AWAKENING SHADOW
By Benjamin Britten & Luke Styles
A private window to the soul – a sequence of desperate prayers –
a crusade from belief to doubt. Awakening Shadow channels Benjamin Britten’s crisis of faith through the singing body.
In a first Australian staging, Britten’s five Canticles are entwined with a new work by leading Australian composer Luke Styles: a
fevered photo negative.
The Canticles are a seminal portrait of Britten’s musical voice, written throughout his life for partner and muse Peter Pears. An hour-long quintet of chamber works centred on a radiant
tenor (sung here by SCO favourite Brenton Spiteri – Oscar & Lucinda, Notes from Underground), their texts draw widely on
English literature: a medieval Miracle Play, Jacobean metaphysics, poetry by T.S. Eliot & Edith Sitwell. None is specifically liturgical,
though taken as one they reveal a complex faith.
Imara Savage (La Passion de Simone, Owen Wingrave, Fly Away Peter) directs alongside Cannes award-winning filmmaker Mike Daly as part of their 2022 Creative Residency at SCO, interrogating Britten and Style’s confrontation with the eternal to forge a path through one of the 20th century’s most intense works, reinterpreted for the 21st.
Director
Imara Savage
Video Artist
Mike Daly
Set & Costume Design
Elizabeth Gadsby
Lighting Design
Alexander Berlage
Music Director/Piano
Jack Symonds
Singers
Brenton Spiteri
Emily Edmonds
Simon Lobelson
Jane Sheldon
Piano sponsored by Kawai Pianos, Australia.
Gallery
Date
30 Sep,
1, 3, 4, 6, 7 Oct 2022
At 7:30 pm
VENUE
Carriageworks
Bay 20, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh
duration
80 minutes
TICKET prices
General Admission: $50
Buy your tickets here

Four Questions for composer Luke Styles
How do you compose responses to Britten’s Canticles?

Four Questions for Director Imara Savage
Awakening Shadow’s Director on making innovative stage work.
Keep in touch
General Inquiries
- contact@sydneychamberopera.com
-
SCO, Carriageworks
PO Box 3035 Redfern, NSW 2016
Postal Address -
SCO, Carriageworks
245 Wilson St Eveleigh, NSW 2015
Resident Address - (02) 8571 9106