A poignant and prescient anticipation of his own death, Mozart’s Requiem is perhaps the most moving choral masterpiece of all time, a monument to love and loss, life and death.

In 2020, the Adelaide Festival’s centrepiece opera event will be a fresh staging of this musical masterwork by pioneering international stage director, Romeo Castellucci. At the world premiere in in Aix-en-Provence, rapturous audience responses and critical acclaim greeted its premiere performances. Castellucci has utterly transformed the funeral mass and created what Le Figaro described as “quite simply a great moment of poetry”. It is a work of colossal visual power and an unforgettable homage to humanity’s cultural and environmental legacy, a ritual to celebrate life as much as mourn the dead. It is a performance event that honours Mozart’s musical genius like no other.

In addition to the Requiem, Raphaël Pichon, Castellucci’s musical collaborator, has introduced rarely heard Mozart gems and Gregorian chant between movements to highlight and magnify the origins of the sublime score. Conductor Rory Macdonald, celebrated worldwide for his Mozart interpretations, will bring it to life in partnership with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and a 36-member chorus alongside a stunning ensemble of soloists.