Every January, Sydney Festival enlivens and transforms Sydney with a bold cultural celebration based on the highest quality art and big ideas.

The 2016 program was kaleidoscopic in its diversity, from burlesque circus to Chicago rap to Dutch theatre; from contemporary dance to family programs to traditional Indigenous arts practice.  Schubert’s Winterreise, in which videos by iconoclastic South African artist William Kentridge paralleled the 24 leider of Schubert’s quintessentially Romantic song cycle, Winterreisse. The incomparable Schubert interpreter, Mattias Goerne, sang the full song cycle in an installation designed by Kentridge, whose stoic mixed-media landscapes refused to yield to the despair and egocentrism of Schubert’s heartbroken wanderer as he walked alone, broken by love, through a wintry nightscape.

Led by the extraordinary William Kentridge, the project was a seamless blend of diverse art forms, each enhancing the other and combining to evoke a subtle yet powerful meditation on experience, time and memory. It is a significant co-production between Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival, Wiener Festwochen, KunstFestSpiele Herren hausen Hannover, Grand Theatre de Luxembourg, Lincoln Centre NY, Opera de Lille and Holland Festival.