Sydney Harbor offers an amazing stage set for Madama Butterfly, starring Hiromi Omura. The temporary stage was built on the water, with the 3,000 seats facing the Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. James Morgon / China Daily

Programs of popular appeal

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Injured dancer to return to stage

Compared with similar venues in Europe and North America, Sydney Opera House presents a much more eclectic mix of programs. Music from movies, especially those with Australian elements, is on offer, often with projection of the movies, including clips from Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby by Australia's own Baz Lurhmann and The Matrix, which was shot in Australia and uses many of its talents.

Opera Australia, which produces productions for Sydney Opera House and venues in other Australian cities, also engages in musical theater. After the success of South Pacific last year, it is rehearsing another Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The King and I.

The day I toured the Opera Center, which is the organization's backroom of actually making things happen, Anna (the "I" in the title) was singing Getting to Know You with a dozen Asian children. Lisa McCune, who plays Anna, is a local star and she made every small detail, meticulously rehearsed, appear spontaneous.

I spotted a Chinese name, Shu-Cheen Yu, on the cast list. She is to play Lady Thiang. We chatted during a break and she told me she used to be with the Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble in the early 1980s when the Beijing-based troupe was at the apex of its popularity in China.

"I started training as a Peking Opera actress and evolved to the specialty of Chinese folk songs. I took up Western opera after I came to Australia in 1987. Now I also do musicals," says the Shanxi province native, who had appeared in The King and I as Tuptim.

"You have moved up from being a slave girl to the king's chief wife," I joked, referring to her change of roles in the same piece.

The musical about a Siamese king and the English governess he hired plays for a good part of 2014 in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.