This was  an excellent Sydney Festival event featuring the high quality Sydney Chamber Opera, accompanied by the Ensemble Offspring (Orchestra), presenting this new work by Mary Finsterer  with libretto by Tom Wright, formerly the long time Associate Director at the Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Janice Muller, and featuring a stellar cast including guest artist  Mitchell Butel, outstanding in the lead role, well supported by Jane Sheldon, Jessica O’Donoghue, Anna Fraser, Andrea Goodwin and Simon Lobelson. 

What made this concert particularly exciting for audiences was that such a high calibre team was presenting, a  multi-layered portrait of a  fascinating, eccentric historical figure, Garolamo Cardano (1501-1576), who few of  us knew about.

An Italian polymath, Cardano was one of the world’s great thinkers. He was not only the inventor of algebra, he was also a surgeon, gambler, philosopher, astrologer and heretic.

The work is presented in twelve intriguing scenes, each providing us with a different perspective on this brilliant, bizarre man.

Highly recommended, BIOGRAPHICA is playing Bay 20 at Carriageworks nightly at 7.30 pm until 13th January.

http://www.sydneyfeatival.org.au