I want to tell you about a moment I witnessed during a rehearsal years ago. We were staging an opera set in a non-European country — I won’t name which one — and every single principal singer was white. The chorus was overwhelmingly white. The director was white. The conductor was white.

Nobody in the room mentioned it. We just got on with the work. And that silence, that total normalcy of an all-white cast telling someone else’s story, stayed with me long after the production closed.

Australian opera has a diversity problem. It’s getting better, slowly. But slowly isn’t good enough, and we need to talk about why.

The State of Play

Let’s be specific. Australia is one of the most multicultural countries on earth. About 30% of our population was born overseas. Our Indigenous heritage stretches back 65,000 years. In Sydney and Melbourne, you can hear dozens of languages on a single bus ride.

Now walk into most Australian opera productions and look at the principal cast. The chorus. The creative team. The orchestra. The board. The audience. The picture you’ll see does not reflect the country we actually live in.

Opera Australia has made progress. There have been more diverse casting choices in recent seasons, and the company has publicly committed to increasing representation. But progress and adequacy are different things. A handful of diverse casting choices per season, often in secondary roles, is not transformation. It’s incrementation.

And this isn’t just an Opera Australia issue. It runs through the entire ecosystem — the conservatoriums where singers train, the young artist programs where careers are launched, the audition panels where decisions are made, and the audiences whose expectations (conscious or not) shape what companies feel safe programming.

The Artistic Case

Some people frame this as purely a social justice issue. It is that, but it’s also an artistic one, and I think the artistic case is underappreciated.

Diverse casting enriches opera. Full stop. When singers from different backgrounds bring their lived experience to roles, the interpretations deepen. When a First Nations singer performs in a work that connects with their cultural heritage, something happens on stage that no amount of directing can fabricate. When an audience sees themselves reflected on stage, the emotional connection intensifies.

I’ve seen this firsthand. Some of the most electrifying performances I’ve witnessed in Australian opera have come from singers whose backgrounds brought something unexpected and authentic to their roles. The voice didn’t change. The notes didn’t change. But the truth of the performance shifted, and everyone in the theatre felt it.

There’s also the simple matter of talent. If you’re drawing your principal singers from a narrow demographic pool in a country this diverse, you’re missing extraordinary voices. The next great Australian soprano might be training at a conservatorium right now, or she might be singing in a community choir in Western Sydney and has never been told that opera is for her.

The Barriers Are Real

It’s easy to say “just cast the best person for the role.” I’ve heard this argument many times, and it sounds reasonable until you examine what shapes who gets to audition in the first place.

Access to training. Opera singing requires years of expensive, specialised training. Conservatorium fees, private lessons, language coaching, audition travel — the costs add up. Families without financial resources or cultural familiarity with Western classical music are at an immediate disadvantage.

Cultural gatekeeping. Opera’s image problem isn’t just about ticket prices. It’s about who feels welcome. If every marketing image features white singers in period costumes, if every outreach program targets the same schools and suburbs, if the implicit message is “this art form belongs to a particular kind of person,” then talented young singers from other backgrounds will go elsewhere.

Unconscious bias in casting. This is the hardest one to talk about, but it matters. When a panel has seen a thousand white Mimìs, a non-white Mimì can register as unusual, and “unusual” in a conservative art form can be mistaken for “wrong.” Panels don’t have to be overtly prejudiced for bias to operate. It just has to feel slightly unfamiliar.

Pipeline problems. Even when companies genuinely want to cast diversely, they sometimes struggle to find candidates — because the pipeline narrows long before the audition stage. Fixing casting is necessary but insufficient. You have to fix the pipeline too.

What Can Be Done

I don’t have all the answers, but I have some observations about what’s working elsewhere and what could work here.

Targeted outreach and scholarships. Programs that identify talented young singers from underrepresented communities and provide financial support for their training. The Australia Council for the Arts has funded some programs along these lines, but the scale needs to grow.

Blind audition rounds. Where practical, initial audition rounds conducted behind a screen can help reduce visual bias. Orchestras have used this technique for decades with measurable results.

Programming that reflects diversity. Commissioning and staging works by composers from diverse backgrounds, in languages beyond the European canon, telling stories that resonate with Australia’s actual population. Not as a special initiative, but as standard programming.

Diverse creative teams. Directors, conductors, designers, and coaches from varied backgrounds bring different perspectives to every aspect of production. This changes what happens on stage in ways that are visible and invisible.

Community engagement that goes beyond marketing. Real engagement means long-term relationships with communities, not a one-off workshop designed to generate a press release. Opera Queensland has done some excellent community work in this space, and other companies could learn from their approach.

This Isn’t About Lowering Standards

I want to address this directly, because it comes up every single time diversity in opera is discussed. The suggestion that diverse casting means compromising on quality is both wrong and insulting. The standard is excellence. The argument is that the search for excellence should be wider, deeper, and more honest than it currently is.

When the Metropolitan Opera cast Angel Blue as Mimì, the production wasn’t diminished. It was extraordinary. When Jeanine De Bique took on Donna Anna, the standard wasn’t lowered. It was raised.

Australian opera can and should reflect the country it serves. Not as a box-ticking exercise, but because the art form is richer, more powerful, and more relevant when it does.

We’ve got work to do. Let’s get to it.