With the handsome young tenor David Hobson opposite her as Rodolfo, ordinary punters poured in to weep and empathise with the romantic young couple in a production updated to 1957.

The rest is history but, by chance, on a cruise late last year Barker and Hobson sang “O Soave Fanciulla” from “La Bohème” – a whole 24 years after Luhrmann’s production.

Sponsor-founder of “Voices in the Forest” Bob Winnel and artistic director Chris Latham are hoping Barker will similarly put their event on the map in November after last year’s storm saw audiences dwindle to 4200 from the previous year’s 4800.

With the tenor Diego Torre and dramatic baritone José Carbó joining Barker outdoors at the Arboretum (in what Latham calls “this Stradivarius of an amphitheatre”), they can hardly go wrong.

Taking no chances, Latham has put together a program set around the theme of love and romance in “La Bohème”.

Good choice. Barker has sung in operas by everyone from Mozart to Heggie, but Puccini is her special favourite, having played all but four of Puccini’s heroines.

“Of all the Australian singers she is probably the most perfect voice for Puccini,” Latham enthuses, “that creamy quality in her voice seems to really suit his lines.”

Barker stresses that while the Luhrmann production put her on the map in Australia, her international career was of her own doing.

Barker is a thoroughly modern diva, and she’s all for updating Puccini, so long as it’s “true”.

Famously, she withdrew from Christopher Alden’s 2010 post-modern “Tosca” at the Opera House, objecting to his treatment of the text. “Puccini was very particular about the libretto, so I took a stand,” she says.

“I lost a lot of money, because you get paid by the performance.”

Opera singers, especially successful ones, often have complicated domestic lives. So while husband, baritone Peter Coleman Wright, is often in Belgium, Warsaw and London, she’s “kind of keeping the home fires burning”.

Their son Gaba is now 16 and is recording an album with the Sydney alt/rock band The Coots.

“They’re jolly good, I have to say,” says his proud mum.

This year Barker is contenting herself with performing in Tasmania, in outdoor concerts like ours and at the Nagambie Festival in Victoria, saying: “It’s the first time since my career started that I haven’t been performing in opera, but I’m okay about it”.

In her estimate, Latham has hit the jackpot in choosing “Bohème” as the basis for his program, saying: “It’s accessible to everyone, it’s a short opera, so you’re not sitting for hours bored rigid, it’s a great story with beautiful music and believable characters.”

They’ll be doing quite a substantial part of the opera, she tells “CityNews”, with arias and duets from Act I, “Muzetta’s Waltz” from Act II, the quartet from Act III and the tenor-baritone aria from Act IV. As well, there’s “a little bit of baroque and some light things – every style of music”.

It is Barker’s fond hope that many people will go to “Voices in the Forest” who would never go to the opera and be converted.

“And it’s not dumbed down at all,” she assures me.

“It’s not just the pot-boilers, there is an interesting repertoire, even for the diehards.”

“Voices in the Forest” at the National Arboretum, November 21, bookings to canberraticketing.com.au or 6275 2700.