Opera Antarctica

ARTISTS

MARY FINSTERER

Composer

Mary Finsterer is recognised as one of Australia’s finest composers. Having received international recognition for her music in Europe, Britain, USA and Canada, Mary has received many awards both nationally and abroad including representing Australia in five International Society for Contemporary Music Festivals and the prestigious Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize, as well as receiving numerous Australian Art Music Awards throughout her career. In 2015 she was the featured composer in the ABC Classic FM Pedestal Programme and has been the celebrated artist for several portrait concerts including ANAM Australian Voices in 2016 and the Sydney Opera House by Ensemble Offspring in 2012, who subsequently toured her music throughout Australia and China.

Also composing music for feature film, Mary composed music alongside Marco Beltrami in the Hollywood blockbuster Die Hard 4 and in 2011 her score for Shirley Barrett’s feature South Solitary was recognised in the Film Critics Circle Australia Awards and has been released on ABC Classics|Universal. Mary has also been the recipient of many prestigious residencies and fellowships including the Churchill Fellowship in 2006, Australia Council Composer Fellowship, Royal Netherlands Government Award and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence.

Mary's first opera Biographica, was premiered by Sydney Chamber Opera and Ensemble Offspring at the Sydney Festival in January 2017 with exceptional success. Having enjoyed a sold-out season, it was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike and described as 'an outstanding new opera that deserves a permanent place in the repertory’.

In 2018 Mary was the composer-in-residence at the Canberra International Music Festival where her new work for viola d’amore and cello entitled Ignis was premiered. Mary has received two Australian Apra|Amcos Art Music Awards in as many years: Art Music Award 2018 – Vocal Work of the Year for her opera, Biographica, and Art Music Award 2019 – Instrumental Work of the Year for Ignis.

Since 1998 Mary has been a member of various regional, national and international advisory boards and adjudication panels of organisations including the Music Board, Australia Council for the Arts, The Melbourne Prize Trust, Soundstream Festival Young Composers’ Award, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Arts NSW, De Ereprijs International Young Composers’ Meeting (The Netherlands), De Internationale Gaudeamus Muziekweek (The Netherlands) and the International Composition Contest Forum – Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Montréal Canada).

Mary holds several positions at the University of Tasmania including CALE Creative Fellow at the College of Arts, Law and Education, University Associate at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and is an Adjunct Professor at the Conservatorium of Music, Tasmanian College of the Arts.

For more information: www.maryfinsterer.com

TOM WRIGHT

Librettist

Tom Wright began his career as an actor, joining Jean-Pierre Mignon's Australian Nouveau Theatre (Anthill) in late 1991. In 1992 he resumed working with Barrie Kosky (who had directed him in student productions at Melbourne University) as a member of Gilgul, a Melbourne company exploring Jewish cultural identity. He acted in their productions of The Dybbuk (1992), Es Brent (1993), The Wilderness Room (1995) and The Operated Jew (1996).

He began writing for the theatre in the late 1990s, although he continued performing into the early 2000s. This Is A True Story, a monologue dealing with a death row case, which he wrote and performed, had multiple seasons and later toured to Sydney and London.  Lorelei: A Meditation On Loss, based on another death row case, and performed by Anna Galvin, played in Melbourne, Sydney, Edinburgh, London and Vancouver in 2003, and has since gone on to be performed in other nations such as Belgium and Pakistan. The BBC Radio 4 radio version of Lorelei won the Gold Prize for Drama at the Radio Academy Awards in 2007.

In 2006 he again resumed working with Kosky, writing The Lost Echo, an eight-hour adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. At the 2007 Helpmanns this production won five awards, including Best Play and Best New Australian work.  Wright's adaptation of The Women of Troy was awarded Best Mainstage Production at the 2008 Sydney Theatre Awards.

In 2009 his co-adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays, performed under the title The War of the Roses, was directed by Benedict Andrews for Sydney Theatre Company. This production collected four Helpmanns including Best Play, and was listed as the theatre masterpiece of the decade by The Monthly in October 2011.

Wright's 2012 play On The Misconception of Oedipus played at Malthouse in Melbourne and Perth Theatre Company, under the direction of Matthew Lutton. It won four Green Room Awards that year including Best Writing.  In 2014 Wright's play Black Diggers premiered in Sydney under the direction of Wesley Enoch; later it toured Australia playing in Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Bendigo. A text exploring indigenous Australian experiences in the First World War, Black Diggers was awarded the Nick Enright Prize for Drama at the 2015 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Having spent many years as an Associate Director at the Sydney Theatre Company, Tom now works across the industry in theatre and opera both in Australia and internationally and is an Associate Artist at Belvoir Street Theatre.

