A war of words has broken out between Artistic Director of Opera Australia Lyndon Terracini and Peter Tregear, the Head of the School of Music at the Australian National University in Canberra.  The first blow of this online scrape was dealt by Tregear on the Australian Book Review website, in an article titled ‘Opera, the art of the possible’. In it Tregear takes Terracini to task about his response to federal arts minister George Brandis’ announcement that a major review of the funding strategy for the four major, federally funded Australian opera companies (Opera Australia, Sate Opera of South Australia, West Australian Opera and Opera Queensland) was required to ensure their longevity.

In a systematic and scathing dressing down of Terracini’s article, published in The Australian on August 12, Tregear attacks Terracini’s assertion that the greatest threat to the continued existence of major opera companies is a simple matter of rising expenses versus dwindling public appetite for opera. Tregear also disagreed with Terracini’s assertion that the past three quarters of a century have failed to produce a single operatic work deemed valuable enough to be programmed regularly by any opera company, foreign or domestic.  After highlighting Terracini’s failure...