Director Bruce Beresford returns with designer John Stoddart for this new production of Die tote Stadt (The Dead City). It was 23-year-old Erich Korngold’s first full-length opera and its story of lost love and yearning for the past resonated with post-WW1 audiences worldwide.

Korngold's operatic music is only now being rediscovered for its technical and musical brilliance. It demands an immense orchestra that for this production will be housed in the state of the art Sydney Opera House Studio. It also requires two great singers, which Opera Australia has found in Cheryl Barker and Heldentenor Stefan Vinke, whose voices will soar in the elegant and sumptuous setting of this production.

Mahler and Richard Strauss admired Korngold and he was likened to the best of the Romantics, especially Puccini; but he was Jewish and his work was banned by the Nazis. Hollywood called and in 1938 he was in California scoring The Adventures of Robin Hood when the Anschluss occurred. He won his first of three Oscars and said that it saved his life.

Performance commences at 7.30pm.
Performed in German with English surtitles.
Running time: Approximately three hours, with two twenty-minute intervals.

BOOKINGS

Opera Australia
(02) 9318 8200
www.opera-australia.org.au

Sydney Opera House
(02) 9250 7777
sydneyoperahouse.com