Arts figures have joined the campaign to stop Monash closing the school at the end of the year, while a proposed scrapping of musicology units has drawn international condemnation.

The MEAA has said the redundancies “will reduce the company to a shell”.

Neil Armfield’s staging of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will headline.

Funded by the venue's donors, partners and contractors, New Work Now will commission a broad range of work from companies including Sydney Chamber Opera and the Indigenous World Art Orchestra.

The ten-day festival will feature live music from Mahalia Barnes, Elysian Fields, Gai Bryant, Melody Riviera and many more, as well as Brazilian bossa-nova singer and nylon string guitarist Anna Setton streaming in from São Paulo.

Theatres and concert halls will be able to seat up to 1000 people, while restrictions on choirs and wind instruments in schools have been eased slightly.

The orchestra’s Music and Memory pilot program, which saw musicians perform live music for people with dementia, has yielded a number of positive impacts.

Opera Queensland, Queensland Ballet, Queensland Symphony Orchestra Queensland Theatre and Circa will all perform live in the coming months in a program called Queensland’s Own.

The new production of the Australian opera will see State Opera South Australia return to a newly renovated Her Majesty’s Theatre.

The new-look Limelight magazine includes major features written by Steve Dow, Jan Bowen, Harriet Cunningham and Clive Paget.

The 30 semi-finalists, who had made the unanimous decision to withdraw from the competition, have hit back at the claim by the RGE that the scholarship was cancelled in order to protect them from bullying.

The innovative online platform is teaming up with the National Art School to broadcast concerts from the Cell Block Theatre.