Opera Australia’s new Artistic Director Jo Davies will move to Australia in November this year to take up the reins of the company. In the interim, CEO Fiona Allan invited Lindy Hume to program OA’s 2024 Sydney Summer Season. Hume describes it as “a celebratory entr’acte or interlude before this next chapter in the vibrant history of Australia’s national opera company”.

The five-production season opens with Sarah Giles’ feminist reading of Verdi’s La traviata. Co-produced by Opera Queensland, State Opera South Australia and West Australian Opera, it premiered in Brisbane in 2022 and has been well received in each of the three hosting cities. 

Ben Mingay and Stacey Alleaume, stars of OA’s 2024 Magic Flute. Photo © Rhiannon Hopley/Opera Australia

In a partnership with Sydney Festival, OA will stage Gluck’s Orpheus & Eurydice. Directed by Yaron Lifschitz, the exciting co-production between Opera Queensland and Brisbane-based contemporary circus Circa, which premiered in Brisbane in 2019, is set in a mental asylum.

There will be two Mozart operas: a new, English language production of The Magic Flute, directed by Kate Gaul, and...