Robyn Archer AO was Artistic Director of the National Festival of Australian Theatre, the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals, and Deputy Chair of The Australia Council, among other major roles in the Arts. Robyn is an ABR Laureate.

John Allison                          

Opera Australia’s problems are undeniably serious, yet far from unique, and only confirm a universal maxim: behind every dysfunctional opera company there lies a dysfunctional board. Although I am conscious of contributing to this feature as an outsider, it seems clear enough, even from the other side of the world, that every wrong turn the company has taken in recent years can be traced back to its board. Hasty appointments have been made, for the wrong reasons, and short-term financial fixes sought. To truly fix OA the board itself must first be fixed: bluntly put, that means dismantled and then reconstituted with the best trustees available in Australia.

OA is, after all, a national company – the biggest performing arts organisation in the country – and deserves the best. Identifying what ‘national’ means in this context has always been an issue, and its meaning has probably changed. That includes OA’s wider responsibilities – or not – to the country as a whole. Though there were very good reasons fifteen years ago to make Melbourne a secondary base – one that recognised essential differences between Sydney and Melbourne, cannily putting on outdoor spectacle in one city and hypnotising Wagnerians in the other – the operatic landscape in Australia has changed and Melbourne has seen its own opera companies flourish. Looking forward, why should the New South Wales-based company favour Victoria over the other states? A worldwide drift away from touring opera in favour of more locally rooted companies sees many national companies now performing only in their countries’ biggest cities.

Is OA’s current board able to take such decisions? Evidently not. I am reminded of what one of America’s most inspiring musical leaders, Thomas W. Morris, wrote in his memoir, Always the Music (2024): ‘I have never found institutional problems that didn’t ultimately originate with the board – a bad music director is a board problem, an ineffective chief executive is a board problem, anaemic fundraising is a board problem, continuing financial distress is a board problem.’

In Sydney, no one seems to be questioning why the traditional model of the classical music machine persists despite at least two major disruptions worldwide: the rise of the internet and the Covid-19 pandemic, both of which have broken long-established audience habits. There is little point now in looking back even a decade or two to see what worked; things have changed, but it takes leaders of vision to acknowledge this. When it comes to OA’s recent past, if it is indeed no longer the case that putting on musicals can save the box office, it would be better to leave such enterprises to commercial theatre and to develop a new artistic strategy.

Ah, artistic strategy … Identifying a board capable of identifying OA’s next leader is now a matter of urgent necessity. The appointee should be someone steeped in opera (in its widest sense), both old and new, and full of fresh ideas. After all, great artistic leaders take the public with them. Audiences – and donors – always respond to artistic vision.

John Allison is Editor of Opera magazine.

Peter Tregear           

The current crisis at Opera Australia, and its attendant review by Creative Australia should, in theory, offer us a chance to think afresh about opera’s place (literally as well as figuratively) in modern-day Australia. Those of us who follow these things, however, could be forgiven for keeping expectations low. The history of operatic policy making in Australia is one littered with failed promises, half-measures, and earlier reviews gathering dust in arts ministers’ drawers.

To put it bluntly, we are not good in this country at thinking about ourselves through the lens of high culture and thus articulating a case for it. On the rare occasions that we do, we are also, understandably, concerned to move beyond relying on substantively European modes of cultural expression that can seem to speak inadequately to, or about, either our pre-colonial past or our multi-ethnic present. For that reason alone, Opera Australia needs above all to have a reinvigorated and clear sense of its public mission. I suspect that some of its troubles of late arise from a widely held view that it currently doesn’t have such a sense.

To be sure, I do think there remain compelling arguments for why substantial public investment in this art form should continue in Australia. Notwithstanding its origins in Renaissance Italy, opera is part of a genuinely global cultural inheritance. It would be odd indeed were the Australian government to lose confidence in investing in it just as the reverse is happening across the wider Southeast Asian region

A key reason for this continuing global currency lies in the simple fact that more and more of us are living in cities and that opera is an urban art form par excellence. The significance of aristocratic patronage to its origin story notwithstanding, opera grew to become the principal medium through which burgeoning urban populations, initially in Europe but soon across most of the globe, came together to hear and see stylised representations of their own lives and concerns. It’s not for nothing that so many nineteenth-century operatic heroines die of ‘consumption’, a pre-eminently urban malady.

