A Midsummer Night’s Dream opera to lead 2021 Adelaide Festival
Cancellation of a French event meant artistic director Neil Armfield has had to look much closer to home for the opera centrepiece of next year’s Adelaide Festival program.
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A dream solution to the Adelaide Festival’s opera problem will also be streamed to four regional venues as the centerpiece of its mostly Australian 2021 program.
Audiences will also be able to experience artistic director Neil Armfield’s own production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the big screen in Elder Park, with up to 3000 tickets to be sold for as little as $29.
“One of the problems of COVID is that it automatically halves our audience, so we searched for a way to make the opera much more accessible and also an experience that could be shared by families,” Mr Armfield said.
The decision to mount UK composer Benjamin Britten’s 1960 modern operatic setting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows cancellation of this year’s Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in France, which had a three-year partnership to share operas with Adelaide.
Armfield’s version of the Shakespeare story was originally staged in North America from 2009-10, with seasons in Toronto, Chicago and Houston.
“I love the Dream … doing the opera was such a rich experience of the play. It has everything in it, but it has all this glorious music as well,” he said.
US countertenor and 2019 Grammy winner Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen will sing Oberon, with NZ baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Theseus and Australian sopranos Rachelle Durkin as Tytania and Taryn Fiebig as Hermia.
Renowned baritone Warwick Fyfe will play the comic role of Nick Bottom, triple Helpmann Award winner Kanen Breen will play Francis Flute and the non-singing role of Puck will be played by film and theatre actor Mark Coles Smith.
“With relative certainty, we were able to plan a work that is joyous – it’s a production I’m extremely proud of, I loved making it,” Armfield said.
“It’s so much about my own childhood, having played Oberon at high school.
“It’s an all Australian design team – we could do it by bringing in just one singer … and the choreographer (Denni Sayers) from London, we hope.”
The costumes and set design by Dale Ferguson feature feathers and facial tattoos inspired by First Nations peoples.
“The fairy chorus in this opera is a bunch of kids – 24 of them (from Young Adelaide Voices) – and one of the pleasures of the production was finding a real schoolyard energy,” Armfield said.
Seating is planned to be in checkerboard pattern, with four performances at the Festival Theatre from February 26 to March 3. If COVID-safe rules change, further tickets may be released.
Armfield and fellow artistic director Rachel Healy’s full 2021 program will be released on November 19 and is believed to also include Australian Dance Theatre’s new work Supernature, which had a work-in-progress showing this month.
A show from this year’s Festival program, High Performance Packing Tape – which was sold out but had to be cancelled when its solo performer was injured in rehearsals – is also expected to return.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream tickets go on sale for Friends of the Adelaide Festival today at noon, and for the general public at 1pm on November 19 from adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS.
Venues in Mount Gambier, Port Pirie, Renmark and Whyalla will be stream the opera on February 28 at 4.30pm. Book at countryarts.org.au