Before Melba… there was Anna Bishop.
Long before women could vote, let alone take centre stage, one woman rewrote the rules.
Opera’s Bad Girl is a unique theatrical experience that tells the untamed true story of Anna Bishop — opera’s original rebel. A Victorian-era trailblazer who defied her time, she lived fast, sang farther, and dared to do what no woman had done before.

From scandal to spotlight, Anna Bishop was unstoppable: leaving her famous composer husband, defying polite society by running off with her harpist lover. Her globe-trotting adventure so wild it reads like fiction: shipwrecks, tiger attacks, hostage-takings, war zones, and epidemics — and through it all, she sang. To royalty. To rebels. To packed houses on every continent — including three history-making tours of Australia, where she performed in the goldfields and helped shape our musical identity.