Created with Sydney creative studio Subversus and First Nations cinematographer Tyson Perkins, 'Oleum - A Sydney Opera' is an original Sydney Opera House screen commission, reimagining opera in a contemporary urban setting.

Breaking down opera’s tropes to explore the fragility of human connection, this original short film considers the influential role of music in how we make sense of the world. Sydney Opera House’s first narrative short shifts the story away from its iconic building, repositioning opera through contemporary Australian stories, told from the wider context of Sydney.

A love letter to the city and the creatives driving it from within, 'Oleum - A Sydney Opera' casts Sydney-based alternative R’n’B star Maina Doe alongside Kevin Stathis – frontman of post-punk hip-hop group, Shady Nasty – in a modern epic that plays with the conventions of opera as we know it. Accompanied by a brooding score by producer and composer Corin Ileto, a stream of surreal confrontations and encounters unfold as Stathis journeys across the city by night, throwing an experimental lens on the Sydney landscape with music as a narrative force.

Credits:

Director, VERSUS (Tanya Babić & Jason Sukadana)
Featuring, Maina Doe, Kevin Stathis (Shady Nasty)
Composer, Corin Ileto

Director of Photography, Tyson Perkins
Production Designers, Charles Davis & Emma White
Costume & Styling, Injury (Eugene Leung & Dan Tse)

Enabled by Sydney Opera House donor Professor Ross Steele AM, The Skrzynski Foundation and New Work Now donors