WAO2026

2026 Season Imagery

To celebrate WAO2026, we are proud to unveil a striking series of digitally illustrated portraits, capturing the spirit and story of each mainstage opera in the WAO2026 season. 

Every illustration gives its Season a distinct personality, weaving together visual motifs that hint at the narrative, characters, and atmosphere of each production. Where possible, design details also draw inspiration from the specific staging and style audiences will experience on stage.

These portraits are not literal likenesses, but evocative illustrations inspired by the artists and themes of the works themselves. Each image offers a glimpse into the world of the opera, blending imagination and artistry to invite audiences into these rich, emotional, and fantastical realms.

Together, the series creates a collection that is unmistakably West Australian Opera: distinctive, characterful, and uniquely its own.

THEMES & MOTIFS

From passion defying hatred to love shadowed by illness or lost to regret, each opera in WAO2026 season explores how desire collides with forces beyond the lovers’ control. 

Alongside the show-specific illustrations, we have developed a symbolic collection of flowers. These blooms unite the stories, reflecting love’s beauty, fragility, and inevitable cost.

• The rose evokes Juliette’s final breath in Romeo et Juliette
• The camellia reflects Violetta’s delicate 
  and fleeting life in La traviata
• and the lilac, long associated with memory and regret, becomes a fitting emblem for Eugene Onegin

Creative design and illustrations: Chard International 

WAO 2026 Trailer

The WAO 2026 trailer was crafted through a hand-built collage process that blends filmed, designed, and AI-assisted elements.

Every frame has been carefully composed, edited, and directed by our creative team to create a cinematic glimpse into the worlds of the WAO2026 season operas.

Our vision was to create windows into the fictional worlds of each production, to bring life to the stories before they reach the stage, and to entice audiences with a taste of the emotion, drama, and imagination to come.

In developing this piece, we explored how emerging tools can extend visual language,  not replace the role of the artist. AI was used as artists have always embraced new mediums: as material for experimentation, reflection, and transformation through human craft and judgment.

For West Australian Opera, technology is never a substitute for artistry, but a way to expand its possibilities, offering new ways to imagine, move, and connect with our audiences.