2019 Season

Verdi

Elijah Moshinsky’s much-loved production of Rigoletto returns to the Arts Centre Melbourne stage, complete with its glamorous La Dolce Vita-inspired sets and costumes, and scene-stealing car. The revolving dollhouse style set gives a cinematic detail to each scene.

Andrea Licata returns to conduct an exciting cast of international and homegrown stars. Melbourne soprano Stacey Alleaume makes her debut as Gilda with Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, who won the Audience Prize at the 2015 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, as Rigoletto, and remarkable young Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan sings the Duke of Mantua.

Rossini

If Rossini made a showreel of his best work, it would sound like Il Viaggio a Reims (The Journey to Reims). In Damiano Michieletto’s playful take, the eccentric cast of characters find themselves in a gallery filled with the master works of art history. It’s a surreal world, where artworks step out of the frame and come to life the moment the lights go out.

Giordano

Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann returns to Australia in one of his most celebrated roles. A concert performance of Andrea Chénier offers the perfect showcase for his “dark, liquid tone, which soars through the music with refined ease and intensity” (The Guardian).

Reimann

Aribert Reimann’s 1984 opera is a haunting and evocative chamber work, exploring Strindberg’s moody text with complex rhythms and other-worldly tones. Director Greg Eldridge creates a chilling picture of Strindberg’s Stockholm in this new staging at the The Coopers Malthouse.

Strauss, Offenbach, Lehár and more

All of your favourite operetta waltzes, polkas and songs by Strauss, Offenbach, Lehár and Kálmán come together in this raucous musical comedy created by Robert Andrew Greene after some of the biggest names in operetta. Some of Australia’s hottest young talents join musical theatre stalwarts John Bolton Wood and Geraldine Turner in this frivolous farce.

Opera Australia presents

When Bryn Terfel sings, everyone stops to listen. The superstar Welshman performs some of his favourite songs across many genres, with the backing of a magnificent orchestra. Once you’ve heard his interpretations, they’ll be your favourites too.

Puccini

Turandot is a fantasy opera of poetry and myth, set in an exotic world where fear and love go hand in hand and death is always just around the corner. ‘Nessun dorma’ is just one of its magnificent moments. Renowned conductor Christian Badea returns to Australia to conduct a thrilling cast: Lise Lindstrom as the ice princess, Walter Fraccaro as the man determined to win her heart and Karah Son as his devoted servant, Liù.

Gounod

Faust intends to win his heart’s desires, even if it costs him his soul. Led into temptation by the charming Méphistophélès, the ageing academic swaps moral restraint for a salacious journey through life’s earthly pleasures. But as the lives around him start to unravel, the devil, it seems, is in the detail. French maestro Guillaume Tourniaire leads an exciting cast. Saimir Pirgu sings the title role with the impossibly young Kazakh soprano, Maria Mudryak, as Marguerite. Teddy Tahu Rhodes is dazzling as Méphistophélès.