9 November 2026
Creating and bringing a new opera into the world is a major undertaking, and for acclaimed composer Victoria Kelly, there’s a mounting sense of excitement and uncertainty.
Three sketches from Victoria’s first opera, Ocean feature as a ‘work-in-progress’ in Orchestra Wellington’s final 2026 concert, Oceans this month.
Amanda Billing
Victoria has been Orchestra Wellington’s composer-in-residence for 2025/2026 and we caught up with Victoria as she was in the final, meticulous stages of preparing the score for the orchestra - after years of carrying the beginnings of the work in her head.
“These final stages are really just about getting the paperwork correct,” she says, describing the process of ensuring the score that lands in front of the musicians is clear and easily understood. That does not mean the composing has necessarily stopped. “I’m always tweaking and revisiting my work.”
The three pieces to be performed are each from different parts of the work, and feature soprano Madeleine Pierard and Tudor Consort, but with no staging or costumes. “I love the idea of being able to present these pieces for an audience and see how it works, how it feels and how people engage with it.”
Victoria has written the libretto so far herself but is also working with Wellington dramaturg Eleanor Bishop and longer-term plans will involve other collaborators. The dream is to turn Ocean into a fully realised opera, but it is something Victoria acknowledges will require many people and considerable resources.
“It’s special to have this opportunity to bring an audience along with me and have them inside the creation of a new opera.
“When I was asked by Orchestra Wellington what I would like to do as composer in residence, working on this opera was number one on the list,” Victoria says.
It is an ambitious undertaking, but ambition is hardly unfamiliar territory for Victoria. A composer and musician whose career spans contemporary classical music, film, television, theatre and popular music, she has worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, Voices New Zealand, New Zealand String Quartet and NZTrio, and collaborated with artists including Neil Finn, Tami Neilson and Don McGlashan. Her 2023 work Requiem won the SOUNZ Contemporary Award and has been described as a “masterpiece”.
Last month she was named an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate, recognition of a career the selection panel described as spanning “genre, medium, and expectation”.
“I’m still so astonished by that recognition and the honour,” she says. For her, the award carries an implicit responsibility: “When you accept something like this it comes with an unsaid covenant that you’re not allowed to stop. It’s more than just an award, it’s an aspiration and you want to keep going.”
Ocean certainly represents a journey onwards.
Adapted from Stanisław Lem’s 1961 science-fiction novel Solaris, the opera takes inspiration from a story in which scientists attempt to comprehend a vast ocean on an alien planet. As their efforts fail, their behaviour becomes increasingly destructive. For Victoria, that premise opened a much larger question about how humans respond to things they cannot understand.
“The book holds up a mirror to human behaviour and exposes the human condition,” she says. “It made me question our relationship to the ocean on Earth and think about the things which are beyond understanding yet we do destructive things and have to ask ourselves about our own humility.”
Those ideas took on further meaning when Kelly travelled to Antarctica in 2024 through Antarctica New Zealand’s Community Engagement Programme. The opera formed a major part of her application, providing an opportunity for her to experience an alien and hostile environment.
“I’ve wanted to go to Antarctica my whole life and it was a life-changing and completely transformative experience,” she says. Arriving meant learning how to survive in the environment, including sleeping in tents on the ice shelf in temperatures of minus 30 degrees. She recalls walking around in “shock and awe”, overwhelmed by the privilege of being there.
That landscape has remained physically present while she composes. “While working on the score I have been surrounded by my photos of my time in Antarctica. I was so privileged to be able to go there.”
The timing of her Antarctica trip and the composer-in-residency with Orchestra Wellington provided opportunity for Victoria to finally pull the strands together to begin creating Ocean.
“The residency has been fantastic. Orchestra Wellington is passionate about its audience, and its audience is excited, curious and loyal. There is a beautiful connection created with composer, musicians and the audience. This is the only composer-in-residency programme in New Zealand and it would be great to see other orchestras follow their example.”
Right now, Victoria is looking forward to experiencing Oceans with an audience. “It’s exciting, but there is also a level of uncertainty. It’s wonderful to be able to present these three pieces, and I hope what I’m creating will resonate.”
Ocean is part of Orchestra Wellington’s programme Oceans at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday 28 November.
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