Adelaide Festival

Day 1 | Saturday 28 February
Arrival | The Cherry Orchard
The tour begins in our Adelaide hotel at 5.00pm, where we meet in the bar for introductions over a welcome drink, followed by a light dinner together in the hotel’s elegant Koomo Restaurant. We then kick off our Festival program with The Cherry Orchard – an Australian premiere and exclusive production from Korea’s LG Arts Center, directed by Simon Stone. Performed in Korean with English surtitles, this daring reimagining of Chekhov’s Russian masterpiece unfolds within the high-stakes world of South Korea’s corporate dynasties, blending heartbreak and humour in Stone’s trademark contemporary style. The remarkable ensemble features Emmy-nominated Haesoo Park (Squid Game). Overnight Adelaide (D)

Day 2 | Sunday 1 March
UKARIA Cultural Centre | Moonlight
We begin the morning with our first talk in the hotel, after which there is free time to explore the vibrant Adelaide Writers’ Week – Australia’s largest free literary festival located in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, a short walk from our hotel. In the early afternoon we travel by coach to the UKARIA Cultural Centre, an intimate concert hall set amid the picturesque landscapes of the Adelaide Hills. Our performance here features Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen in Moonlight, the final concert in his acclaimed Beethoven cycle. Performed in UKARIA’s superb acoustics, the program includes the beloved Moonlight Sonata and Beethoven’s profound Op. 110, written in ill health yet filled with transcendent beauty. Following the concert, we return to Adelaide in the late afternoon for an evening at leisure. Overnight Adelaide (B)

Day 3 | Monday 2 March
Adelaide Festival | Re-shaping Identity and History of Violence
Today begins with a morning Festival performance at the Space Theatre – the Australian premiere of Re-shaping Identity by dynamic Chinese dance company  GuoGuoHuiHui. Five charismatic dancers from diverse ethnic backgrounds – Tibetan, Yao, Uyghur and Han – take to the stage to share traditional dances that have shaped their identities. As a thumping electronic beat consumes the theatre, these movements evolve into contemporary expressions of liberation and life in the present, reflecting the artists’ own transformations and the new wave of choreographic ideas shaping dance in China. Following the performance, we gather for lunch at Osteria Oggi, an award-winning Italian restaurant in the heart of Adelaide, with time to attend a Writers’ Week session in the afternoon. In the evening, we reconvene for History of Violence at the Dunstan Playhouse. This Australian premiere and exclusive production from Berlin’s renowned Schaubühne Theatre is directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Adaptated from Édouard Louis’ autobiographical novel, the play reconstructs a night of desire and trauma with powerful emotional and psychological depth – performed in German with English subtitles. Overnight Adelaide (B, L)

Day 4 | Tuesday 3 March
Adelaide Festival | Breath & Bow and Perle Noire
Our day once again centres on the Adelaide Festival. Following a morning talk in the hotel, we walk to nearby Elder Hall for Breath & Bow, a midday concert featuring renowned British violinist Anthony Marwood with musicians of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. This elegant program pairs Henri Tomasi’s Fanfare liturgiques with Beethoven’s spirited Septet, a work of wit and invention that remains one of the composer’s most enduring creations. After returning to the hotel, we enjoy a Q&A with the Festival Director, Matthew Lutton OAM. In the evening, we travel to Her Majesty’s Theatre for Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, directed by acclaimed opera visionary Peter Sellars. Featuring soprano Julia Bullock and the International Contemporary Ensemble, this genre-defying work reimagines the life and legacy of performer and activist Joséphine Baker through music by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Tyshawn Sorey, blending opera, jazz and 20th-century cabaret with powerful poetic narration. Overnight Adelaide (B)

