Opera Australia's New Leading Lady
Gilbert and Sullivan could be back on the menu for Opera Australia following the appointment of UK director Jo Davies as Artistic Director. She’s set to take over from Lyndon Terracini at a time when the company is facing intense financial pressures.
Ms Davies has worked with some of the world’s most respected opera companies and has directed musicals at London's Barbican, Le Chatelet in Paris, the Welsh Millennium Centre and at the London Coliseum. She has directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre Wales and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
Her most recent production was Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeoman of the Guard with the English National Opera.
OperaWire applauded Davies' “revised book for the show, touching up Gilbert’s cod-Shakespearean and adjusting the setting to the 1950s, an era of austerity and pompous reserve.”
Under the leadership of Lyndon Terracini, Gilbert and Sullivan was phased out of the company’s repertoire, even though he often trod the boards in the operettas as a performer.
In an interview with AAP, Jo Davies said she wants to entice expatriate Australian singers to perform back home.
"I've worked over in the UK and Europe with a host of Australian artists, very few of whom have worked for Opera Australia," she told AAP.
Opera Australia CEO Fiona Allan said Ms Davies was the standout candidate in the world-wide search for a new Artistic Director.
“It really gives me the greatest pleasure to be able to announce Jo’s appointment. Her depth of experience across opera, theatre and musicals, as well as her demonstrated commitment to developing talent, made her an outstanding candidate.
“During an extensive series of interviews she met with representatives from our performing and administrative departments, who expressed their admiration for her programming ideas and loved her collaborative approach.
“It is an incredibly exciting time in OA’s history as we emerge from the pandemic and move forward with a new strategy to make Opera Australia more reflective of a 21st century Australia, and to celebrate our own stories and talent – a strategy that is completely in concordance with Jo’s ideas and values around what opera can be,” said Ms Allan.
Ms Davies will meet with OA’s artistic, production, marketing and technical teams in the new year to commence planning the 2024 season, and will relocate to Australia to officially take up her new role in November 2023.
“I am honoured and thrilled to take up this appointment as Artistic Director and by the opportunity to work with the superb team of talented and ambitious people at OA creating extraordinary opera and musical theatre,” she said.
“I look forward to collaborating with Fiona Allan and her team to present a rich range of national and international programming that reflects the passions and politics of 21st century Australia.
“My work is committed to broadening opera and discovering the potency of stories that make a social connection, so I am hugely excited to work with the broad community of incredible artists that Australia has to offer,” said Ms Davies.
Ms Davies, who herself trained as a singer, has a demonstrated history dedicated to talent development through her coaching and teaching work at The Royal Academy of Music, The Royal College of Music, The National Youth Music Theatre, and the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artist Program among others.
Photo Kirsty Young.