State Opera South Australia has launched its 2020 season with a wide-ranging program that includes a major revival of Richard Mills’ Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a handful of star recitals, a Verdi blockbuster, a pair of musicals, a visit from Les Arts Florissants, and the odd operatic staple.

Macbeth. Photo © Robert Firth Acorn

“Step through the door, anything can happen,” says SOSA Artistic Director Stuart Maunder, quoting the proprietor of the travelling carnival in the binge-worthy HBO series Carnivàle. “At State Opera we believe we are here to give more South Australians – and whomever lights upon our glorious town – more chances to experience more opera. We can look for themes of darkness and light and redemption and love, Victorian gore, human tragedy – and all those are present – but the 2020 operas could not be more different in their scope, in their feel, in their musical styles.”

To begin at the end, in November Maunder himself will direct a new production of Verdi’s breakthrough opera Macbeth, not only the Italian composer’s first brush with the...