In its seven-year history, Opera Australia’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour (HOSH) has become one of Sydney’s high profile cultural events. It will return in 2019 – but with its first musical, the iconic West Side Story, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Arthur Laurents.

American director Francesca Zambello, who staged the very first HOSH in 2012 – an acclaimed production of La Traviata – is returning to direct the show. Brian Thomson who designed Zambello’s Sydney Harbour Traviata and Carmen, directed by Gale Edwards for HOSH in 2013 and restaged in 2017, will design the set. Jennifer Irwin designs the costumes, with Guy Simpson as Musical Director.

West Side Story premiered on Broadway in 1957 and was a modern-day telling of Romeo and Juliet set in New York. Though most casting will be announced later, the lead lovers will be played by Alexander Lewis and Julie Lea Goodwin. Lewis recently played Count Danilo in The Merry Widow and The Nose in Barrie Kosky’s The Nose for OA, and has also played Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera. Goodwin played Maria in the previous Australian tour of West Side Story and her...