Sydney Chamber Opera produced and commissioned Elliott Gyger’s first opera, Fly Away Peter, which we performed in 2015. It was almost immediately after that, I asked Elliott “what’s the next opera you want to write?”

Oscar and Lucinda. Photo © Image © Samuel Hodge

He took a while to think, but I talked to him again in 2016 and he said he couldn’t shake the idea of making an opera out of Peter Carey’s 1988 novel Oscar and Lucinda, which is a very ambitious story on a very different scale to Fly Away Peter. I said “well, let’s see if anyone else is interested”… The Artistic Directors of Victorian Opera and Opera Queensland had both seen Fly Away Peterand were very impressed, so I said “let’s do it all together” and that’s how Oscar and Lucindahas come to be a co-commission and co-production between the three of us. I’m very glad that a piece like this will be able to have a life in multiple cities and companies.

Oscar and Lucindais the perfect text for Elliott to tackle. He’s able to conjure up such a variety of place and...