Set on the banks of Merri Creek in suburban Melbourne in the 1990s, The Children’s Bach centres on Dexter and Athena Fox, their son, and the insulated world they’ve built together. When a friend from Dexter’s past resurfaces and introduces the couple to the city’s bohemian underground, Athena begins to wonder if life might hold more for her, and the tenuous bonds that tie the Foxes together start to fray. It is a piece about love in its many forms.

Given the metaphorical weight music is given in Helen Garner’s work, containing many references to music, both classical and popular, it is no wonder that the novella lends itself so well to becoming an opera. The music is beautiful, powerful, complex, and haunting. It faithfully recreates the novel’s inner-suburban world. The score plays on the book’s musical references while remaining utterly original. It employs everything from jazz-inspired riffs to fugal structure to accompany the progression of romantic entanglements. Performed by seven singers, and a chamber orchestra of six players, in the words of Michael Halliwell “the opera is an evocative meditation on the messiness and complexity of human relationships…” It is a profound and masterful contemporary chamber opera that is engaging and thought-provoking.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Patrick Burns, this is the third production of an outstanding Australian chamber opera performed at Theatre Works by Lyric Opera. First was the acclaimed and multi-award winning Iphis in 2022 followed by the equally lauded and critical triumph Biographica in 2023. The Children’s Bach features a cast of some of Victoria’s finest established and emerging opera artists including Kate Amos, Michael Honeyman, Adrian Li Donni, Juel Rigall, Lucy Schneider, Chloe Taylor and Ben and Chris Touzel, directed by Katy Maudlin, designed by Jacob Battista and conducted by Patrick Burns.

This opera was commissioned and premiered in 2008 by Chamber Made. This will be the second full production of the work.