The inimitable German female vocal group Sjaella takes an eclectic look at nature in its various aspects to mark its return to Australia after three years.

Formed out of a girls’ choir 20 years ago in Leipzig, the six women – sopranos Viola Blache, Maria Fenske and Franziska Eberhardt; mezzo-soprano Marie Charlotte Seidel and altos Luisa Klose and Helene Erben – are all founding members and have established themselves as the marquee act at festivals and in concerts throughout the world.

More often than not heard in vast spaces – cathedrals, concert halls or on open-air stages – the group’s two sold-out concerts in the intimate acoustic of the Opera House’s Utzon Room offer a special resonance for a program which ranges from Renaissance and Baroque polyphony to European folk music and contemporary works, with some choreography and performance art as an added bonus.

Sjaella in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

Sjaella enters through the audience on either side humming and whistling the bass line of A Bird’s Prelude from Henry Purcell’s A Fairy Queen before Blache and Eberhardt recreate the flute duet.

Birds, not unnaturally, figure prominently...