Victorian Opera has announced its 2023 season, the eight-show final hurrah of outgoing Artistic Director Richard Mills’ 11-year tenure. In the kind of typically diverse and intriguing line-up we’ve come to expect from Mills, it features a new take on Mozart’s underrated masterpiece Idomeneo, what surely must be the Australian premiere of Shostakovich’s hilariously black operetta set in an all-mod-cons Soviet housing block, a First Nations’ opera about the arrival of the First Fleet, and the world premiere of Mills’ latest opera about the revolutionary scientist Galileo Galilei.

Richard Mills. Photo © Charlie Kinross

“In 2023 we are creating pathways for developing artists, First Nations arts practitioners and young designers and theatre workers – as well as young singers,” said Mills. “International guest artists also feature prominently in the season, old friends returning and great Australian talent such as Simone Young, Steve Davislim, Jessica Pratt and Deborah Humble returning to Melbourne as honoured guests.”

In a poignant handover, incoming Artistic Director Stuart Maunder will direct Mill’s new...