British director Jo Davies to lead Opera Australia

Opera Australia’s new artistic director has not worked here before but her job is to make the national company more identifiably Australian.

British opera director Jo Davies is the newly appointed artistic director of Opera Australia.

Opera Australia has moved to give the company a more distinctive Australian character by appointing as its new artistic director a British woman, opera and theatre director Jo Davies, who has not previously worked in this country or run an opera company.

The appointment was announced on Monday after an international search of eight months that ultimately narrowed to Davies and two Australian candidates who live overseas.

Davies has worked in Britain, Europe and North America for 25 years as a freelance director of opera, musicals and theatre, and has won critical praise for her updates of repertoire opera and classic musicals.

When she starts at OA next year, she will be charged with making the nation’s biggest and busiest performing arts company “more reflective of a 21st-century Australia, and to celebrate our own stories and talent”.

The naming of a new artistic director draws a line under the 13-year reign of Lyndon Terracini, who greatly expanded the company’s range of activity but was criticised for sidelining Australian singers and creative artists.

Opera Australia chief executive Fiona Allan.

Artistic director Jo Davies.

Much of the 2023 season, the last Terracini has programmed, features international singers in many of the principal roles, and productions devised by foreign creative teams.

Davies said that while an international outlook in opera was important, she believed that local audiences needed an ongoing relationship with local artists.

“For audiences, it’s interesting to learn about the new generation of brilliant Australian artists and practitioners and to connect with them,” she said from her home in England.

“I think it means that Australians can see themselves in the work.”

Australian singers she had worked with in the northern hemisphere, she added, felt that they “didn’t necessarily have a home at Opera Australia”.

OA chief executive Fiona Allan said the company had considered limiting the search to Australian candidates, but did not want to be “xenophobic” or rule out an artistic director who had the motivation to discover and develop Australian talent.

“Being Australian wouldn’t guarantee that they had the kind of curiosity that we wanted, because we have had Australian artistic directors before, who have possibly not done as much Australian work as we’d like,” Allan said.

She praised Davies’s experience across a range of theatrical forms, and her demonstrated ability to collaborate with artistic teams.

While no specific projects have been disclosed, Davies is interested in community opera, in the works of Czech composer Leos Janacek, and in generating more opera productions out of Melbourne, where OA’s presence in recent years has been slim.

Being a theatre practitioner, she said she expected to direct some productions herself each season.

“I have built up a really strong body of knowledge and connections and experience that will be useful as an artistic director,” she said.

“I’m used to leading people towards one creative goal, and fostering that creative collaboration – that’s very important to me. I’m hoping that they are the skills that I can bring to Opera Australia.”

Davies’s initial term at OA is for five years, starting early next year. Because of the long lead-times involved in running opera companies, Lindy Hume will program the first part of the 2024 season.

Davies has worked with companies including the Royal Opera, English National Opera and Opera North in Britain, and Washington National Opera and Houston Grand Opera in the US.

OA chairman Rod Sims said she was widely respected, had excellent international contacts and would bring a fresh perspective to the company.

“We were after someone with a clear audience focus, who will be deeply collaborative internally and externally, who is innovative, and who is interested in all aspects of talent development, and in Jo we have found someone who excels in all these areas,” he said.