I dreamed the Sydney Opera House was on a huge stage in an opera. The stage was Sydney Harbour and so the scale was enormous and beautiful.

Jorn’s Utzon’s opera house seemingly and predictably floated on its watery stage. Music, song, poetry, dance and visual art projections emanated form all parts of the site.  History coalesced and a type of an all-at-once storytelling narrative formed, transcending linear time as we know it.

The story of the Sydney Opera House’s formation and blossoming is far more than a few scenes from the 1960’s.

This ancient area, known in post colonial times as Bennelong Point was after all, part an epic unfolding dream-time history and tale of creation, location of art, magic, spectacle and iconic predisposition

In the dreamed up opera, the Sydney Opera House sang and moved around to tell its story, backed up by choruses of buildings, land, seawater, nature and the spirits of ancient and modern peoples. The scale, content and volume of A Sydney Opera is of truly operatic proportions.

After I recovered from that fateful vision, I set about depicting and devising a way to recreate and share the dream. I began creating visual art works and essay librettos, capable of conveying the elements of the heroic vision. Not being a musician I was initially stumped as to how to go about the crucial element of sound.

I began by commissioning a singer and together we hatched a simple installation art work.  I exhibited a stage-size mural, some smaller paintings and a group of four metre high and layered, transparent screens suitable for digital projections and then set voice to it. The projection artwork ran as a continuous loop within the darkened installation room.

There are so many wonderful and significant stories to choose about this magnificent site, however by choosing nine major motifs to unpack A Sydney Opera, a manageable and cohesive opera infused by those nine key elements seemed more than enough to unfurl its dramatic, cultural,  literary and musical intentions.

These are simply titled here as chapters or scenes, supported by a particular visual artwork and associated essay from which a refined libretto could be later drawn and musically scored.

Seems simple enough!

Follow the new instgram page A Sydney Opera

These SOH pages are going up from 23 mar 2023 – please check for updates

There’s also a large glossy book – A Sydney Opera and an exhibition ready to go public…. please contact for more