Voss was adapted into an opera by author David Malouf and composer Richard Meale. It was first performed by the Australian Opera in Adelaide, March 1986.
First performed by the Australian Opera at the Adelaide Festival Centre, 1 March 1986.
Director: Jim Sharman.
Designer: Brian Thomson.
Cast: Geoffrey Chard (Voss), Robert Eddie (Judd), Robert Gard (Le Mesurier), Anne-Maree McDonald (Belle), John Pringle (Palfreyman), Marilyn Richardson (Laura Trevelyan), and Gregory Tomlinson (Harry Robards).
Performed with the same cast and crew at the Opera Theatre, Sydney, between 5 June and 28 June 1986.
Performed with the same cast and crew at the State Theatre, Melbourne, between 14 March and 2 April 1987.
Restaged with the same crew at the Opera Theatre, Sydney, between 8 October and 26 October 1990.
Scheduled for production by Victorian Opera on 4 August 2021 (single-night performance) at Palais Theatre, St Kilda.
Director: Stuart Maunder.
Conductor: Richard Mills.
Cast: Samuel Dundas (Voss) and Emma Pearson (Laura).
Production cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scheduled for production by State Opera South Australia in September 2021.
Director: Stuart Maunder.
Conductor: Richard Mills.
Cast: Samuel Dundas (Voss) and Emma Pearson (Laura).
Production postponed, but not initially cancelled, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scheduled for performance in 2022.
'In 1986, the Adelaide Festival staged an operatic adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning writer Patrick White’s 1957 novel Voss, a pivotal work in the Australian literary canon. The opera, with music by a leading figure of the classical music avant-garde, Richard Meale, and libretto by acclaimed novelist and poet, David Malouf, was conceived in the period leading up to the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. It certainly tapped into the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
"is there an Australian art-music canon? Does Australian music feature in any lists of 1001 works to be listened to before you die?' Joel Crotty.
