Sarah Brightman’s first musical in 30 years an Opera Australia coup
Sarah Brightman’s first musical theatre performance in three decades will feature in a new Opera Australia season set to double the representation of female creatives compared with previous years.
In a coup for Australia’s largest performing arts company, Brightman – whose inspired and originated the character of Christine in former husband Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, which propelled her to superstardom in the 1980s – will star in the world premiere of a new production of Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre next May, followed by the Sydney Opera House in August.
Sarah Brightman will star in Opera Australia’s world premiere of Sunset Boulevard, written by her former husband Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Simon Fowler
“It’s huge. There’s a lot of excitement about it, and her connection to Andrew’s material makes Sarah perfect for this role,” OA artistic director Jo Davies said of Brightman’s casting. It is the 63-year-old’s first in a musical since she finished up in Aspects Of Love, yet another Lloyd Webber standard, on Broadway in the early 1990s.
Ms Davies credits this surefire boon to OA’s box office to Sunset Boulevard’s co-producer, UK-Australian house GWB Entertainment, which was co-founded by South Australian Torben Brookman and is the manager for the world tour of Lloyd-Webber’s latest production of Phantom.
Elsewhere, Ms Davies has used her inaugural OA season to boost the representation of both Australian and female creatives.
Noting that the proportion of female creatives had averaged about 14 per cent in OA’s preceding seasons, Ms Davies said that had increased to 30 per cent in 2024 – approaching the 40 per cent level she says is the average among major performing arts companies in her native UK.
Boosting Australian and female creatives: Opera Australia’s new artistic director Jo Davies. Daniel Boud
“I haven’t had to look very hard to find brilliant women in Australia to take on these roles and responsibilities,” she said.
Two of the four main stage operas in the Sydney season will be conducted by women – Lidiya Yankovskaya for Puccini’s rarely performed triptych Il Trittico, and Zoe Zeniodi for Mozart’s evergreen Cosi fan tutte.
The Melbourne season will feature the first international female composer that OA has ever worked with, Missy Mazzoli. Dubbed “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” by Time Out New York, Mazzoli has composed an operatic adaptation of Lars von Trier’s film Breaking the Waves. That program will also feature a female conductor in Jessica Cottis, and a female director in Anne-Louise Sarks.
An unprecedented four operas written by Australians will also feature in the season. These include Sir Jonathan Mills’ bush-evoking fairytale Eucalyptus; Brett Dean’s Hamlet, which incorporates electronic music and cinema-like surround-sound effects; and a highlight of the 2022 Adelaide Festival, Watershed, an oratorio about the 1972 drowning of a University of Adelaide professor near a gay beat, which led to South Australia’s pioneering decriminalisation of homosexuality three years later.
Mark Oates as Dr Duncan and Mason Kelly as The Lost Boy in Watershed at 2022’s Adelaide Festival. Andrew Beveridge
Heralding a promise of more collaborations with other Australian performing arts companies, Ms Davies has also programmed the world premiere of the first opera written in English to be based on the ancient Mesopotamian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Written by Sydney Chamber Opera director Jack Symonds, and directed by Sydney Theatre Company’s Kip Williams, the production will also feature musicians from the Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring.
Opera Australia’s 2024 seasons in Sydney and Melbourne are on sale now.
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