Day 5 | Wednesday 4 March
Hans Heysen | Orfeo
This morning we travel by coach into the Adelaide Hills to visit The Cedars, the home and studio of renowned Australian painter Sir Hans Heysen and his daughter, artist Nora Heysen. Set amidst rolling countryside near the picturesque German village of Hahndorf, The Cedars preserves over 200 original works and offers one of the finest examples of an historic artist’s house-studio in Australia. A curator-led tour introduces us to the house, studios, and surrounding gardens, followed by a delightful High Tea at Cedars Kitchen. We return to Adelaide in the afternoon with time to relax and freshen up before tonight’s Festival performance at Elder Hall. Here, the Pygmalion choir and orchestra make their long awaited Australian debut in a residency exclusive to the Adelaide Festival. Led by visionary founder and director Raphaël Pichon, the Ensemble Pygmalion will perform Rossi’s rediscovered baroque masterpiece, Orfeo. Highly sought after by Europe’s 17th-century tastemakers, Italian composer Luigi Rossi was commissioned to write the first-ever opera for the French court while in exile in Paris. The result, his Orfeo, boasts some of the Baroque’s most sublime and original writing, blending tragedy and comedy with remarkable poignancy. Overnight Adelaide (B, HT)

Day 6 | Thursday 5 March
Indigenous Heritage | Serenade from the Sewer
This morning we visit the South Australian Museum, one of the country’s most respected cultural institutions, renowned for its research and collections spanning natural history, anthropology and world cultures. Our focus is the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery, which houses more than 3,000 artefacts from Central Australia and the Top End. Considered one of the finest collections of its kind anywhere in the world, the gallery showcases tools, ceremonial objects, bark paintings and material culture that speak to the richness and diversity of the world’s oldest continuous civilisation. We are guided through the collection by an Indigenous specialist, whose insights provide invaluable cultural and historical context. The afternoon is free to enjoy further sessions at Writers’ Week before we reconvene in the evening for Serenade from the Sewer at Her Majesty’s Theatre. This new concert by cult cabaret legends The Tiger Lillies is inspired by the seedy underbelly of 1980s Soho, blending chanson, cabaret and operatic punk in the band’s trademark style – a provocative, macabre and unexpectedly moving reflection on life at the margins. Overnight Adelaide (B)

Day 7 | Friday 6 March
McLaren Vale | POV
This morning we depart Adelaide by coach, taking a scenic route through the historic village of Clarendon before arriving in McLaren Vale, one of Australia’s most celebrated wine-growing regions, renowned for its rich Shiraz and innovative viticulture. We begin with a tasting at Shottesbrooke Cellar Door, sampling a selection of their award-winning wines, before continuing a short distance to The Currant Shed. Set amid vineyards and orchards, this acclaimed restaurant offers a relaxed lunch paired with regional wines in an idyllic rural setting. In the late afternoon, we return to Adelaide with time to freshen up at the hotel before this evening’s performance at the Space Theatre, POV, by the inventive re:group performance collective. Told through the lens of an 11-year-old aspiring filmmaker, the work unfolds anew each night as two unrehearsed actors attempt to navigate her questions and re-enact her fractured family story. These brave (or foolhardy) performers discover the story on the night, negotiating disarming questions about parenting, agency, mental health and how we speak to children. Overnight Adelaide (B, L)

Day 8 | Saturday 7 March
AGSA | Mary Said What She Said
After a final talk in our hotel this morning, we take a short walk to the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) to take in the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength. This major survey exhibition – presented in association with the Adelaide Festival – features 24 contemporary Australian artists whose works probe how materials, selfhood and society are tested and transformed under pressure. The afternoon is then at leisure before we reconvene for our farewell dinner at one of Adelaide’s acclaimed restaurants. Following dinner, we walk together to the Festival Theatre for our final performance, Mary Said What She Said. In this powerful solo performance, international stage and screen star Isabelle Huppert embodies Mary, Queen of Scots in a mesmerising production directed by the late Robert Wilson. Written by novelist Darryl Pinckney, with a score by celebrated composer Ludovico Einaudi, the work plunges us into the psyche of Mary Stuart – a woman involved in some of the most notorious plots of her time, and a Queen exiled, isolated and misunderstood. After the performance, we return to the hotel and gather for a final drink in the bar to reflect on the week’s experiences. Overnight Adelaide (B, D)

Day 9 | Sunday 8 March
Departure
The tour concludes after breakfast this morning. (B)