A craving for home begins a new act for Opera Australia CEO

Opera Australia boss Fiona Allan has moved back into her Victorian terrace house in Sydney’s Paddington after 18 years away.

After 18 years away, Opera Australia chief executive Fiona Allan has moved back into her Victorian terrace house in Sydney’s Paddington, just a couple of hundred metres from where she was born at the Royal Hospital for Women.

After living in Melbourne, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leicester and Ithaca, New York, Allan is pleased to be back in her small three-bedroom terrace with a cathedral window extension that opens on to a tiny inner city courtyard with a “work-in-progress” garden.

“I love living in Paddington, it really is a village with lovely cafes and restaurants nearby,” she says. “I find the house very peaceful and I’ve converted one of the bedrooms into my office, so that I can keep the living spaces to be just that.

“I love all the light in my back room and being able to open the folding doors to connect my indoor and outdoor living spaces but, most of all, I just love being back in my house after so long away – I was homesick for this house so often that it’s wonderful to finally have returned.”

Allan, who took on the role of chief executive in November 2021, has always been a lover of classical music and opera and can recall her first Opera Australia (formerly The Australian Opera) performance when she was 14. Living abroad she has been able to see great opera performances across the UK and Europe. A trained musician with degrees in music and business management, Allan loves how Opera Australia combines the very best of all the art forms.

“Opera has text, music, singing, and design, high drama and amazing sets, all together in one evening at the theatre – the stories of the great operas have universal themes that can be reimagined today for new generations,” she says.

“Making opera contemporary and relevant for a 21st Australia is Opera Australia’s ambition – opera can be escapist, and it can be a way of looking at the world around you through a different lens.

“What I think Opera Australia also does very effectively is showcase what a breadth and depth of talent we have here in this country; on stage and off, working with some of Australia’s best directors and designers, as well as singers and musicians.”

Opera Australia chief executive Fiona Allan’s backyard in Paddington. Picture: Rhiannon Hopley

Allan is also excited about the annual open air productions on Sydney Harbour – such as Madama Butterfly – which wow audiences with great performers and productions, scenic views, pop-up bars and dining.

Her role is diverse, from working with the productions, through to relationships with government and sponsors, to planning for a sustainable future and responsibility for the largest performing arts workforce in the country.

“As one of the busiest opera companies in the world, there is always a lot to do,” she says.

Allan also loves spending time working on her house and is replanting her “hodgepodge” of a garden with native plants and edibles, including finger limes and lemon myrtle.

“All my rooms are currently works in progress – until a few weeks ago I didn’t even have a wardrobe and was living like in my student days with all my clothing on demountable racks – I do like my sitting room, it has some of my favourite pictures and I spend a lot of time in there reading,” she adds.

Some of her favourite possessions include two large wingback chairs which, she says, look straight out of a James Bond villain’s lair and are “ridiculously comfortable”.

She’s also collecting vintage fairground horses after her parents gave her birthday money with instructions to “buy something you’d never otherwise indulge in”.

Two large photographs of the Australian coastline taken from a light aircraft, from the Girt By Sea exhibition by photographers Tony Hewitt and Denis Glennon, are also treasured.

“I think their work is spectacular – it showcases just how varied the landscapes of our nation are, and the colours are so very vivid the images look abstract, not real. My father sent them to me while I was living in the UK – I think he was trying to make me homesick, so I’d move back here – it worked.”