Antarctica

Sydney Chamber Opera x Asko|Schönberg

Media Scenography

Performers standing inside a fog-filled box, surrounded by a large LED screen depicting fragmented white text on black.

“Ambitious and exquisite: Antarctica is contemporary opera at its best.”


Sydney Morning Herald

Antarctica is a contemporary opera co-production between Asko|Schönberg and Sydney Chamber Opera that premiered at the Holland Festival before featuring at the Sydney Festival.

Mary Finsterer’s composition is a fusion of early music, contemporary orchestration and sonic recordings made in Antarctica of oceans, sonar signals and the movements of microscopic animals. The stage design responds to this by placing period characters inside a hyper-modern frame of data, mapping connections and dissonances between the Age of Discovery and the Anthropocene.

Mary Finsterer’s composition is a fusion of early music, contemporary orchestration and sonic recordings made in Antarctica of oceans, sonar signals and the movements of microscopic animals. The stage design responds to this by placing period characters inside a hyper-modern frame of data, mapping connections and dissonances between the Age of Discovery and the Anthropocene.

The text-based imagery is displayed on a nine-meter tall LED screen and played live for each performance using a custom coded, real-time, midi-controlled visual

Five opera singers in a glass enclosure filled with light fog and surrounded by a large LED screen displaying coordinates and the names of locations.
The time and date 09:00 20/01/1822 is displayed in large text on an LED screen that is surrounding a glass encloure. The enclosure is filled with fog and contains three opera performers singing in period costume.
Jack Simmons conducting orchestra
Man singing in a glass enclosure filled with fog and surrounded by a large LED screen displaying white text on black that resembles a map of continents.
Woman playing double bass in front of large LED screen.
A young girl in a white dress holds her hand to the glass of an enclosure, which is set within a large LED screen displaying jumbled and overlapping poetic texts.
Pixelated white text on black that is displayed on an LED screen. The words are jumbled and mixed up.
Singer floating mid-air in a glass case surruonded by text on a surrounding LED screen.
A large LED screen on a stage behind an orchestra displaying geometric lines and points. In a cut-out of the screen, a young girl wearing white is visible in top-left.
  • Production: Asko|Schönberg and Sydney Chamber Opera
  • Composer: Mary Finsterer
  • Librettist: Tom Wright
  • Conductor: Jack Symonds
  • Principal Artistic Associate: Dr Huw Belling

  • Stage Director: Imara Savage
  • Video Artist: Mike Daly
  • Set & Costume Designer: Elizabeth Gadsby
  • Lighting Designer: Alexander Berlage
  • Sound Engineer: Bob Scott

  • Singers: Jane Sheldon, Jessica O’Donoghue, Anna Fraser, Michael Petruccelli and Simon Lobelson with Asko|Schönberg Ensemble

  • A co-production of Sydney Chamber Opera, Asko|Schönberg and Sydney Festival supported by Carriageworks and the NSW Government through Create NSW.

  • Photo documentation: Wendell Levi Teodoro
  • Video documentation (Sydney): Hospital Hill
  • Video documentation (Amsterdam): Saskia Habermann, Rafael Gridelli and Zoë Jungmann