In his book with Rainer Simon “Curtain, and Hello!”. A Life with Salome, Mariza, Miss Piggy & Co. Barrie Kosky, the celebrated opera director and expert juggler of irreconcilable contradictions, lets us partake in his extraordinary life. Born and raised in Australia, 15,000 kilometres from Europe, the birthplace of opera, he discovered his love for this artform early on. How did that happen? How do those two worlds fit together? What connects music theatre, Barrie Kosky’s childhood and adolescence in Australia and his career in the European artistic epicentres? In the first chapter of his book, Kosky tells the story of his Hungarian grandmother, who showed him “how colourful and versatile the garden of music theatre is, and as different flowers as Countess Mariza and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle can grow, blossom and flourish in it”.