Event List

Lerner & Loewe

Celebrating the beloved original, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady comes to the Sydney Opera House in August 2016, under the direction of Julie Andrews.

Handa presents

The Premier had a vision for an opera house. The architect had a dream of a building unlike any other. The young soprano had a great talent and a big choice ahead of her. This is a story of a building — but few buildings in the world catch so many personalities, so many agendas and so many dreams in its sails.

Step into the the Sydney Opera House's magnificent Concert Hall to watch the Opera Gala concert of popular arias by Verdi, Puccini, and Rossini, with Sydney's New Year's Eve fireworks at interval.

Puccini

Leave the crowds behind as you enter the Sydney Opera House, then settle back for an evening with Rodolfo, Mimi, Marcello and Musetta in Puccini's La bohème.

The way that first love grabs hold of your insides and floods you with something you've never felt before. The fire that burns you the first time jealousy flares. The growing up you do in the instant you realise love can't last forever. Puccini takes these achingly human feelings and sets them to music — music that soars with the ecstacy of love, crackles with the pain of jealousy and cries with the agony of loss. Gale Edwards' glittering production, set in the bohemian streets of 1930s Berlin, offers a perfect showcase for Mariangela Sicilia in the role of Mimì.

Puccini

The way that first love grabs hold of your insides and floods you with something you've never felt before. The fire that burns you the first time jealousy flares. The growing up you do in the instant you realise love can't last forever. Puccini takes these achingly human feelings and sets them to music — music that soars with the ecstacy of love, crackles with the pain of jealousy and cries with the agony of loss. Gale Edwards' glittering production, set in the bohemian streets of 1930s Berlin, offers a perfect showcase for Mariangela Sicilia and Greta Bradman, sharing the role of Mimì.

Mascagni / Leoncavallo

Roll up for a double dose of desperation and drama in this classic double bill of tragedies with stories that cut all too close to home. In a small Italian town, lusting after someone who is not yours is a dangerous game. And falling in love? Even more treacherous. Two short operas explore the full spectrum of emotion: passionate love, consuming lust, bitter suffering and boundless rage.

Szymanowski

Watching his wife dance under the stranger's spell, King Roger struggles with his own passions: choosing between the sacred love he knows and the sensuous, glittering realm of hedonism the shepherd preaches. Szymanowski's intoxicating, iridescent music is rarely heard on the opera stage, so don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear a 20th-century Polish masterpiece.

Verdi

Violetta wears velvet and lace and drinks the very best champagne from crystal glasses. Her parties are legendary, her company sought after. She's free and free-spirited, living outside society's bounds, and for the courtesan, it seems like the party will never end. Could a little love really change everything?

Puccini

Tosca is a war drama that draws you in from the first notes and holds you fast, as a gripping story of love, lust and betrayal that unfolds at breakneck pace. John Bell's intense production relocates the opera to Nazi-occupied Rome, seeking to recapture the shock Puccini's original audience might have felt seeing a war they remembered, depicted on stage.

Bizet

This is Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour: the cultural event of the year. At sunset, gather with friends over a glass of something sparkling and a sumptuous Spanish meal before settling back to enjoy our vivacious, vivid production of Bizet’s Carmen.

Robert Greene

All of your favourite operetta waltzes, polkas and songs by Strauss, Offenbach, Lehár and Kálmán come together in this raucous comedy. Two Weddings, One Bride is a brand new operetta created by Robert Greene. Gather for a fun night out at the Sydney Opera House and let the sumptuous costumes, pretty sets and joyful melodies take you all the way to French Morocco.

Join us in the Joan Sutherland Studio at The Opera Centre, Surry Hills, for fascinating programs of songs chosen and performed by some of our favourite singers, accompanied by Siro Battaglin.

Saturday 3 June, 2:30pm — Natalie Aroyan & José Carbó sing Armenian and Argentinian songs and duets.
Saturday 17 June, 2:30pm — Stacey Alleaume sings a solo program, and John Longmuir & Agnes Sarkis sing The Diary of the Man Who Disappeared by Janáček.
Saturday 29 July, 2:30pm — Jonathan Abernethy & Anna Dowsley sing Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf.

Pinchgut Opera presents

Program

Rameau Anacréon
Vinci Erighetta e Don Chilone
Rameau Pigmalion

Presented by Pinchgut Opera, these three perfect operatic miniatures are sparkling, diverting, lyrical pieces centered on short stories that revolve around the themes of love, wine and pleasure.

Massenet

For all the fame and beauty of the music of Thaïs, the best reason to perform this French opera is to show off Nicole Car: a star soprano with a voice that could turn a monk's attention from chaste disregard to irrepressible desire. For the best availability, book seats for the new performance on Monday 24 July. 

Wagner

Jonas Kaufmann is the greatest tenor of our time, and he returns to the Sydney Opera House to perform one of opera's most challenging roles in a rare concert performance of Wagner's final opera. In a story drawn from the Arthurian legends of holy relics, enchanted maidens and faithful knights, the fate of the knights rest on the shoulders of a pure fool, Parsifal.

Concert Performance

Sorrow, desire, anger, fear — Verdi's Requiem is a thrilling journey of intense human emotion, as dramatic as any opera. Performed by the Opera Australia Chorus with an international cast of Verdi specialists, this is a true choral masterpiece.

Recital

Glamourous divas and showy tenors are used to the spotlight, but it's a rare performer who can take a sonorous bass and make it world famous. Ferrucio Furlanetto is that performer: a gifted singer-actor with a captivating voice. He returns to Sydney after his acclaimed performances as King Philip II in Don Carlos to give two recitals with pianist Igor Tchetuev in the intimate surrounds of City Recital Hall.

Wednesday 27 September, 7pm — Schubert's Winterreise
Friday 29 September, 7pm — Russian Songs by Rachmaninov & Mussorgsky

Puccini

A young Japanese geisha falls head-over-heels in love with her new American husband. She believes their love is real, even after three years without so much as a word from him. Everyone around her knows the trth. They try to convince her to move on but she won't. She can't. Rejected by her past, and forgotten by the man she loves, she waits.

Pinchgut Opera presents

Distinguished for its superbly crafted characterisation, Coronation of Poppea is the first opera to have been based on historical figures, and is set to sensuous, exquisitely beautiful music, culminating in the famous duet 'Pur ti miro'.