At the Sydney Festival in January, a couple of dozen beachgoers will lie on their towels or frolic atop 26 tonnes of sand, laid out on the ground floor of the main room at Sydney Town Hall.
These holidaymakers will sing operatically of the languorous splendour of their destination, their words embedded with subtle micro-narratives, all floating across a gentle, almost invisible, pre-recorded melody.
Sun & Sea at Biennale Arte 2019, Venice. Photo © Andrej Vasilenko.
One wealthy woman will sing, for instance, about the “bleached, pallid whiteness” of the Great Barrier Reef. Another will find beauty in the plastic floating past, “the emerald-coloured bags, bottles and red bottle-caps – the sea never had so much colour!”
There will be no sun above, of course, but above this beach set, Sydney Festivalgoers will sit in the mezzanine level, drinking in the wry libretto in this hour-long, English-language opera, Sun & Sea, which won the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Sun & Sea has already toured the UK, Europe and the United States. The setting changes, and localised references are included: just outside Berlin, it was staged in a Bauhaus swimming...
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