PRODUCTION ARTISTS

IMARA SAVAGE

Director

Imara Savage is a theatre and opera director. She has directed award-winning productions for Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir Theatre, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Sydney Chamber Opera, and Griffin Theatre. Her productions for Sydney Theatre Company (where she was resident director between 2016 – 2018) won multiple awards. Imara is nominated for a 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Director for her acclaimed adaptation of ST JOAN which is nominated for three Helpmann Awards including Best Female Actor (Sarah Snook). ST JOAN received four Sydney Theatre Award nominations including Best Director and Best Production.

Imara’s production of Caryl Churchill’s TOP GIRLS won two Sydney Theatre Awards. AFTER DINNER won a Helpmann Award, Best Ensemble at the Sydney Theatre Awards, and was voted Best Revival by Sydney Morning Herald. MACHINAL won two Sydney Theatre Awards. Imara also directed DINNER, THE TESTAMENT OF MARY, and HAYFEVER for the company. Imara’s Helpmann Award winning production of MR BURNS for Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South Australia, received many award nominations including Sydney Theatre Award nominations for Best Director and Best Ensemble.

Her acclaimed production of Elliott Gyger’s FLY AWAY PETER for Sydney Chamber Opera was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Opera and toured to Melbourne Festival. Other opera directing includes: Kaija Saariaho’s THE PASSION OF SIMONE, Philip Glass' IN THE PENAL COLONY and Benjamin Britten's OWEN WINGRAVE for Sydney Chamber Opera which won Best Opera in the Time Out Awards.

Other theatre: for Belvoir, FOOL FOR LOVE; for Bell Shakespeare, A COMEDY OF ERRORS; for Griffin Theatre, THE BROTHERS SIZE which won Best Newcomer at the Sydney Theatre Awards; for Red Stitch, ORPHANS; for NIDA, WOYZECK, the Tom Waits/Robert Wilson musical, and PUNK ROCK.

Imara is a graduate of NIDA in Directing and the NIDA Playwriting Studio and holds a BA in Communications and International Studies from University of Technology Sydney.

For more information: www.imarasavage.com

ASKO|SCHÖNBERG

Co-Producer

Asko|Schönberg, leading ensemble for new music, performs music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a variety of settings.

Asko|Schönberg is a visionary ensemble that anticipates new developments in an rapidly changing society. Stimulating talent development and cherishing the rich history of the ensemble, Asko|Schönberg energizes the classical music scene by commissioning composers and challenges them to reach for the moon. Innovation is key not only in relation to content, but also in relation to the way we will move forward in presenting work, rehearse, create and think of the way an ensemble looks like in the future. We are persistently looking for new languages that communicate to new audiences and connect with other disciplines in arts and science to further investigate and discover new found lands and spaces.

They focus special attention on long-term relationships and cooperation with major, significant composers, as well as on unknown and brand-new work of high quality. Thanks to these many forms of intensive collaboration, the musicians are highly specialised in performing new music.

The ensemble has a large number of working alliances with theatre and opera companies as well as opera houses, in which it can place the versatility of the contemporary musical palette in the limelight. The ensemble regularly performs in a wide range of concert halls in the Netherlands and abroad, and is a regular guest at festivals in places such as Cologne, Krakow and Paris. In recent seasons the ensemble performed in Melbourne, London, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Jakarta.

Asko|Schönberg is the ensemble in residence at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam. www.askoschoenberg.nl

SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA

Co-Producer

Resident at Carriageworks, Sydney Chamber Opera is a fresh and youthful answer to some of the difficult questions facing today’s opera industry. Louis Garrick and Jack Symonds established SCO in 2010 and it has rapidly developed into an important and distinctive voice in the Australian music and theatre landscapes.

Under the artistic vision of Jack Symonds, SCO continues to gain critical acclaim for its innovative programming, musical rigour and strong focus on compelling theatre-making. They make opera with a 21st-century outlook that resonates with a new, younger audience, and that shows how vibrant and relevant the artform can be.

Each year SCO stage two to three productions of 20th and 21st-century repertoire. Their program is a balance of specially commissioned work by leading homegrown composers, the latest international operas in their Australian premieres, song cycles and cantatas in unusual stagings, and canonical repertoire reinvigorated by the country’s most daring theatrical talent.  sydneychamberopera.com