Directed by Victorian Opera’s Artistic Director, Stuart Maunder, Australia’s first professional production of English Eccentrics is full of pleasant surprises and discoveries: its rogues’ gallery of historic figures, the emerging artists who interpret them, and attractive, playful design that belies a modest budget.

Victorian Opera’s English Eccentrics. Photo © Hilary Walker

For many, this 1964 “operatic entertainment” will also be the means of discovering its Australian-born composer, Malcolm Williamson. Popular and prolific in his time, and holding the position of Master of the Queen’s Music for nearly 30 years until his death in 2003, he is now largely forgotten.

The source material for this, his second opera, is The English Eccentrics by British author Edith Sitwell – who was, like the composer, quite the eccentric herself. Published in 1933, this collection of anecdotes about Regency-period oddballs of the first order was adapted by librettist Geoffrey Dunn.

Largely without narrative, English Eccentrics begins with a rapid parade of characters, including a man obsessed with bathing and a woman who never does. The first act concludes with the more expansive tale of a woman who goes mad when her brother squanders all their...