Co-opera Prosectus 2025-2027
From the Chair, Board of Management, Libby Ellis, OAM
The Co-Opera Board is pleased to announce plans for performances in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
In January 2024, Brian and I were concerned to discover that there was a possibility of Co-Opera winding up and therefore accepted an invitation to resume our former positions. We resolved to use 2024 as an opportunity to gather evidence from key stake-holders regarding the advisability of dissolving the Company. After all, it had operated for over 30 years, and maybe its time had come.
The waters were tested with pocket-sized productions of Mozart’s Operatic Journey and Tosca in July and November 2024 respectively.
The enthusiasm from highly talented emerging and mid-career artists to participate and the positive audience response to all 12 performances lent great weight to the argument that Co-Opera still had a role to play. But the most persuasive perspective came from over 30 “Co-Opera Alumni” who were invited to express frank opinions at planning meetings in June/ July 2024. There was emphatic commentary that, as Co-Opera played a seminal role in kick-starting their own careers, currently emerging opera artists today need the performance opportunity Co-Opera provides as much if not more. Furthermore, now, as mid-career artists, they were adamant that the opportunity to practice their art with demanding operatic repertoire with Co-Opera was important for them as well.
Having accepted a persuasive rationale for Co-Opera to continue, the Board’s focus turned to the fi nancial means by which that might happen. It is patently obvious that any pathway back to the kind of public funding that Co-Opera enjoyed for 20 years [c. $500,000 per year] and which allowed impressive national and international touring, would be a slow journey if, indeed, that destination could ever be achieved again. With public funding for the arts from the SA Government currently in a highly constrained phase, any fi nancial solution to Co-Opera’s current viability issues needs to be sourced from the private sector.
We are delighted to announce that stable, multi-year funding has been approved from the Royal Commonwealth Society of SA and from Henkell Brothers Investment Managers in Melbourne. With these contributions [averaging $85,000 pa] we are confident of being able to offer repertoire each year that is challenging to artists and extremely attractive to our loyal audience members. Smaller contributions to our productions and running costs from new and existing benefactors will enable us to offer fair remuneration to our performers who put so many hours [too many unpaid] toward making these productions the artistic successes expected from Co-Opera.
I urge you to assist in any way that is possible.
Notwithstanding our recognition of the need for private funds to help make Co-Opera viable now, we remain convinced that, for our company to continue to be the only entity in Adelaide in addition to the State Opera SA to provide regular professional opera performing opportunities, some [relatively modest] measure of reliable public funding will be essential in the medium and long term. To that end we continue to press the SA State Government for assistance on grounds that Co-Opera makes a significant contribution to the fabric of the South Australian classical music scene on which so much of our State’s national and international cultural reputation depends.
We look forward to seeing you at our planned performances.
Libby Ellis OAM
Chair, Board of Management
From the Artistic Director, Brian Chatterton, OAM
For its 35-year history, Co-Opera had prided itself on offering mainstream operas in an intimate format. In so doing, we have offered an approach alternative to experiences in large opera houses. Hence, our cabaret style performances of The Magic Flute, La Boheme, Madam Butterfly, La Traviata, The Marriage of Figaro and many other popular works have won enthusiastic receptions across Australia, in SE Asia and Europe.
From time to time, instead of well-known operas, more out of the way choices have been made. Accordingly, 2001-2002 saw hugely popular performances across Australia of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2006 saw a national tour of The Portrait by Adelaide composer, Becky Llewellyn, 2008 saw an extensive national tour of the Broadway Musical, Kiss Me, Kate, and 2015 saw, instead of a buffa or a singspiel, Mozart’s infrequently performed opera seria, La Clemenza di Tito.
The repertoire contained in the 2025-2027 CO-OPERA PROSPECTUS continues our tradition of offering well-loved repertoire side-by-side with pieces that, whilst maybe less well known, we are confident our audiences will find in them the musical joy, the dramatic energy and the visual engagement that have become the hallmark of Co-Opera artists for so long.
Lehar’s The Merry Widow, Gounod’s Faust, are scheduled alternately beside Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz and a new work, the inspiration of former Co-Opera principal singer Adam Goodburn, entitled The Invisible Man, based on the story that all South Australians know to be The Somerton Man.
Join us in performances in venues that offer relaxed environments encouraging conviviality, along with artistic experiences that are serious and funny, lyrical and dramatic, energetic and peaceful….all that the miraculous operatic genre can offer.
Please say hello when you come to our performances with all your friends and acquaintances!
Brian Chatterton OAM
Artistic Director
