Michael Camilleri made his directorial debut during the L’Or‚àö?al Melbourne Fashion Festival a few years ago with ‘a weird, arty performance, art fashion parade at a strip club in Brunswick.’ This year, the two-time Melbourne Fringe Festival award winner has turned his hand to opera with an absurd update of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. The show has been nominated for three Green Room Awards (for Best Director, Best Production and Best Conductor), which is interesting considering that Camilleri has never worked in opera before. ‘They wanted someone to spice things up and I jumped at the chance,’ he says. ‘It’s not like someone asks you to direct an opera everyday.’

The show centres on themes of trickery, marriage and generational warfare and is populated by characters like ’80s street kids and Rotary Club members. With mismatched sets and costumes and ridiculous props, the younger characters take the piss out of futile attempts to stage a grand opera. Camelleri says he found working with singers a great learning experience. ‘A lot of opera staging is very old-fashioned,’ he says. ‘Working with singers who are used to a more traditional way of making theatre was a real challenge.’ So was working with a Musical Director. ‘Luckily, Chris van Tiunen has been really great and patient with the fact that I don’t know anything about opera or music!’

Camilleri hopes that the humorous and shambolic interpretation of Don Pasquale will make the music accessible to a wide audience. ‘The music’s still very beautiful, we just take the piss out of the presentation of it. It blows a bit of that pretentious bullshit out of the water.’ As someone who finds a lot of traditional opera ‘really boring’, Camilleri takes much of his inspiration for Don Pasquale from comedy. A favourite from last year’s Comedy Festival was Wild Duck by Aussie boys Derek Ives and Asher Treleaven. The highlight was a ten minute fight between the actors and the audience throwing soft toys at each other. ‘We were pelting them with fluffy toys and it was great! We do a bit of a homage to that in the opera.’