In the constant push to keep opera relevant, it is increasingly small-scale companies and productions – agile, mobile and free from the cost pressures of the mainstage – that are doing some of the most effective audience-building.

Their low-cost, high-mobility model allows them to tour regionally and inhabit alternative spaces, while programming that blends opera, art song and contemporary music embraces crossover in ways that feel immediate and accessible.

Queensland’s Voxalis Opera is about to embark on a regional tour with a Shakespeare anthology, drawing upon Verdi, Gounod, Thomas and Wagner; in Melbourne, the Australian Contemporary Opera Company brings Emma O’Halloran’s Mary Motorhead and Trade to the Malthouse; and Opera Queensland continues to take its opera-pop-country hybrids across the Outback in productions that quite literally fit on the back of a truck.

Even Opera Australia briefly ventured into this space before COVID, activating its scenic workshop as a venue for intimate productions of Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis and Aribert Reimann’s Ghost Sonata – the latter featuring mezzo-soprano Ruth Strutt, whose latest small-scale venture, Possession, proves just how compelling this model can be.

Ruth Strutt in Possession at Qtopia, 2026. Photo © Adam Player

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