SYDNEY FESTIVAL IS ABOUT TO HIT

By Benjamen Judd

If you are planning on staying with us during January then you should probably start organizing your diary now because the Sydney Festival line up is not only out but tickets are selling fast.

The Sydney Festival has become one of the highlights of summer in Sydney, drawing enormous attention world wide for it’s line up of music, performances and art. It’s also a whopping shebang of a party that basically turns Sydney in to a non-stop Event with a capital E.

The first Festival took place in 1977 and it has since grown to become one of Australia’s largest annual cultural celebrations with an international reputation for modern, popular and intelligent programming. In many ways it is probably still best understood as a celebration of Sydney and its style and energy reflect the confidence, diversity and vigour of one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Now, despite the fact that Festival First Night has gone the way of the dodo and anti-discrimination laws (by the way, Lieven Bertels, we LOVED the way you shut-it-down when the whiners complained that you took away a ‘tradition’ – good job, son), the festival is bigger and better than ever.

So what can we expect this year? Underwater opera (Dido and Aeneas); Indigenous war heroes (Black Diggers); baroque cacophonies (Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin); and enormous installation pieces that challenge our understanding of public and social spaces (Merchants Store).

It’s going to be a very busy January.

For more information, including timetables, ticket sales and locations, head to the Sydney Festival website here.