In 2019, Lost and Found Opera staged the world premiere of Luke Styles and Peter Goldsworthy’s chamber opera Ned Kelly at Perth Festival. The following year, the company went into self-imposed hibernation. Six years on, Lost and Found is being relaunched at the same festival where it last saw the light of day, with a production of Philip Glass’s 2014 ‘pocket’ opera The Trial.

Staged in an empty office space in Forrest Chase – one of Perth’s central shopping complexes – the site-specific production promises to deliver everything that Lost and Found was set up to achieve.

The company was established in 2012 by Thomas de Mallet Burgess and Chris van Tuinen with a mission to present unusual operas in found spaces that would enhance the work’s resonance and help attract a broader opera audience.

Jarred Wall in  The Trial for Lost and Found Opera, staged as part of Perth Festival. Photo © Cole Baxter

In its first seven years, it presented 10 productions including Ned Kelly in an old timber mill in Jarrahdale, Charpentier’s Actéon at the University of Western Australia’s Aquatic Centre, Bizet’s...