Just a few days after Muruwari writer Jane Harrison’s play The Visitors ended its return season in Sydney, her operatic adaptation premiered in Melbourne.

Like the play that made its debut at the 2020 Sydney Festival, this Victorian Opera commission considers the First Fleet’s arrival from an Aboriginal perspective.

Directed by Noongar man Isaac Drandic, with music by Dharug-Eora composer Christopher Sainsbury, and an all-First Nations cast, The Visitors upends expectations of what is still, overwhelmingly, a culturally European art form.

Victorian Opera’s The Visitors. Photo © Charlie Kinross

This hour-long work is set during one fateful day in 1788. Six Elders and one initiate from different Aboriginal clans watch as British ships drop anchor in Warrane, or Sydney Cove. The group debates the wisdom of scaring the newcomers off or welcoming them, as is their custom.

Will they, like the visitors of 18 years before (Cook and co, of course), simply move on? Could their technology be useful? There are signs of trouble the audience knows is inevitable: the initiate, who has paddled up to the ships, becomes sick, parrots die, and the group watch an onboard hanging in horror.

Harrison’s...