History

In 1990 Co-Opera was registered as an incorporated association in South Australia with a principal objective to perform operas with regional/remote Australian communities as its main target audience. The key principals involved in the formation of Co-Opera at this time were David Cox, Tessa Bremner and Brian Chatterton.

With assistance from the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society of SA, over 60 performances of free 30 minute, themed, fully theatrical opera programmes were presented at each of the 1991 and 1992 Royal Adelaide Shows. From the beginning, our approach was intended to demythologize opera by making it fresh, accessible and entertaining.

In 1993 and 1994 respectively, under the directorship of Christian Thyer, the SA Country Arts Trust [now Country Arts SA] sponsored highly successful tours of Co-Opera's productions of Pagliacci and The Magic Flute to regional/remote South Australian communities.

Cast of The Magic Flute 1994

With this experience to quote, Co-Opera applied for and was granted assistance from the Federal Government through its Playing Australia program to take performances of The Magic Flute to regional Victoria and New South Wales in 1995. Similar tours followed in 1996 and 1997 with Queensland added to the touring communities. New productions of La Boheme, Carmen and The Marriage of Figaro were the works toured. All were developed under the creative guidance of Tessa Bremner [director], Silvana Angelakis [designer] and Brian Chatterton [musical director] whilst the Company enjoyed a residential sponsorship at the Golden Grove Arts Centre.

The 1995 performance of La Boheme in Penola , South Australia , was the first for the most loyal host Co-Opera has in Australia . For every one of the 15 succeeding years Co-Opera has presented a performance as part of the May long weekend Penola Festival, surely the most distinguished, intellectually stimulating and culturally diverse of any regional festival in Australia.

Carmen - Original cast 1996

In 1997 Co-Opera faced a serious survival crisis deriving from poor administrative infrastructure attempting to support rich touring and performance prospects. After an attractive relocation offer, the then SA Government Minister for the Arts, Diana Laidlaw, saved the move of the Company to Melbourne by approving annual funding status for Co-Opera.

In 1998, the Federal Government increased touring funding so that Co-Opera's performances sprang from around 40 per year reaching c. 7,000 patrons to around 100 per year reaching c. 20,000. In 1998 itself, for the first time, Co-Opera performed extensively in every State and Territory in Australia. Since then it has become customary for Co-Opera to reach most Australian states each year.

From 1998 to 2002, new productions of Madam Butterfly, La Traviata, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cosi fan Tutte and

Jillian Chatterton - Tosca 2002

Tosca were added to the repertoire and extensively toured. Since then Co-Opera has developed its first operetta in Die Fledermaus, [successfully toured in 2003, 2004 and 2005] and has also moved towards supplementing its popular operatic repertoire with less mainstream work. In 2004 a production of Mozart's The Impressario was jointly presented with Salieri's Prima La Musica and in 2005 work began on Co-Opera's first commission, a music theatre piece by SA composer, Becky Llewellyn, based on the life and artistic achievements of Adelaide born painter Stella Bowen.

This latter project attracted Australia Council funding, providing for Co-Opera the pathway to attaining annual Federal Government funding.

Throughout its history, Co-Opera has been heavily committed to an extensive outreach program. With SA Government assistance, a program of reduced performances of popular operas for schools has been presented every year since 1994. And generous continued assistance from the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society of South Australia has resulted in Co-Opera continuing to present regular performances free of charge at the Royal Adelaide Show each year.

It has always been a central plank of Co-Opera's raison d'etre to provide talented young emerging artists from South Australia and beyond with opportunities to undertake their earliest professional performance employment. Every 3 or 4 years a new generation of young singers assumes the responsibility to present professional opera performances before communities in the far flung corners of the Continent. After 20 years of activity, there are many “alumni” who have now moved on to some of the most prestigious opera establishments in Australia and overseas. In their operatic youth, artists such as Grant Doyle, Catriona Barr, Teresa La Rocca, Lindsey Day, Imogen Roose, Kathryn Zerk, Sally Anne Russell, Jacqui Dark, Andrew Jones and Samantha Rubenhold all contributed significantly to Co-Opera's busy schedule and are now enjoying active careers with other opera organizations within Australia or beyond.

In 2003 Co-Opera's progression towards securing a consolidated administrative infrastructure took a step forward with the establishment of a small staffing unit in the offices of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Adelaide 's CBD. In the same year the support organisation The Friends of Co-Opera was formed, providing audience members with an opportunity to identify more closely with the day to day activities of the Company.

In 2005 our company took the first step towards its goal of developing a significant performance presence in Asia with a one week, 4 performance season of Pagliacci in the Recital Studio of the renowned Esplanade Theatres on the Bay in Singapore. A healthy success, aided by the Australian Government through the New Exporter Assistance program of Austrade led to large increase in activity in 2006.

Eleven performances of Don Giovanni, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart, were presented in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu and Singapore including two performances devised especially for schools’ audiences. In 2008, Co-Opera singers and instrumentalists joined with Malaysian musicians to present Highlights of La Traviata in the Chinese Assembly Hall in Kuala Lumpur. And in May 2009, Co-Opera accepted an invitation to present The Magic Flute as part of the celebrated Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden, Germany. The enormous success of this season, along with two weeks of touring performances that followed it, led to Co-Opera winning the Business SA Arts and Entertainment Export Award for 2009. Co-Opera has been invited to return to Wiesbaden in 2012.

In another move to broaden the repertory base of the company beyond the classic operas of the 18th and 19th centuries, in 2007 Co-Opera developed a new production of its first Broadway staged musical with a saucy version of Cole Porter’s masterwork Kiss Me, Kate! With assistance from the Australian Government through its Playing Australia program, 40 performances of Kiss Me, Kate! were presented in a 10 week tour to Eastern Australia in 2007. Performances of La Traviata were presented in every mainland State of Australia in 2008, including an open air performance in the Amphitheatre of the Darwin Botanic Gardens with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and the Darwin Chorale. Darwin will be visited again in 2010 with La Boheme to be presented for the Darwin Festival.

The now five year association with the Friends of Co-Opera has been rich and enterprising. Most recently a series of bi-monthly performances in Adelaide restaurants has proved a remarkable success with multiple shows being booked out long in advance. This series has spawned a new offering for South Australian regional audiences that we have called “A Taste of Opera”, a series intended for country SA Arts Council members where the population base makes it financially difficult to host a full Co-Opera performance. The popularity of this series in its first year of operation has exceeded all expectations and augurs well for Co-Opera’s ambition rapidly to develop its South Australian regional program of activity.