Melbourne Opera Wagner gala to showcase Bendigo food and produce

The Melbourne Opera has a series of three Wagner gala dinners planned for their time in the region to be held right on stage at the Ulumbarra Theatre where all the action takes place.

The first behind-the-scenes showcase took place on March 25, with two more scheduled for April 15 and 22 at 6pm, complete with a three-course dinner.

Bendigo's Daniel Treacy of Treacy Patisserie is one of the locals the event will highlight, and his Wagner-themed desserts are sure to impress.

Having been selected by another local company Lakkis Brothers Catering, who service the Town Hall, the Capital and Ulumbarra, Mr Treacy said he was honoured to have the chance to showcase his recipes.

READ MORE:

"We use traditional French techniques as well as contemporary techniques so every recipe that's used is started from scratch," he said.

"We take the methods and use those to create all new creations.

"Every recipe is pretty specific to me and influenced by my experiences, my preferences, to create the product that we want to present."

Mr Treacy said his team had decided to take quite a thematic approach to create some perfect cakes for the Wagner event.

"The first point of call for us, because we are not people who go to the opera, is we approached Terry at Mr. Mozart's Music Emporium and he's well versed being a musical teacher," he said.

"So he gave me some ideas and some starting points, what the themes are for the opera and what I could do, and then we took that feedback."

Using the existing dessert catalogue, Mr Treacy created a golden nugget dessert and an apple of eternal life cake.

"In the opera, they find gold and then repurpose that for the ring at the bottom of the Rhine so we quite literally made a gold nugget," he said.

"Another theme within the opera that kept coming up in all of our research was eternal life and we used that green apple shaped cake for that theme.

"We had originally planned to change the recipes for each dinner but it looks like they were pretty popular so we'll stick with those."

Mr Treacy said the first night was very exciting and no plate came back uneaten - a mammoth effort given his busy schedule preparing for Easter.

"There's no balance so I live here and I sleep here sometimes," he said.

"We're just very grateful for the Lakkis Brothers Catering for getting us involved (in the gala) and then seeing what we can do and give us a platform to present our work at a prestigious event as well."

Digital subscribers now have the convenience of faster news, right at your fingertips with the Bendigo Advertiser app. Click here to download.