Embedded within the Adelaide Festival this year is a series of chamber music concerts called Chamber Landscapes, held in the Ukaria Cultural Centre in the Adelaide Hills.
La Gaia Scienza. The Gay Science. Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft. Not many musical ensembles have, as far as I know named themselves after a book by Nietzsche. (Though why not? The Beyond Good and Evil wind quintet from Helsinki, perhaps…)
Three decades of immersion in the particular performance idioms of the early 17th century have given them an authenticity which sounds completely natural, indeed which convinces from the very outset that this is the only way that Monteverdi’s music can reveal all of its riches.
It not only imitates life, it penetrates the emotional heart of a terrible trauma, re-enacts it, and universalises it in one of the most direct acts of catharsis I have ever seen.
Kosky’s Saul at the Adelaide Festival paves the way for future baroque opera production in Australia.
From the very opening – a sparkling and glittering party, with very loud music on the sturdy industrial set with monochrome projections flashing about – it was clear that this was going to be different.
Anchored by the great performances from its leads, terrific musical numbers and stylish choreography, this re-imagined and re-vamped version is a proper crowd-pleaser.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, now that the annual Christmas proms are here.