BIOGRAPHICA
2017 Sydney Festival, Carriageworks Bay 20
Presented by: Sydney Chamber Opera with Ensemble Offspring
Music & Concept: Mary Finsterer
Libretto: Tom Wright
Conductor: Jack Symonds
Director: Janice Muller
VIDEOS & SYNOPSIS
Recordings and information available via this link:
REVIEWS
SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2017
The Australian
‘Inventive, engaging, stimulating and moving, Biographica is an outstanding new opera.
It deserves regular performances as well as a permanent place in the repertory.’
MURRAY BLACK January 9, 2017
The Australian
'Biographica’s complex yet crystalline textures, evocative instrumental colours, intricate rhythms and Renaissance-inspired vocal writing resulted in an absorbing, appealing sound-world…’
MURRAY BLACK January 9, 2017
Sydney Morning Herald ★★★★
'Finsterer's ear for original, dramatically appropriate instrumental and vocal combinations and the way musical processes intersect with mathematical ones, are a collision of the sensual and the rational.'
PETER MCCALLUM January 8, 2017
Sydney Morning Herald ★★★★
'Finsterer's score recreates the Renaissance sound world with modern musical codes, using imaginative instrumentation, scattered modernist textures, and instrumental figuration to animate, transform and sometimes subvert the glistening vocal sonorities
PETER MCCALLUM January 8, 2017
Limelight Magazine ★★★★
Finsterer’s score thrums with energy throughout, making this a worthy addition to the Australian operatic canon.’
ANGUS MCPHERSON January 8, 2017
TimeOut ★★★★
‘Finsterer draws deep from the medieval minstrel origins of Renaissance music, but links up with intervening periods and contemporary art music styles, delivering highly appealing yet substantive fabrics for every scene. It succeeds paradoxically by being both palatable and unsettling, like the tale it carries. A triumphant level of achievement...'
JASON CATLETT January 10, 2017
TimeOut ★★★★
'... an exemplary achievement for the Sydney Festival: new, fresh high art that will be enjoyed by a wider audience than any accountant would have predicted.’
JASON CATLETT January 10, 2017
Bachtrack ★★★★
Mary Finsterer has managed a musical melange that crosses effortlessly and delightfully from the Renaissance to today which makes Biographica the most musically successful of the young Sydney Chamber Opera's commissions.’
JEREMY ECCLES January 9, 2017
Partial Durations / Real time
'...a major new work by one of our finest living composers.'
ALISTAIR NOBLE January 12, 2017
Partial Durations / Real time
'Biographica is full of lovely colours, both dramatic and subtle. The result is captivating, intelligent, and theatrically powerful.'
ALISTAIR NOBLE January 12, 2017
Partial Durations / Real time
'Biographica is a beautiful, haunting and thought-provoking work from an important composer of our time.’
ALISTAIR NOBLE January 12, 2017
Harry Fiddler
'...thank goodness for opera, thank goodness for composer Mary Finsterer and thank goodness for the many hands which came together to make this palimpsest of sights, sounds, words and music.'
HARRIET CUNNINGHAM January 8, 2017
Financial Times
‘[With] meticulous craftsmanship in her toolkit, Mary Finsterer’s opera is a vote of confidence in the mainstream appeal of new music.’
SHIRLEY APTHORP January 10, 2017