When Amy Manford and Genevieve McCarthy started thinking about putting on a concert, they didn’t imagine that within a few years they would be selling out the Sydney Opera House. Well, that’s not quite true.

“We were figuring out our first production and, as a joke, I wrote down ’100th anniversary, Sydney Opera House’,” Manford says. “Fast forward five years, that’s exactly what we did.”

Both from Perth, Manford was an elite athlete, first in rhythmic gymnastics, then pole-vaulting, before turning to music. A singer and musical theatre performer, she has toured with Andrea Bocelli and starred as Christine in both the Australian and West End productions of The Phantom of the Opera.

McCarthy performed in productions of Les Misérables and The Sound of Music as a child before choosing a career in law. But, while working as a solicitor in WA, “I literally had one of those movie moments where I thought, ‘I hate this. Why am I here? I don’t like doing this’. And I quit on the spot,” she says.

“I went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music in musical theatre. [Amy] went to London to study at the Royal College of Music in opera, and we were there at the exact same time.” Over a coffee they thought, maybe, when they were in their 40s, back in Australia and raising families, they’d try to run a business together.

“We had that conversation in 2019 – then in 2020 we both found ourselves back in Perth during lockdown,” Manford says. So they accelerated their plan and formed MM Creative Productions, setting their sights on getting the rights to Disney music for a large-scale concert, featuring stars of musical theatre performing songs they’d both loved since childhood.

“We were incredibly persistent. I would call us pests, to be honest with you. This was daily emailing, daily phone calls, daily voicemails,” McCarthy says.

Manford adds: “I think they honestly just got sick of us contacting them so much that they just said, ‘Give these crazy girls some songs’.”