Our company is your company

About Us

Melbourne Opera produces new productions of grand operas for today’s audiences. We pride ourselves on our commitment to producing high quality, accessible opera performances for the benefit of all. We work with artists from our local industry, strongly focusing on developing young, emerging singers as well as the occasional Australian expatriate and international guest. This provides performance and career development opportunities for artists throughout their creative lives.

Melbourne Opera’s mainstage productions are created by professional singers, artistic teams, the orchestra, and a volunteer chorus. We run The Richard Divall Program, which develops young singers to a professional standard by providing financial support for their singing lessons, coaching and languages, and by offering them performance opportunities an industry experience.

We produce two to three large scale performances and a smaller scale production featuring Richard Divall Program members as part of our annual season. In addition, we are in frequent demand for special events by renowned cultural organisations such as the National Gallery of Victoria and have a busy recitals program, especially for events run by our Friends of Melbourne Opera (FOMO). We remain Victoria’s busiest opera company.

The Backstory

Melbourne Opera was incorporated in 2003, born from the closure of the Victoria State Opera in 1996. The local opera scene was left with no major professional opera company, but lots of talent and lots of demand for beloved repertoire opera.

Crucial to Melbourne Opera’s survival was Lady Potter’s agreement to become Patron-in-Chief after our first production of La Traviata. Lady Potter quickly assembled an impressive and influential group of founding patrons including Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Dame Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, Richard Divall, Sir Zelman Cowan and Sir Rupert and Lady Hamer. This group gave great comfort to the public and artists that Melbourne Opera would be a serious long-term project — this has proved to be the case, as we now proudly continue into our twenty-third year of operations.

The loyal and generous support of the Athenaeum Theatre as our base has also been instrumental in keeping the company on track and moving forward. As required, we have also performed in some of Melbourne’s other heritage theatres: Her Majesty’s Theatre, The Regent and the Palais. The company has toured extensively and stages numerous orchestral and opera concerts in metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.

In our 21st year the company worked tirelessly to climb the Wagnerian mountain and produce three Ring Cycles at Bendigo’s ideally proportioned Ulumbarra Theatre. This was accompanied by a festival that included Wagner performed 60 metres down a gold mine, a day-long Wagnerian Symposium presented in conjunction with Melbourne University and a guest appearance by legendary heldentenor Siegfried Jerusalem. The production was critically acclaimed nationally and internationally.

The Melbourne Opera Chorus under the outstanding leadership of Raymond Lawrence, with distinguished predecessors including Matthew Toogood, Bill Bamford and Elanor Parsons, has proved to be a backbone of the company. The chorus not only provides crucial entry level experience for younger singers but has also enabled our large-scale Wagnerian productions, including as Lohengrin ,Tannhauser, The Flying Dutchman and Götterdämmerung, to be undertaken with confidence. That this fine group is entirely voluntary (like the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestra choruses) demonstrates the depth of support that the company has built over the years. There would be no Melbourne Opera without its chorus.

Similarly, the Melbourne Opera Orchestra has developed into a fine ensemble, collaborating with a range of conductors including Resident Conductors Greg Hocking, Raymond Lawrence, and Richard Divall, Armando Krieger, Warwick Stengards and David Kram. Ultimately this allowed Melbourne Opera to undertake projects as demanding as The Ring Cycle with leading international conductor Anthony Negus, who has become a stalwart supporter of the company particularly in its Wagnerian repertoire. The orchestra, like the chorus, has proven to be a valuable launching pad for many professional careers and has undertaken three international tours, playing in such prestigious venues as Beijing’s National Centre for Performing Arts and Shanghai Symphony Hall, tours which are testimony to its quality.

A constant source of frustration, disappointment and difficulty for the company has been the lack of support from the State and Federal Governments. Despite this, Melbourne Opera has continued to survive, thanks to our strong box office, brought about through our determination to counter-act an ever-dwindling calendar of traditional operatic productions in the State, the continued support by the public and the generosity of our philanthropic supporters, key amongst them are Lady Potter AC CMRI, Hans and Petra Henkell, Dr Alastair Jackson AM, Maureen Wheeler AO & Tony Wheeler AO, the Hansen Little Foundation, Roy Morgan, the Copeland Williams Arts Foundation, The Ian Potter Foundation, The Sylvia Fisher Fund, The Angior Family Foundation and the Robert Salzer Foundation.

The board’s dedication has been instrumental to Melbourne Opera’s ongoing success.
Special thanks must go to our past chairs: Peter Donnelly, Michael Wright, Peter Clark, Michael Flemming and David Pitt.

“Our company is your company.”

Greg Hocking AM
Producer, Founding Director