Antarctica
Picture the scene …
A space. Empty. A fall of white ash which covers all surfaces, enveloping in a fine whiteness. A party of futuristic explorers trudge through the frozen steppes. They are in the colours of artificial, twenty-first century Antarctic wear – bright red, yellows oranges. they come across a figure, buried in the whiteness, near to death, frozen. It is a girl, dressed in nineteenth-century clothes – sepias, browns, deep greens. They warm her, wrap her in insulative blankets. She begins to stammer out her story, a fantastic tale …
This is the premise of Mary Finsterer’s new opera, Antarctica, with a libretto by Tom Wright, which is playing as part of the 2023 Sydney Festival. Finsterer, one of Australia’s most versatile and successful composers, works in a wide range of genres, including film. Her first opera, Biographica, which was premièred by Sydney Chamber Opera as part of the Sydney Festival in 2017, garnered critical acclaim. It is a work inspired by the extraordinary life of Gerolamo Cardano, a prolific and controversial inventor during the Renaissance.
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