First peek at 2025 Adelaide Festival program
The first three shows to be announced as part of the 2025 Adelaide Festival line up have been revealed today with opera Innocence set to take centre stage, thanks to additional support from the Malinauskas Labor Government.
The Malinauskas Government has invested an additional $2.3 million to secure major international events for Adelaide Festival through to 2026.
As a result, Innocence by renowned Australian director Simon Stone, with a musical score by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, will make its exclusive Australian debut at Adelaide Festival Theatre
Innocence will come exclusively to South Australia following its premiere season at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and subsequent seasons at London’s Royal Opera House, Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera.
Following its Adelaide Festival season, the opera will have its American premiere at the Met in New York.
Set in Helsinki, Innocence takes place at a wedding reception. Initially a joyous occasion, a fill-in waitress recognises the groom as the brother of the perpetrator of a school shooting over a decade ago in which her teenage daughter was a victim.
This has been kept secret from the bride and it is gradually revealed to not be the only thing the groom’s family has been hiding.
The action takes place on a multi-level, rotating set which allows the action to jump between both locations and points in time.
It will be performed by Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs, and sung by a combined chorus of 32 Adelaide Chamber Singers and State Opera South Australia Chorus members in an astonishing nine different languages, at various times: English, Finnish, Czech, Romanian, French, Swedish, German, Spanish and Greek, with English surtitles.
Also being announced today is Australian Dance Theatre’s 60th anniversary show A Quiet Language and Club Amour performed by legendary German dance company Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal.
Adelaide’s Australian Dance Theatre is the oldest continuing contemporary dance company in Australia and was founded by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM against a backdrop of social upheaval and protest. A Quiet Language will explore the company’s game-changing beginnings and its bold collective future.
At the same time, Club Amour, will unite two icons of the dance world - Pina Bausch and Boris Charmatz - for a triptych of groundbreaking works dedicated to love and desire.
Adelaide Festival will launch its full program on 4 November and will run from 28 February – 16 March, 2025.
Tickets for these three shows will be on sale to the general public from 11:30am today.
Quotes
Attributable to Andrea Michaels
Innocence, Club Amour and A Quiet Language are testament to Adelaide Festival’s reputation for incredible storytelling through the power of performance and the Malinauskas Government is delighted to be a strong supporter of our state’s premier festival.
We have dedicated an additional $2.3 million to the Adelaide Festival over three years to bring incredible international performances to South Australia including new opera, Innocence, as it makes its Australian debut here in Adelaide as part of the Festival.
This will premiere alongside A Quiet Language from Adelaide’s own Australian Dance Theatre – well-known as one of the world’s best dance companies – as they celebrate 60 years and Club Amour by Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal as they return exclusively to SA.
It will be an unmissable 2025 Adelaide Festival and I’d like to thank Ruth Mackenzie for her work as artistic director in putting together the program.
Attributable to Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Brett Sheehy AO
The three productions in our avant-launch are each extraordinary artistic achievements. I want to thank former artistic directors Neil Armfield AO & Rachel Healy for securing Innocence.
I remember with awe Simon’s brilliant, genre-breaking realisation of The Cherry Orchard for my 2014 Melbourne Theatre Company season, before he began his stellar international career, and my own introduction to Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal was at the 1982 Adelaide Festival.
Considered by many to be Pina’s masterwork, Café Müller is a pivotal creation in dance history, and to have it accompanied by two of the finest works by Boris Charmatz gives us an holistic dance experience as outstanding as any previously seen at an Australian festival.
Finally, we have ADT’s A Quiet Language, with both its founding and current directors collaborating on a singular dance event like no other, created by this magnificent South Australian-born, international company.