The Australian organisations are on the longlist for the Innovation Award at the 2017 conference in Rotterdam.

Victorian Opera and classical music street press publication CutCommon have made the longlist for the 2017 Classical:NEXT Innovation Award. The award is part of the Classical:NEXT conference to be held this year in Rotterdam and has been running since 2015. It is designed to draw attention to forward-thinking activities taking place around the world.

“This award aims to give international recognition to the people who are doing the most to push things forward with daring yet intelligent, effective and successful ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, planning and action,” said Classical:NEXT Director Jennifer Dautermann in a statement on the Classical:NEXT website. “I firmly believe the time has come to add such a distinction to the list of already existing awards. As with Classical:NEXT itself, the Innovation Award is a global, democratic, community effort.”

^{Kanen Breen and Mew Meow in Victorian Opera’s ‘Tis Pity. Photo by Pia Johnson}

Victorian Opera has commissioned 16 new Australian operas in its 11-year history and stages at least one new work annually. The company’s most recent work ’Tis Pity: An Operatic Fantasia on...