Barrie Kosky returns with third opera for 2022 Adelaide Festival

Berlin-based Australian director Barrie Kosky will return with a third opera spectacular for next year’s Adelaide Festival.

Acclaimed opera director Barrie Kosky will present his third production for the Adelaide Festival, The Golden Cockerel, as the centrepiece of its 2022 program.

The Australian premiere of Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1908 opera will come direct from seasons at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and Lyon in France.

Nina Minasyan as the queen, with Andrei Popov as the astrologer, in Barrie Kosky’s production of The Golden Cockerel at Aix-en-Provence. Picture: Jean Louis Fernandez

“It’s a mixture of eroticism, satire, sardonic humour … a very, very strange dream which comes from the deep, deep, dark recesses of my mind,” Australian born, Berlin based Kosky said.

“It combines glamour and horror, fear and sexuality – all my favourite things, actually.”

Based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1834 poem, the opera will be performed by a cast of mostly Russian singers, including Venera Gimadieva and Andrei Popov, with British-Ukranian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunk.

It tells of a king who fears attack from neighbouring state and seeks advice from an astrologer, who provides a magic rooster which makes the king become infatuated with the rival queen.

Nina Minasyan as the queen in Barrie Kosky’s production of The Golden Cockerel at Aix-en-Provence. Picture: Jean Louis Fernandez

Festival artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield said audiences had hounded them to bring back Kosky after the success of his productions Saul in 2017 and The Magic Flute in 2019.

“You’ll fall in love with this richly melodic, kaleidoscopic work,” Armfield said.

“We’re doubly proud that this will be the first time the opera has been staged in Australia since it was written in 1908.”

Healy said The Golden Cockerel was “tailor-made for Barrie Kosky”.

Kosky, who was the Adelaide Festival’s youngest ever artistic director in 1996, has been chief director of Berlin’s Komische Opera company for the past decade.

“It’s a wonderful present from Neil and Rachel that they have continued my relationship with the Adelaide Festival,” Kosky said.

The Golden Cockerel will be performed with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its Estonian former music director Arvo Volmer, at the Festival Theatre from March 4 to 9.

Tickets go on sale for Festival Friends from Tuesday, September 7, and for the general public on September 28 at adelaidefestival.com.au