Thanks to the pandemic, one of Australia’s greatest voices has been silent on stage for two years.

“It’s lovely to be in Brisbane,” the national Living Treasure says, greeting his first-night audience. “It’s lovely to be anywhere.” Even more so because this event, commissioned by Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) and Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and originally scheduled to run last September as part of the Brisbane Festival, had to be postponed until now.

An Evening with Anthony Warlow. Photo © Darren Thomas

Warlow has had the distinction of being consistently popular and critically acclaimed over the past four decades for his rare versatility spanning opera, musical theatre and concerts. The Australian public took him into their hearts in 1990 as our original Phantom of the Opera in the eponymous Andrew Lloyd Webber blockbuster. He created history in 2012 as the first Australian cast directly into a Broadway-originated production, when he was invited to play Daddy Warbucks in Annie in New York, after playing the role on an Australian tour.

The Fairfax newspaper headline “Bald, 50, and ready for Broadway”, which this program quote, was in tune with Warlow’s...