Winton is an elegant, aspirational town proud of its heritage. Sheep and cattle are the predominating industries and yet the town hosts fifteen significant annual events, including Way Out West, and a series of writers, opal, and film events. For the last five years it has hosted Opera Queensland’s Festival of Outback Opera.

Anything seems possible in this Australian town where there is a longstanding interest in the arts. Elderslie Street is lined with historic buildings, art installations, and murals. More than a century ago, the North Gregory Hotel with its Art Deco charm commissioned artist Daphne Mayo to create a series of etchings. Recently, The Crackup Sisters founded Dustarena, a whimsical open-air arts venue.

It is the first outback vicinity to host a Musical Fence on which tunes can be played and the first town to dedicate a multi-purpose building to a song. The Waltzing Matilda Centre is the site of a museum and art gallery.

Evidently, Central West Queensland, which encompasses Longreach, is a receptive and rewarding region for OQ’s pioneering annual happening – pioneering because it seeks to make the artform accessible and appealing beyond the formality of a city’s concert hall.

Splinter groups of singers function as wandering minstrels and pop up in surprising places to give performances in local schools, cafes, pubs, and even on board the Spirit of the Outback train. Passengers on the twenty-one-hour journey to and from Winton were thrilled by tenor Nick Kirkup and soprano Megan Kim’s recitals of operatic delights in the train’s dining car.

Music was integral to Red Dirt Tours’ birdwatching trip. Festival punters marvelled at sightings of brolgas, spinifex pigeons, wedge-tailed eagles, and a knee-high bustard before tucking into a morning tea at Bladensburg Homestead where they were treated to a rendering of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Three Little Maids from School’.

Operatic gems were also digested during a gourmet Long Lunch provided by Big Red Truck, a catering facility which teaches high-school students hospitality and cooking skills. Guests were treated to a beautiful version of ‘The Jewel Song’ from Charles Gounod’s Faust by Nina Korbe, the performance sandwiched between the starter, main, and dessert. Henry Purcell’s ‘If Music Be the Food of Love’ was given a moving account by Jason Barry-Smith. Margaret Sutherland’s ‘Nocturne’ was expressively directed by violinist Doretta Balkizas with associate artist Narelle French.

‘Dark Sky Serenade’ was staged outdoors at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, situated in a spectacular mesa plateau on the outskirts of Winton where the only preserved dinosaur stampede in the world can be found. It featured a talented line-up, which included Korbe who gave the Welcome to Koa Country, compered the event, and eloquently intoned the wordless ‘Eliza’s Aria’ from Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin’s Wild Swans. The female artists wore opals loaned by local jewellers while the audience fended off bush flies clinging to their clothes.

Highlights included ‘Barcarolle’ by Jacques Offenbach from The Tales of Hoffmann sung exquisitely by Sumi Jo and Eleanor Greenwood. Bradley Daley’s ‘Recondita armonia’ from Tosca soared into the open sky.

Sumi Jo performing at Dark Sky Serenade (photograph by Murray Summerville)

The festival’s huge success this year was due to many factors but credit must go to Sumi Jo, the UNESCO Artist for Peace and a Grammy-award-winning South Korean lyric coloratura soprano. As conductor Herbert von Karajan once remarked, she is ‘a voice from above’. She proved herself to be an inspiring professional whose endearing resolution before each concert is ‘to take her audience on a date’. Her performances were world class and included ‘Juliette’s Waltz’ from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette at Dark Sky Serenade and Aldoph Adam’s Variations on ‘Ah vous dirai-je, Maman’ from Le Toreador, performed with Queensland Symphony Orchestra flautist Hayley Radke.

Playing alongside professionals is widely accepted as an excellent way to train emerging artists. The orchestra was an amalgam of QSO and University of Queensland students. It wasn’t a large ensemble, but it played with theatrical colour and a spirited execution.Vanessa Scammell, the conductor, provided firm direction and ensured the soloists could always be heard. All seven soloists at ‘Singing in the Night’ at Camden Station in Longreach sang with a deep emotional investment. The frisson between Western European art music and the outback location had a magical appeal.

Megan Kim, Nick Kirkup, and Daniel Kramer’s impassioned ‘Zitti Zitti’ from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville drew an enthusiastic response. Tenor Kirkup’s expressively shaped ‘Serenade’ from Pagliacchi’s Leoncavallo, in the character of Beppe, was a triumph. In Donizetti’s opera La Fille du Régiment, the grenadiers call on Marie to sing their anthem, ‘Chacun le Sait’. Jo sang this with heartfelt authenticity. Some were not keen on the programmed arias but there was no doubt about the topflight singing.

Relevance is a key driver. ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ pitted country anthems alongside operatic greats in an exhilarating performance with soprano, cellist, and actress Gabrielle Diaz, singer-songwriter Marcus Corowa, and music theatre soloist Jonathan Hickey. Musical director Trevor Jones drove a fury of energy from the keyboard.

Before the show began, movement artist Lili Vizer led a fun warm-up routine with the audience followed by a sequence of boot-scooting stand-up from hilarious local celebrity Amanda Lyn Pearson, a Crackup sister in a gold jumpsuit and neon pink chaps.

Directed by Barry-Smith, a chorus of children from St Patrick’s Catholic College and Winton State School sang a mash up of ‘Click Go the Shears’ and ‘Figaro’ from The Barber of Seville with gusto. Afterwards, a ten-year-old from the choir whispered, ‘I loved learning old people’s songs.’

As if to pacify the purists, Hickey told the crowd that opera and country music have in common ‘loving, drinking, fighting and cussing’. Liaz, Corowa, and Hickey demonstrated admirable stamina, pzazz, vocal prowess, and versatility whether they sang with a classical technique or belted a country twang.

A quick glance around the happy, packed-out audience showed that the talented threesome crooning ‘Let Your Love Shine’ by the Bellamy Brothers, Verdi’s ‘Drinking Song’ from La Traviata, Troy Cassar Daly’s ‘Take a Walk in My Country’, ‘Jolene’, and ‘Habanera’ from Bizet’s Carmen had more than succeeded.

On Saturday evening, there was a music trivia evening in the North Gregory Hotel followed by supper. Many of the singers and orchestral players were there and the mythology that opera is for the élite was helped dispelled by the mingling of OQ’s production team, locals, and festival punters who had travelled wide and far from Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Sydney, Tasmania, and Western Australia.

In the early morning of Saturday, the crack of a whip signalled the start of the first Great Australian Charity Cattle Drive at the Stockman Hall of Fame in Longreach. In an iconic partnership between OQ and Beefbank, Barry-Smith sang ‘Overlander’ and ‘Figaro’ on the tray of a dusty ute as more than 1,600 head of cattle were released ceremoniously from the grounds of the Longreach’s Stockman’s Hall of Fame. This was the start of an eighty-seven-day excursion to Roma, covering a distance of 775 km, supervised by women drovers and eighty international tourists on horseback. Raising money to feed the homeless is the goal.

Festival of Outback Opera 2025 (Opera Queensland) ran from the 13^th to the 19^th of May 2025.