★★★★☆ It’s on for young and old in this hilarious update of Bizet’s rarely-performed opera buffa.

Vasto Club, Perth
June 14, 2016

In innovative Perth-based company Lost and Found Opera’s previous production, the blood-drenched Médée by Milhaud, a nurse sat knitting by a prison cell like a lone Fate. It was therefore startling to see in this very different production of Georges Bizet’s 1858 opera buffa Don Procopio, a chorus largely comprising real-life Italian nonne (drawn from a nearby aged care facility) busily knit throughout the entire two acts, in the end producing baby onesies.

Since the small WA-based opera company’s launch in 2013, Artistic Directors Thomas de Mallet Burgess and Chris van Tuinen have mounted intimate, intense productions of rarely performed works such as Poulenc’s The Human Voice, Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis and Milhaud’s Médée in a hotel room, a synagogue and an insane asylum respectively.

However in Don Procopio Lost and Found lose all inhibitions and find the maximum hilarity in what, as de Mallet Burgess writes in his programme note, “ is a wedding comedy in a space that sees over two weddings each month and lies at the heart of a vibrant Italian community” – in...