Adelaide festival 2018 opera headliner is Brett Dean and Neil Armfield’s Hamlet

Internationally renowned Australian opera talent will again headline Adelaide festival in the form of composer Brett Dean’s Hamlet.

The Glyndebourne Festival Opera production, directed by Neil Armfield, who is also co-artistic director of Adelaide festival, will have its Australian premiere and exclusive season at the Adelaide festival centre in March next year and run for a mere three performances.

This year Adelaide festival staged Barrie Kosky’s Saul, also a Glyndebourne production, which sold out three months before opening.

Dean and Armfield’s Hamlet is a much bigger undertaking, with a larger cast – including a second chorus in the orchestra pit – a full symphony orchestra and two satellite groups of musicians playing for acoustic effect from high vantage points throughout the auditorium.

The fully enclosed, high-ceilinged set also features an English oak parquetry floor, which will be imported to Australia for the production’s short season.

Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, Armfield said working with the opera from scratch allowed him and Dean to push the boundaries of the form: “How far can we go in playing with this idea? How far can opera be released from the strictures of naturalism?”

Not all of these ideas came to fruition: “When Brett suggested Horatio could have been played on stage by a dog, I thought he’d been in Berlin too long,” Armfield said.

British tenor Allan Clayton will reprise his role as Hamlet for the Australian season, supported by American baritone Rod Gilfry as Claudius and British tenor Kim Begley as Polonius. Australian sopranos Cheryl Barker and Lorina Gore will take on the roles of Gertrude and Ophelia respectively. The production will also feature the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and State Opera of South Australia chorus.

Co-artistic director of Adelaide festival Rachel Healy said the festival didn’t deliberately seek out a multiyear partnership with Glyndebourne, but that the opera company’s commissioning of Australian artists was evidence of their “significant impact” internationally, bolstering the argument for supporting them at home.

Armfield and Healy believe there is a growing energy around opera as an artform, despite the fact that it does not traditionally perform well in a festival environment.

Tickets for Hamlet will go on sale on 31 August. The full 2018 Adelaide festival program will be released on 24 October.