Highlights include Brett Dean’s Hamlet, a Shakespeare adaptation akin to House of Cards, and an immersive German Requiem.

After the record-breaking success of their first Adelaide Festival this year, which achieved the highest box office in the Festival’s history, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy have revealed their programme for 2018 – and once again there is an exciting mix of international and Australian work, with an acclaimed opera as the centerpiece. The Festival Board also used the occasion to announce that it has extended the contracts of the two joint Artistic Directors until 2021.

As previously announced, Australian composer Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet, which premiered to rave reviews at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in June, directed by Armfield, will open the Adelaide Festival on March 2.

^{Allan Clayton as Hamlet @Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photograph © Richard Hubert Smith}

Hailed by the UK’s Sunday Times as “unmissable” and “the operatic event of the year”, Hamlet follows the phenomenal success of Barrie Kosky’s ravishing production of Handel’s oratorio Saul, which launched the 2017 Adelaide Festival, after having also originated at Glyndebourne.

Reviewing the world premiere...