When Brett Sheehy ran his first Adelaide Festival in 2006, the world was a different place - and arts festivals were different too. "What I've seen happen, which breaks my heart in many ways, is the slow diminution of major international content in each of the capital city festivals," Sheehy told AAP. He would know, having run Melbourne and Sydney's annual arts festivals too, over a 30 year career.
While local work is vital, capital city festivals were really established to bring groundbreaking international art down under, he said. All this leaves the Adelaide Festival holding the torch - it's now billed as Australia's International Festival - and it's the only event that imports a large scale contemporary opera as its centrepiece every year. The centrepiece of the 2025 program is the Finnish opera Innocence, which comes to Australia before its New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
Also on the slate of 65 events and 11 world premieres announced Monday, is German choreographer Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal. She combines with the company's artistic director, Boris Charmatz, for a triptych of performances titled Club Armour, dedicated to love and desire. First, there's Bausch's influential dance piece Cafe Muller followed by Charmatz's Aatt enen tionon, in which performers are isolated on high platforms, then two naked dancers entwined together in herses, duo.
The there's flamenco meets punk with Rocio Molina's Caida del Cielo (Fallen from Heaven) pushing the bounda.
