When New Zealand Opera announced The Unruly Tourists, a newly commissioned work about the badly behaved British travellers who in 2019 outraged the nation while leaving a trail of rubbish and rip-offs, it became something of a flashpoint for the company.
Since taking over as general director in 2018, Thomas de Mallet Burgess has been explicit about his ambition to “reimagine opera in Aotearoa, embracing the cultural and social identities of our diverse communities”. He was also determined to attract new audiences and maintain NZ Opera’s viability, a challenge for an artform with a
