| Underneath | State Opera |
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Drawing on her background directing baroque opera and a belief in the power of art to transform communities, in 2006 director Lindy Hume was awarded an Australia Council Theatre Board Fellowship to experiment with ideas in the areas of community engagement and design/performance aesthetics, collaborating with three distinguished SA based colleagues: Nigel Levings, Graham Abbott and Timothy Sexton.
The project developed from Hume’s Fellowship - generously supported by State Opera of South Australia and given a “home” in their Netley studios - is Underneath, based on Monteverdi’s Orfeo. At its core is the 3000-year-old myth of Orpheus, whose journey is here interpreted as a poetic metaphor for the life experience of grief. The Orpheus story belongs to all communities including our own time and place - Adelaide 2008.
The Underneath project brings together a cast of State Opera’s young singers, specialist musicians and members of the broader Adelaide community sharing personal experiences of grief for a loved one, bereavement professionals and an enthusiastic group of community participants aged 70 and upwards. Award-winning lighting designer Nigel Levings has conceived a unique performance environment for a large, non-theatre space, allowing the audience to journey with the actors, while Abbott and Sexton have developed a new musical version incorporating baroque and contemporary instrumentation and the spoken word, merging the aesthetics and experiences of the 17th and 21st centuries.
Hume’s aim for the Underneath project is “to develop a new, more creative template for bringing opera and the broader community together. Baroque fanatics are forewarned NOT to expect a "pure" baroque opera experience - this project is by its nature experimental: adventurous audiences can expect to move around the studio space, fumble in the dark, hear the real voices of our own community and share a very different music-drama experience. “
State Opera presents
Director Lindy Hume’s
Underneath
based on Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo
The Opera Studio, 216 Marion Road, Netley
Fri 19, Sat 20 September at 6.30pm and Sun 21 September at 2.00pm
Running Time: Approximately 85 minutes
Visit: www.saopera.sa.gov.au
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