George Palmer

Well, again, I was looking for an Australian story, a powerful Australian story.

And then one day...

walked into our bedroom at home and there on my wife's bedside table was the novel The Draver's Wife.

And I remembered that in 2016 we had seen that at the Belvoir and how powerful a play it was.

And it was so tight and yet so dramatic and you couldn't get more Australian.

And I thought that is the perfect text for

So that's when I decided to approach Leah Purcell.

Well, I got in touch with her husband, Bain, who runs the company, and I said, this is what I want to do.

And he sent me a text saying,

look, we're very busy at the moment filming.

We've got our heads too full of other stuff.

We'll get back to you.

And I thought, okay, that's a polite way of saying get lost.

And to my surprise, literally about 15 months later,

Bain gets in touch with me and he says, about that opera, would you like to discuss it?

So we got together for a cup of coffee, Bain and Leah and I, and literally within about five minutes, we'd clicked immensely.

We were ravingly enthusiastic.

Yes, let's do it.

Leah said, it'll be my first opera.

I said, and it'll be your greatest opera.