Australia+France Circus

Opus

CIRCA AND DEBUSSY STRING QUARTET

Melbourne Festival Co-commission

PRESENTED BY Melbourne Festival

DIRECTED BY YARON LIFSCHITZ
MUSICAL DIRECTION BY DEBUSSY STRING QUARTET

World-renowned circus innovators Circa have formed a rare collaboration with the Debussy Quartet, one of France’s most esteemed string groups, to create the internationally acclaimed Opus, a work of exceptional beauty and power.

Opus features a repertoire of three of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s quartets (5, 8 and 11) which form the musical and dramatic spine behind extreme acrobatics, lyrical movement and group choreography. The quartets are by turns intimate, passionate, lyrical, ironic and deeply moving personal testimonies by one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers.

Blending the lyrical majesty of Dmitri Shostakovich’s quartets with the intense physicality of Circa’s acrobats, Opus is a marvel – one that, rather than quarantining the quartet away from the performance, draws them intimately into the action, weaving them into a blaze of acrobatics and choreography.

Repertoire

Shostakovich Adagio (Elegy) for Strings
Shostakovich String Quartet #11

Shostakovich String Quartet #5

Masterful and groundbreaking, Opus is a performance of unshakable passion and razor-sharp precision – a melding of music and movement that teeters artfully between virtuosity and chaos.

“Opus is cut-glass, caviar circus... an astonishing thing to watch: graceful, bombastic. Profound. ★★★★★”

The Telegraph (UK)

Artists in Conversation - free

Sun 19 Oct at 1pm

Foxtel Festival Hub

Circa Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz and Debussy Quartet violinist Christophe Collette talk about pairing circus and Shostakovich.

A Nuits de Fourvière production/Département du Rhône, coproduced with Les Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg, GREC Festival of Barcelona, Le Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf, Dusseldorf Festival, Barbican Theatre, CACCV Espace Jean Legendre-Compiegne. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative, managed by the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals, Brisbane Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and Melbourne Festival. Circa acknowledges the assistance of the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding body, and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. Debussy String Quartet is supported by SPEDIDAM, Ville de Lyon / Institut Français, Musique nouvelle en liberté, French Ministry of Arts and Region Rhône-Alpes

Image: Justin Nicholas