By Stephanie Gardiner in Milthorpe

A group of blokes huddle around a small table at a country pub, clutching meat raffle tickets and mulling over the local council’s approach to footpaths.

Among them is Lyndon Terracini, the former artistic director of Opera Australia, who has been warmly embraced as a local at the humming Millthorpe Hotel, in central western NSW.

While he orders a glass of red wine – served with a generous country pub pour – his mates heap praise on him for bringing world-class music to the bush.

Terracini, who left the nation’s premier opera company in 2022, has established Handa Opera at Millthorpe in the village hall, 244km west of the Sydney Opera House.

The festival has an expanded program for its second season in April 2026, featuring revered Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto and French-Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Gabouri.

The 2025 debut was an experiment to gauge the success of an opera set in a village, rather than merely playing host to a touring show.

“It went very well. It sold out,” Terracini said, sitting in the pub’s sunny beer garden.

“My accountant said, ‘Oh it’s not nearly as bad as I thought’.”

The Millthorpe opera, which will be Vienna-based Furlanetto’s only Australian performance, is backed by Japanese billionaire Haruhisa Handa, also the patron of Terracini’s Sydney Harbour venture.

So how to convince a philanthropist and internationally-renowned performers of the merits of a small show in a rural hall?

“I’ve been in the business all my life and so, fortunately, people trust me,” Terracini said.

“Also, artists genuinely want to perform in a festival that they think is special.”

The hall is next door to a hatted restaurant, across the road from organic winery’s cellar door and a quick stroll on bluestone-lined streets to the pub.

“It’s really using everything that’s so wonderful about this place in the best possible way,” Terracini said.

“I love the fact that the 20th century just passed it by.”

Terracini’s mother was born in nearby Orange, so his purchase of a 1861 homestead in the region was something of a homecoming.

In his move to the country with his wife, soprano Noemi Nadelmann, Terracini has also returned to a childhood hobby: pigeon racing.

He is expecting to have about 30 birds ready to race by winter, with help from the Bathurst Pigeon Club.

“These pigeons find their way home from Wilcannia or Broken Hill in a day – it is extraordinary.”

The slower lifestyle and his new projects, including the large-scale staging of Verdi’s AIDA at Adelaide Oval in 2027, has given Terracini pause to reflect on his exit from Opera Australia.

He abruptly quit in 2022 after 13 years at the helm, amid publicly-aired ructions in the organisation.

“You’ve got to have some sort of idea about your end date because you can’t keep doing it forever – people get sick of you,” Terracini said.

“Wanting to start Handa Opera at Millthorpe was getting back to the reason why I wanted to be in this business.”

The Millthorpe opera will continue involving locals, who are invited to watch open rehearsals, and bring country life to the fore, he said.

“What’s interesting is creating work in this place and telling the stories about this place.”

As Terracini leaves the pub, he spots a local carrying a slab of meat won in the three hams of Christmas raffle.

“Oh, you won,” he said.

“Congratulations.”