2007 Season
After several temporary locations, the historic Horti Hall in Victoria Street, Melbourne, became the company's permanent headquarters in 2007.
The company's second season commenced on 17 February 2007, with a concert presentation at Hamer Hall of the Stravinsky double-bill Les noces and Oedipus Rex, with Richard Gill conducting Orchestra Victoria, and a cast which included most of the coming season's principals and the Victorian Opera Chorus.
Between 1–3 June, the Victorian Youth Opera, again in collaboration with the Victorian College of the Arts School of Production, presented an interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's immortal story The Snow Queen, by Grahame Dudley and Nick Enright.
A new production of The Love of the Nightingale by Richard Mills and Timberlake Wertenbaker, directed by Lindy Hume, was premiered at Her Majesty's Theatre on 27 and 29 July. Based on the 3000-year-old legend of Philomele and Procne, the explosive drama featured Leanne Kenneally (Philomele), Elizabeth Campbell (Niobe), James Egglestone (Captain/Hippolytus), Adrian McEniery (First Soldier/Pandion), Samuel Dundas (Second Soldier), Sarah Crane (Hero), Sarah Cole (Iris) and Roxanne Hislop (Juno). Once again Richard Gill conducted Orchestra Victoria.
Gluck's enduring and greatest opera Orphée et Eurydice was performed at Her Majesty's Theatre between 6–13 August in the Berlioz version, directed by Stephen Page, with mezzo-soprano Dimity Shepherd as Orphée, Alison Rae Jones (Eurydice) and Jacqueline Porter (L'Amour). The Victorian Opera Chorus and Orchestra Victoria were conducted by Matthew Coorey.
The previous season's acclaimed production of Così fan tutte toured metropolitan and regional Victoria during October and November. Sung in English, with a chamber ensemble drawn from Orchestra Victoria, and conducted by Nicholas Carter, only Gary Rowley (Don Alfonso) and Jacqueline Dark (Dorabella) remained from the original cast, with James Egglestone as Ferrando, Samuel Dundas (Guglielmo), Mylinda Joyce (Fiordiligi) and Jacqueline Porter (Despina).
Although more modest than the previous year, the company once again finished with a financial surplus.
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“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
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