Orchestra Victoria

One of merely two pit orchestras specializing in theatrical accompaniment anywhere in Australia, Orchestra Victoria performs in that role for both Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the latter in 2014. The ensemble nevertheless sustains an active calendar of concerts mounted under its own auspices and maintains a vigorous educational profile in Melbourne, the city that serves as its base in the state of Victoria. Founded in 1969 under the name Elizabethan Melbourne Orchestra, the group possessed capabilities that set it apart from other Australian ensembles at the time and therefore drew leading international artists, among them conductors Richard Bonynge and Carlo Felice Cillario as well as performers Dame Joan Sutherland, Rudolf Nureyev, and additional stars of comparable stature. Beginning with thirty-two musicians, the orchestra expanded over the years until it reached full symphonic complement. Ownership passed to the Victorian Arts Centre in 1986, at which point the name became State Orchestra of Victoria; full independence arrived in 2001, accompanied by adoption of the present title Orchestra Victoria and relocation to an army band barracks in Melbourne’s Albert Park suburb. Displacement from those premises occurred in 2016 when the building was repurposed as a primary school, leaving the musicians to rely on assorted rehearsal facilities while they continued, as of 2018, to seek a permanent venue for their independent programs. The lack of a fixed home left unaffected the orchestra’s core commitments to ballet and opera or its recording activity, which intensified during the 2010s. The majority of its discs have appeared on the ABC Classics imprint of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, on whose airwaves the ensemble has also been featured regularly. In 2018 the orchestra issued a recording of Léo Delibes’ Coppélia on that label under the direction of Barry Wordsworth. Nicolette Fraillon serves as artistic director. Across roughly two hundred performances annually, the musicians frequently appear before youth and school audiences, presenting works such as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.