Festival Director Josephine Ridge’s final festival selection is headlined by Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984.

For the past three decades the Melbourne Festival has been one of the nation’s most potent cultural lightening rods, attracting world-class international artists to Victoria for an annual celebration of the arts. To mark this auspicious birthday, as well as her own final year curating the event, Melbourne Festival Director Josephine Ridge has assembled a stellar line-up for the 30th anniversary festivities. Featuring eight world premieres and 17 Australian premieres, with 15 events exclusive to the Melbourne Festival, Ridge describes 2015’s selection of music, theatre, dance and cabaret as having “sophistication, irreverence, audacity and creative intelligence.”

During her three-year tenure, Ridge has collaborated with ACO Artistic Director, Richard Tognetti, as the Melbourne Festival’s Creative Associate for Classical Music, and during that time he has curated an exploration of the master of the classical string quartet, Joseph Haydn. In 2015 the conclusion of the Haydn for Everyone project will see performances of all 68 of Haydn’s quartets over the course of the festival in some of Melbourne’s most historical and architecturally significant venues. Performed by quartets from the Australian National Academy of Music, members of the...