Brett Whiteley, the enfant terrible of Australian art, could have little idea that not three decades after his death, he’d wind up being the subject of an opera. But big, splashy personalities such as his have always been catnip to storytellers, and so it was that Whiteley received its much-anticipated premiere on Monday night.

Leigh Melrose in Opera Australia’s Whiteley. Photo © Prudence Upton

As with any biographical work, the hope for Whiteley was that its creators ­– composer Elena Kats-Chernin and librettist Justin Fleming – would transform their subject into effective theatre. This task has largely eluded them, with the libretto a particular weakness. Given its narrative importance, surprisingly little time is spent establishing Brett and Wendy’s relationship: we don’t really feel the heady, all-consuming passion of the early days, nor register as we should the deeper companionship that develops between them. The complexities of their relationship, shaped by infidelity, substance abuse and the passage of time, are largely flattened out, and so too are the characters. We get little insight into them as individuals, with Brett’s creative zeal only wanly explored, and Wendy’s interior life...