There’s a thread of artistic audacity running through the May edition of Limelight: the audacity to return, to reimagine and, sometimes, to disobey.

Take Barrie Kosky, who opens the issue. Having sworn off Der Ring des Nibelungen after staging it in Hannover, Kosky has done what great artists so often do – changed his mind. His return to Wagner’s vast mythological universe for Royal Ballet and Opera is not an act of repetition, but of reinvention. As he tells Limelight Editor-at-large Clive Paget, each encounter with these monumental works reveals something new, both about the music and about ourselves. It’s a reminder that the canon is never fixed; it lives only through the imaginations of those bold enough to revisit it.

Reclamation is another powerful thread. In our feature on the multi-talented Sheridan Harbridge, we meet an artist determined to prise open history and let new voices sing. Whether channelling Chrissy Amphlett in a rock ‘n’ roll cabaret, reanimating a Miles Franklin heroine in a hit musical, or starring in Suzie Miller’s award-winning Prima Facie, Harbridge is drawn to women who refuse to conform. Speaking to Elissa Blake, she explains that the past...