A new Australian opera based on Peter Carey’s award-winning 1988 novel Oscar and Lucinda is among the highlights of Carriageworks’ season next year. Sydney Chamber Opera will give the world premiere of the opera, composed by Elliott Gyger, with a libretto by Pierce Wilcox, and directed by Patrick Nolan. Carey’s novel, which won the 1988 Booker Prize and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award, tells the story of an Anglican priest and an industrialist – both gamblers – who dream of building a glass cathedral and transporting it from colonial-era Sydney to Bellingen. This will be Gyger’s second opera, and his second to be premiered by Sydney Chamber Opera, following Fly Away Peter in 2015.

Oscar and Lucinda. Photo © Samuel Hodge

Oscar and Lucinda won’t be the first Carey novel to receive operatic treatment, with Brett Dean’s Bliss – with libretto by Amanda Holden – premiering to great success for Opera Australia in 2010 before going on to performances overseas.

A Drone Opera. Photo © Lucy Spartalis

Carriageworks has also announced another opera on its 2019 season. A Drone Opera, by Australian visual artist Matthew Sleeth, created...