Swiss ballet of Verdi’s Requiem for 2023 Adelaide Festival

The latest round of national RISE Fund grants has revealed a planned highlight of next year’s Adelaide Festival program.

A major collaboration with Switzerland’s Zurich Ballet will be a centrepiece of the 2023 Adelaide Festival, which has just received more than $400,000 funding for the production.

The Festival’s staging of composer Guiseppe Verdi’s 1874 operatic oratorio Messa da Requiem will be choreographed by German-born Christian Spuck and also involve more than 200 Australian artists, crew and staff.

Zurich Ballet production of Messa da Requiem, choregraphed by Christian Spuck. Picture: Gregory Batardon

The project was among seven by SA organisations to share a total $2m as part of the latest round of national RISE Fund grants, announced by Arts Minister Paul Fletcher in Adelaide on Monday.

State Opera received $570,274 to remount its production of Sweeney Todd for a national tour, while Australian Dance Theatre gets $223,283 for its new artistic director Daniel Riley’s work about his great uncle, Tracker.

Insite Arts International was given $325,000 for its Indigenous opera Nharangga, which will weave together Narungga creation stories from Yorke Peninsula.

Other grants went to the Tarnanthi Art Fair ($184,500), Light Cultural Foundation ($200,000), and Australian Short Story Festival ($150,000).

Spuck previously choreographed Verdi’s Requiem for the Zurich Ballet in 2016, when it was described as featuring “16 staged tableaux” by the dancers, as well as a 110-member opera chorus, four soloists and a philharmonic orchestra.