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Prologue 2026

Prologue Program
2026

SCO is proud to launch Prologue, a new program supporting the next generation of opera composers.

Three emerging opera composers have written new 15-20 minute works for SCO to develop during the week of August 24-28. Lucy Blomfield, Meta Cohen & Alexander Maltas all have exciting ideas for operas that speak powerfully to the artform’s future and the aesthetic SCO has pursued within Australian music. Opera is a complex artform, requiring much of a composer to master its many strands. Prologue is the first step in SCO passing on its knowledge to the next generation.

During 2026, these composers have had the mentorship of Jack Symonds (composition), Pierce Wilcox (libretto writing), Imara Savage (dramaturgy) as well as vocal writing from the four singers who will perform and record these works in a showing: Jane Sheldon, Jessica Aszodi, Jessica O’Donoghue and Mitch Riley.

Lucy Blomfield

Lucy was in the childrens’ chorus for SCO’s second ever show, The Cunning Little Vixen (2011), and is now an accomplished composer-performer, writing an opera for three female voices, Eurydice: A Postlude, which also forms part of her PhD. 

Meta Cohen

For several years, Meta has been developing their opera Kiss My Sword on the figure of Julie d’Aubigny – the queer, cross-dressing, rapier-wielding opera star of the 17th century – with longtime SCO performer Jessica Aszodi and it’s exciting to take this work to its next stage. 

Alexander Maltas

Alexander began with SCO as an intern in 2022 and has since become an invaluable part of the company as surtitler and artistic assistant. His imaginative take on The Little Prince uses the unique and virtuosic resources of SCO’s musical team to the fullest.

Categories
Current Productions

The Oresteia

THE
ORESTEIA

By Liza Lim

Presented by Sydney Chamber Opera & Carriageworks in association with ELISION Ensemble
 

The Sydney exclusive of a key work of Australian opera by our leading composer internationally, Liza Lim.

Electra, Cassandra, Orestes, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon are summoned to relive their murderous hatreds in Liza Lim’s first opera The Oresteia. A landmark in Australian music, Lim’s “visceral, confrontational, and totally compelling” (The Guardian) work exploded onto the scene in the early 90s, yet The Oresteia has never been produced after its world premiere in Melbourne.

With a libretto adapted by Barrie Kosky, this opera marked Lim out as the leading Australian composer of her generation, an epithet borne out today by her music’s ubiquity on the world stage and her recent win of the 2026 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition (the highest international honor for new music). A new generation of Australian artists now take on Lim’s taut hour-long distillation of this immensely powerful Greek classic. Imara Savage (Antarctica) directs six of Australia’s most adventurous and virtuosic singers in this unique collaboration with the world-leading instrumental specialists in Lim’s music – ELISION Ensemble, returning to Carriageworks after more than a decade.

Image by Daniel Boud.

Composer
Liza Lim

Libretto
Liza Lim & Barrie Kosky drawn from Aeschylus, Sappho & Tony Harrison

Conductor
Jack Symonds

Director
Imara Savage

Set & Costume Designer
Charles Davis

Lighting Designer
Alexander Berlage

Assistant Director
Mitch Riley

Singers
Jane Sheldon
Jessica Aszodi
Jessica O’Donoghue
Mitch Riley
Daniel Szesiong Todd
Simon Lobelson

With
ELISION Ensemble

Sydney Chamber Opera is a resident company at Carriageworks and supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and Creative Australia.

©Casa Ricordi Srl., Milano (Universal Music Publishing · Classics & Screen) by arrangement with G. Ricordi & Co. (London) Ltd.

Gallery

Date & TIME

July 2026

Fri 24 July – 7:00 pm
Sat 25 July – 3:00 pm
Tue 28 July – 7:00 pm
Thu 30 July – 7:00 pm
Fri 31 July – 7:00 pm
 

Friday 24 July – 6:00pm
Join us before the opening night performance for a free pre-show conversation with Andrew Ford with The Oresteia’s composer Liza Lim, recorded for broadcast on The Music Show, ABC Radio National.

VENUE

Carriageworks
Bay 20
245 Wilson St Eveleigh
NSW 2016

duration

Approximately 60 minutes, no interval

TICKET prices

from $49 – $69

Click here for tickets