OEDIPUS REX & SYMPHONY OF PSALMS
“This is going to be one of those important festival moments,” says Sydney Festival director Lindy Hume, conviction worn firmly on sleeve. “This is [an] epic music theatre story telling by one of the 20th Century’s great master composers…” Hume is excited, you see, because a double bill of Igor Stravinsky’s opera masterworks, Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms, will receive a rare performance in Sydney this month. So why has Peter Sellars, a director known for his unconventional, profound and controversial theatre productions, produced Stravinsky’s two tonally diametric pieces side-by-side? Hume explains that Sellars wanted to provide the audience with a sense of catharsis by tempering the bleak despair of Oedipus’ fate with the ecstatic and liturgically uplifting Symphony. “The two pieces chemically respond to each other,” Hume says. “It was not Sellars’ intention to leave the audience in a wreck following Oedipus’ violent fallout. He wanted to resolve the story.” Featuring powerful Latin choruses, gorgeous Ethiopian aesthetics, an American and local cast, as well as the musical talents of the Sydney Symphony and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sellars has respectfully updated Stravinsky’s take on Sophocles’ mythical Oedipus to provide relevance for contemporary audiences. “Sellars is trying to reveal the human truth of the pieces in a way that feels real for people today,” Hume says. “The people that have been involved in this project are geniuses; Sophocles, Stravinsky, Sellars… and I’d love for as many people as possible to share this epic experience.”
Jan 28-30, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, East Circular Quay, $50-189, sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/