Would it be better if the ‘national’ company also become something more profoundly connected to a particular place? It is worth asking, for instance, why its current interstate touring model is one conspicuously not followed in comparable countries like the United States or the United Kingdom (there is no equivalent British Opera, or United States Opera). A new, devolved funding model might also help strengthen more repertoire-ambitious and fleet-of-foot companies such as State Opera of South Australia, Victorian Opera, West Australian Opera, Melbourne Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, and Pinchgut. 

We also need a company that more confidently and securely grounds its work in both the operatic canon and in new Australian compositions. While the occasional foray into commercial music theatre repertoire might help the company’s bottom line in the short term, it cannot but serve to weaken the underlying case for ongoing public subsidy. That ultimately will be grounded in the fact that Opera Australia exists to advocate for, and perform, works that the Australian public might otherwise not experience live. Therein lies the key reason why it should be (at the very least partially) protected from the vagaries of the fully commercial stage.

Whatever the managerial structure and scope of operations it determines that that Opera Australia should adopt, let us hope that the current review empowers, indeed mandates, the company better to articulate why this art form – along with art museums, galleries, and state-funded ensembles – is a valuable expression of a public good.

Peter Tregear is a former Head of the School of Music at the Australian National University.

Michael Halliwell                              

Opera in Australia, as in many other countries, is facing existential pressures and challenges for which current structures and arrangements are often not appropriate. Most opera outside of Europe receives limited public funding when compared with the levels of government subsidy in major European cities. At the other extreme is the Metropolitan Opera, which is largely funded by endowments and donations. Opera in Australia falls somewhat in the middle. The recent management issues at Opera Australia need no rehearsing here, and a shake-up is welcome. There are a wide range of possibilities in terms of what the future direction of the company might be.

Perhaps I might offer a radical suggestion. Instead of a national company attempting to spread itself around a physically large country, why not focus on five major companies situated in five capital cities? There are already four in place, and resources from Opera Australia could be redistributed among the existing companies and a new Opera New South Wales established in Sydney. Productions could be shared; outreach and educational work would be distinct within individual states. 

The announcement that there might be three management positions – music director, opera producer, and commercial director – in a revamped OA makes sense. A form of this structure is in place in many opera houses. From personal experience as a member of the Hamburg Opera many years ago, this kind of structure worked very well, with Christoph Von Dohnányi an outstanding hands-on music director. Some years later, Simone Young was equally effective in Hamburg in this kind of structure.

Repertoire is a source of eternal dissatisfaction. One might argue that a national company should have at its core works by the ‘great five’ (Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss). My personal view is that there must be new operas on a regular basis if the art form is to survive. Many new operas will disappear after one production, but opportunities and resources should be given to rising composers who have demonstrated musical skill and know-how regarding opera – who do not only know how to write effective instrumental music, but who deeply understand the art form. There are several smaller companies where composers are given a chance to develop their craft: Opera Australia’s recent collaboration with the Sydney Chamber Opera on Jack Symons’s Gilgamesh is an example. 

Should the ‘national’ company have a strong educational presence? The Young Artist Program, in many iterations, has enjoyed mixed success. It might be time to develop an opera studio of the kind that exists in many European companies of various sizes. This would be an integral part of the opera company’s training brief, but would also have direct links with a suitable higher education institution possessing a proven track record in high-quality opera education. Logical candidates would be the Sydney Conservatorium or the Victorian College of the Arts. Opera training in Australia – a relatively small sector – needs to be much more concentrated and focused than is presently the case.

Michael Halliwell was principal baritone for many years with the Netherlands Opera, the Nürnberg Municipal Opera, and the Hamburg State Opera. He has served as Chair of Vocal Studies and Opera, Pro-Dean and Head of School, and Associate Dean (Research) at the Sydney Conservatorium.