Mimì gets a makeover: three operas deconstructed with surprising results.

Taryn Fiebig didn’t think she’d be singing her first Mimì in a mood-lit warehouse on the shadier side of Surry Hills near Ding Dong Dang karaoke bar. The Opera Australia darling normally sings Musetta, but this is no normal opera: Fiebig will be singing the demure character’s signature aria Mi chiamano Mimì as part of a new composition, the first in a triptych of operas scaled down and stripped back for edgy urban settings around Sydney.

Opera Australia has teamed with cross-disciplinary collective Polyartistry to create Polyopera: a series of three mini-operas taking a representative aria and opening it to new theatrical forms. It launches this week with La bohème in the dingy but impossibly hip Surry Hills venue CuriousWorks, followed in June by Don Giovanni in Blacktown and Lakmé in Parramatta. All three will be turned into videos and made available on the Internet.

“There will be audience participation and elements that are completely improvised on the night,” says Fiebig of La Bohème: Bohemian Deconstruction. “A little bit circus-y, and very different to traditional opera. It’s all organic and quite experimental.”

As for the music, Sydney-based composer Drew Crawford has...