Opera Australia is bringing Mozart masterpiece Don Giovanni to Newcastle's Civic Theatre for one night only this month.
And a Lake Macquarie local is playing one of the lead roles.
Jessica Blunt, who grew up in Valentine and attended St Francis Xavier's College in Hamilton, will be making her Opera Australia principal debut in Don Giovanni as Donna Anna.
"This production of Don Giovanni is the third in my career, but being able to travel around my home country and bring opera to people who have never experienced it before is such a joy and a privilege," Blunt tells Weekender.
"Donna Anna is one of Mozart's most interesting and complicated heroines. She is incredibly strong and motivated by justice, but has moments of vulnerability and tenderness, all of which are expressed by Mozart's incredible writing."
Mozart's Don Giovanni is opera at its most explosive: part comedy, part thriller, part supernatural reckoning about a notorious libertine whose seductions, schemes and violent impulses finally catch up with him.
Having last toured in 2013, the revival of this dynamic production of Don Giovanni - combining the creative minds of director Michael Gow, set and costume designer Robert Kemp, and lighting designer Matthew Scott - marks a welcome return to the stage for one of the country's most respected storytellers.
Conductor Simon Bruckard leads a cast of brilliant singers and musicians including tenors Christian Haotian Qi and Andrew Williams who share the role of Don Giovanni alongside sopranos Celeste Lazarenko and Blunt as Donna Anna.
Tenors Kiran Rajasingam and Stephen Marsh play Leporello, Tomas Dalton and Shanul Sharma share the Don Ottavio role, and sopranos Cathy-Di Zhang and Jane Mago play Zerlina.
Newcastle children's chorus Hunter Trebles portray the town's lively young rascals.
Blunt is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was a 2024/25 Wesfarmers Arts Young Artist with West Australian Opera.
She now lives in Perth with her husband.
"I grew up in beautiful Valentine, and you could find me riding a jet ski on the lake most weekends," Blunt says.
"I joined the Waratah Girls' Choir's Junior Choir at age seven, which was young, but the choir specialises in fostering a love of music, especially classical music, in young girls.
"I always had a love of singing, and was approached by my first voice teacher Susan Hart after singing in one of their concerts at age 11. She offered to teach me, and from then on I completed Trinity Guildhall singing exams throughout my teenage years."
Blunt also attended weekly drama classes at Young People's Theatre in Hamilton. Her first stage role was Cindy Lou Who in Seussical the Musical at the age of eight.
"As I was growing up, I realised I had a love of acting and singing, so I considered musical theatre, but I am also incredibly passionate about history and language, so opera encapsulated all of those things in one ultimate art form," she says.
"I was encouraged by Newcastle's own star soprano Miriam Allan to move to the Sydney Conservatorium where I completed my Bachelor of Music Performance and then Master of Music (Opera Studies).
"I was 17 when I moved, and haven't performed in Newcastle since, so I'm really looking forward to singing for a home crowd again."
Blunt, who has performed in cities including London, Salzburg, Sicily, Verona, New York, Prague, Rome and Vienna, says taking on her first principal role with Opera Australia was "a no-brainer".
"I worked with Opera Australia in 2020, performing as a chorus member in their production of Don Giovanni, right before COVID hit. To return to the company in the same opera, but this time as a principal, is very full-circle," she says.
Interestingly, Blunt has synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon where the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another.
"My synaesthesia allows me to feel music as texture, as well as letters and numbers having their own unique colour," she explains.
"This mostly helps with memorisation, especially when we often have 500 pages of music to memorise in another language.
"I will translate the role of different characters in my score using the colour of the first letter of their name, and music itself has different textures and visuals in my mind as I listen and perform."
And her dream role?
"I performed one of my dream roles earlier this year as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata with West Australian Opera. Another dream of mine is Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute."
