Highway to the highfalutin': opera hits the outback

May 22, 2026

Entertainment
Highway to the highfalutin': opera hits the outback

Oceania [Fiji], May 22: Put on your fancy pants and cowboy hats: opera's annual run through a state's outback towns is back. Just look out for flying locusts.
In an open-air theatre on the main drag of an outback town, more than 1300km from the nearest capital city, soprano Katie Stenzel is trilling to the heavens under the Milky Way.
Locusts the size of your hand - in large numbers after summer floods that cut the northwest Queensland shire of Winton off in January - helicopter around the venue, occasionally dive-bombing unwary spectators.
One of them lands on the stage in front of Stenzel and baritone Jason Barry-Smith, as they perform the duet of Figaro and Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville.
The Festival of Outback Opera is back in town.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Cooperation