“Whiteley,” as the opera is called, runs from the 1950s through to the 1990s, and covers Mr. Whiteley’s travels in London, New York and Fiji, as well as his life in Sydney, where he eventually ended up .

Sung in English, and with a musical style that ranges from the lyrical to the dissonant, “Whiteley” is a risky venture for Opera Australia, the country’s main producer of music theater. The company is expanding beyond the classic opera repertoire to avant-garde productions that are uniquely Australian, and, organizers hope, exciting enough to draw in a younger audience.

Opera Australia last premiered a new Australian opera on the main stage at the Sydney Opera House in 2010; that work, “Bliss,” was based on the Peter Carey novel of the same name. Audience figures, however, were disappointing with only around 5,200 tickets sold, according to Opera Australia.

Elena Kats-Chernin, the opera’s Soviet-born Australian composer, said that she wanted to create “something modern, something that people can still relate to — somebody who has actually lived, somebody who people have actually met.”