Fitters’ Workshop, Canberra
May 2, 2018

In Australia we’re relatively inured from the turbulence that’s displacing people in other parts of the world, from Syria to Venezuela, but it’s this displacement that Canberra International Music Festival AD Roland Peelman sought to highlight in the 13th concert of the festival, Ulysses Now, which presented music from Monteverdi’s opera Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria alongside contemporary Australian works in an intelligent, thought-provoking program.

Ulysses Now, CIMF, Canberra International Music FestivalMonteverdi’s Il Ritorno at the Canberra International Music Festival. Photo © Peter Hislop

Monteverdi’s Opera – based on the second half of Homer’s Odyssey – focusses on Ithaca, where Penelope is anxiously awaiting the return of her husband, King Ulisse, from the Trojan Wars. Opening with the Prologo – after the musicians of early music group I Bassifondi allowed the ears to adjust from the Glass Games earlier in the afternoon to the sounds of lute and theorbo in a Sfessania and Pasacaglia by Kapsberger – the scene was set with the warm-toned countertenor of Tobias Cole as Human Fragility, bass Andrew Fysh as Time, soprano Chloe Lankshear as Fortune and 12-year-old treble Wynton Johnstone...