AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Biographica is a new opera by award winning Australian composer Mary Finsterer with libretto by celebrated writer, Tom Wright. Informed by the principles of Renaissance music, and conceived for one actor, five singers and eleven musicians, Biographica is inspired by the extraordinary life and demise of Gerolamo Cardano.
'Gerolamo Cardano was a prolific inventor, a flawed father, a solitary, aggressive and peculiar soul with a magnificent and eccentric Renaissance mind; a human who listened to guardian angels, swore by science, and dreamt of defeating time. He wrote the first texts on the mathematics of gambling and cheating, was a world-renowned surgeon, invented algebra, and was the pioneer of sign language.'
Production Details
-
Presented at Carriageworks Bay 20 as part of the 2017 Sydney Festival, by Sydney Chamber Orchestra with Ensemble Offspring.
Conductor: Jack Symonds..
Director: Janice Muller.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Mary Finsterer
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17 December - 6 January 2022;'Mary Finsterer is an Australian composer who is internationally respected and locally cherished for her many works, including the soundtracks to Die Hard 4 (2007) and Shirley Barrett’s 2010 film South Solitary, the opera Biographica (2017), written with librettist Tom Wright, Catch (2004), an album of her award-winning work released through ABC Classics/Universal, and innumerable commissions for ensembles, orchestras and residencies. She has had a long teaching career and received many prestigious awards. Her latest project, the innovative opera Antarctica, also written with Wright, debuted at the Holland Festival this year and will have its Australian premiere at the Sydney Festival in January.' (Introduction)
-
Mary Finsterer
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17 December - 6 January 2022;'Mary Finsterer is an Australian composer who is internationally respected and locally cherished for her many works, including the soundtracks to Die Hard 4 (2007) and Shirley Barrett’s 2010 film South Solitary, the opera Biographica (2017), written with librettist Tom Wright, Catch (2004), an album of her award-winning work released through ABC Classics/Universal, and innumerable commissions for ensembles, orchestras and residencies. She has had a long teaching career and received many prestigious awards. Her latest project, the innovative opera Antarctica, also written with Wright, debuted at the Holland Festival this year and will have its Australian premiere at the Sydney Festival in January.' (Introduction)
