The fact that Breaking Glass survives at all is a minor miracle. Sydney Chamber Opera’s staging of four works that came out of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s ground-breaking Composing Women Program was slated to premiere in late March. One of the many productions to fall victim to the COVID-19 crisis, performances were cancelled when Carriageworks was forced to close its doors. Thankfully, SCO had reached the staging point and was able to record the works, though the editing process, which involved marrying audio recordings to video footage has been a significant challenge. As SCO Artistic Director Jack Symonds says, “it felt like both an enormous risk and privilege to be making something out of nothing when many around us were losing hope and the world was shutting down.”

Jessica O’Donoghue in Commute. Photo © Daniel Boud

That Breaking Glass, now presented as a Facebook Premiere Event, comes across as considerably more than something out of nothing is a tribute to SCO, and especially to the talents of its four composers, all women, all Australian: Georgia Scott, Peggy Polias, Josephine Macken and Bree van Reyk. Each work has been fully realised and the...