CLIMBING TOWARD MIDNIGHT

2013 is the bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth, and opera companies around the world are performing his towering music dramas to mark the occasion. Sydney Chamber Opera has developed a more searching tribute: a living composer’s response to his controversial final work Parsifal.

Jack Symonds’ Climbing Toward Midnight is based on Act II of the Wagner, and it explores the aborted romance between the two ill-matched main characters, Parsifal and Kundry. It uses Wagner’s text, however, Symonds’ intimate chamber score is a totally new composition.

Climbing Toward Midnight is a modern parable of obsession and desperation and does not require prior knowledge of Parsifal. Staged by colourful Israeli-Australian director Netta Yashchin, it is a 21st-century reflection on Wagner’s complex legacy.