Meet our 2025 Opera Prize Winners

We provide pathways and foster the careers of the next generation of performers. So, we are delighted to introduce the recipients of Victorian Opera’s 2025 Opera Prize: Bailey Montgomerie, Rachael Joyce and, for the second year, Michaela Cadwgan.

These impressive artists will be engaged by the company for a full year where they will have the opportunity to work as ensemble and principal artists in our mainstage productions, education programs and special events across the year.

In addition, they will be guided and mentored by our dedicated and highly skilled Music Department lead by Head of Music Phoebe Briggs and Artistic Director Stuart Maunder.

Victorian Opera thanks the generous support of Dr Michael Stubbs and Malcolm Roberts, and Mary Davidson & the family of the late Frederick R Davidson AM for their generous support of our Opera Prize scholarship.

Get to know a little more about the artists gracing our stages next year.

Bailey Montgomerie

Bailey Montgomerie’s love for opera started when he was just 14, thanks to the infectious passion of an inspiring music teacher.

“She really showed me how to love the artform and how beautiful the music is,” he says. “It’s not something a kid would usually gravitate to unless you have someone in your life who’s really passionate about it.”

Now, as a 2025 Opera Prize winner, the baritone says he is excited to hone his craft while singing full-time.

“I want to see how I can improve when I’m spending more time and energy on it,” they say. “And I know the other prize winners really well. It’s going to be a wonderful experience working with them every day.”

Bailey has pursued a career in public policy, writing briefings for the Victorian Premier on transport and infrastructure – yet he has maintained his passion for opera throughout this impressive career. Now, like his music teacher before him, Bailey has an opportunity to help others appreciate the magic of opera and, in particular, its place in modern society.

“What most people know about opera are big classics from the 19^th century. While they’re really beautiful, and part of why I got into the artform, I think opera is so much more than that.

“If I had one thing to say about the artform is that it’s alive and still changing. New stories and new operas are being created – it’s incredibly modern and so relevant to people’s experiences today,” he says.

In Season 2025, Bailey is most excited about embodying one of the rich, complex Jane Austen characters in Mansfield Park, and singing in Czech for the very first time in Katya Kabanova.

Rachael Joyce

It seems music runs in Rachael Joyce’s blood. The soprano says she is inspired by her two impressive grandmothers, both of whom have continued to play music well into their 80s.

“My nanna is in a recorder group, she plays the organ at church and has recently purchased a violin and a clarinet from Aldi. She also has a double bass and a didgeridoo,” she says. “My other grandma has taken up the piano again and plays the guitar. They’re also great opera lovers.”

Rachael is a soprano and is no stranger to singing in public. Her first experience was when she was in primary school, singing an arrangement of ‘What a Wonderful World’ with the primary school orchestra.

“They asked me to sing the solo, and I remember thinking ‘oh this is a bit of fun!’,” she says.

After two months of performing and honing her craft in Germany, Rachael is returning to Victorian Opera as a 2025 Opera Prize winner. She says she is drawn to opera for its storytelling and wants people to know there is so much more to each production beyond beautiful music.

Performing authentically, she explains, means having not only a good understanding of the character, but also how the character is personified through the composer’s music.

“I think there’s a misconception that only a certain type of person would like opera. But all opera plots boil down to interpersonal relationships, which is basically our whole life. In every opera there’s something that someone can relate to.

“I wish more people knew that there is something for everyone in opera.”

Michaela Cadwgan

Michaela Cadwgan left Aotearoa (New Zealand) last year to work in Australia after winning the 2024 Opera Prize. Just 12 hours after stepping off the plane in Melbourne, she entered our studio and began to sing.

“I was a bit overwhelmed at the beginning, especially walking through Melbourne Central. Melbourne basically has the whole population of New Zealand,” she says.

Michaela, a soprano, has been singing classically since she was seven years old, following in her big sister’s path, and was performing her first German or Italian song by age 10.

“Opera has really caught me… the stories, the orchestra, and sometimes absurdity of it,” she says.

Her goal for the next five years is to play the lead in Puccini’s Suor Angelica, a tragic opera that tells the story of a woman who has a child out of wedlock and is sent to a convent.

“I think I love a tragic character. I love doing fun characters as well, but something about tragic stories draws audiences into them. You get the chance to make people feel something. It’s a way to show the power of what opera can do, to really move people.”

After a hugely successful year as the 2024 Opera Prize winner, she is returning in 2025 to develop her craft even further.

“I am incredibly thrilled to be coming back as a 2025 Opera Prize recipient. I’m so grateful to Victorian Opera and to Mary Davidson and the family of the late Frederick Davidson for their continuing support and nurturing of my journey as a young singer.”