Opera Q: Season 2016

Opera Queensland has announced a 2016 season packed with new Australian work, international collaborations, and more opportunities for audiences to get up close to the action.

The company is set to post its first surplus in eight years, thanks to the strong audience response to La traviata, the success of its $25 ticket initiative, which saw thousands of people see an OperaQ show for the first time1, the sell-out Cloud Song, where cocktails mixed with immersive opera in a nightclub, and record numbers signing up for workshops.

The critically acclaimed Candide, directed by OperaQ Artistic Director Lindy Hume, saw the company move into the QPAC Playhouse for the first time and prompted audience calls for more adventurous programming alongside the classics.

Lindy Hume said the company’s 2016 season was a response to the changing tastes and demographics of its audience, as well as the current landscape for opera in Australia.

“The Government has just released the National Opera Review Discussion Paper, which is a forensic analysis of the challenges facing Australia’s major opera companies, including the decline of traditional audiences and financial pressures,”Ms Hume said.

“In 2016 we are building on our model of new venues, new experiences, new work and thousands of affordable $25 tickets.”

The exclusive Australian season of a magnificent co-production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, from Houston Grand Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Lyric Opera of Chicago, directed by Tony Award- winning Michael Grandage, will play in QPAC’s Lyric Theatre from 12 to 19 May. Starring Hyeseoung Kwon, Bradley Daley and Jonathan Summers, Maestro Johannes Fritzsch will conduct Queensland Symphony Orchestra and The Opera Queensland Chorus.

International collaborations play a major role in 2016. From 9 to 23 July, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville - a new co-production between OperaQ, Seattle Opera and New Zealand Opera - will take over QPAC’s Playhouse, exactly 200 years since it opened in Rome. Lindy Hume will direct the rollicking fiesta of sunny Spanish madness, which will also play in Seattle in 2017 and New Zealand in 2018.

In a coup for the company, OperaQ's co-production with New Zealand Opera of Rossini's Cinderella, which premiered in Brisbane in 2013, will be presented by Leipzig Opera in March.

For the first time, OperaQ will join forces with La Boite Theatre Company and Brisbane Festival for a new adaptation of Snow White to play from 7 to 24 September. Directed by Lindy Hume, with music by Zulya Kamalova, set to Suzie Miller’s poetic text, the contemporary collaboration will be entertaining and erotic, with a heart as dark as ebony.

As a nod to the global celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, on 12 November in QPAC’s Concert Hall, OperaQ will present two semi-staged concerts of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, based on The Taming of the Shrew and starring Peter Coleman-Wright and Cheryl Barker.

The company will also join with Musica Viva and Victorian Opera for Voyage to the Moon at Queensland Conservatorium on 29 February and 1 March, hit the road again with its smash kids’ show FiZZ! based on Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love and open its studio doors to hundreds of Queenslanders wanting to learn how to sing. Special Youth Workshops during school holidays will also be offered to respond to increasing demand.

Ms Hume said she wanted Queenslanders to come on an adventure with their opera company in 2016.

“Come and sing your heart out in an Open Stage workshop, abandon yourself to the lushness of Puccini's tragic love story, laugh out loud at the witty chaos of Rossini's comedy, explore the dark psychological forests of a Grimm fable and tap your toes to a Cole Porter classic musical.

“Opera has had a tough few years but OperaQ has turned a corner and we are strongly positioned to meet the challenges of the future.”

Image: Madama Butterfly. Image courtesy of Houston Grand Opera - Photographer Lyn Lane

operaq.com.au

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