Opera Australia

This term has brought to fruition a number of unique student experiences which have come out of a developing relationship between Opera Australia and University High School. 

It all began little more than 12 months ago, when a group of Uni High students impressed the stage manager for Opera Australia with some particularly astute and very technical questions. Seeing both the interest level and knowledge of backstage work being developed at Uni High, Opera Australia gratefully extended the opportunity to have our students engage in a range of experiences with the company. 

Different groups of students have had the opportunity to attend rehearsals of the opera, take part in backstage tours, and perhaps most significantly for a small group of students, engage in backstage work experiences during the productions themselves. This has allowed students across Performing Arts, from Music to Drama, Theatre Studies and Backstage Arts to all engage with Opera and gather something different from it, depending on their interests. We cannot begin to express our gratitude to Opera Australia Stage Manager Garry Alcorn who worked tirelessly on the Opera Australia side to clear the red tape and provide this opportunity for our students. 

Student Experiences: Click to read!

I had the pleasure of attending backstage for one of the performances and every Opera Australia crew member I talked with spoke of how valuable an opportunity this is for the students, and how jealous they are that they never had an opportunity like this when they were at school.

Similar gratitude must be expressed to the Careers Team at Uni High, who went above and beyond to get all the paperwork processed in record time to ensure that students didn’t miss out. We are all very hopeful that this relationship will continue to develop and that we will be able to continue to provide (and hopefully expand) these experiences to Uni High Students.

Cameron McCormick - Instrumental Music Co-Ordinator & Co-Head of Performing Art