West Australian Opera
West Australian Opera — Perth’s resident opera company
West Australian Opera is the principal opera company of Western Australia, based at His Majesty’s Theatre on Hay Street, Perth. The company produces a typical year of four mainstage productions in Perth, with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra as the resident pit orchestra. The size of the heritage opera house — 1,194 seats and a narrow proscenium — constrains the kinds of productions that work, but the intimacy of the venue produces some of the most acoustically rewarding opera anywhere in Australia for the mainstream Italian and Mozart repertoire.
The company’s programming line favours the Italian operatic repertoire (Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti, Bellini), Mozart, and selected twentieth-century works that suit the room. The company is also the regular opera-producing partner for the Perth Festival, which commissions or co-produces one mainstage opera production for the festival programme each year.
Home venue
- His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth — the principal mainstage.
How to book
Subscriptions open in mid-September; single tickets follow in late October. The Saturday evening seats for the marquee Verdi and Puccini productions sell out within four weeks; the Sunday matinee is the easier seat-availability slot.
Pair a West Australian Opera evening with the King Street precinct dining (Wildflower, Print Hall) or the State Buildings restaurants — five minutes’ walk from the theatre. The 1904 Edwardian interior alone is worth arriving thirty minutes ahead of curtain to take in.
Useful links
- Official: waopera.asn.au
- Where we cover them: Companies, Reviews