Adelaide Festival celebrates 60 years!

This February the Adelaide Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival celebrate their 60th birthday.

The Adelaide Festival was the culmination of real effort by the Adelaide establishment to create an arts destination event that would draw international artists to the southern city. The brainchild of Sir Lloyd Dumas, a newspaper executive, and John Bishop, a University of Adelaide Music Professor, who sought to create a model akin to the successful Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

Launched biennially in 1960 alongside the Adelaide Fringe Festival and becoming an annual event in 2012, the festival gave rise to Adelaide Writer’s Week and in 1992 Peter Gabriel combined the UK’s WOMAD – the World Of Music Arts and Dance and with the Arts festival created WOMADelaide. The month-long Fringe Festival has grown in leaps and bounds being open to performers across a diverse range of genres and for all ages. The Fringe alone generated $95 million for the South Australian Economy last year, with tourist attendance up 72% from 2018. The Adelaide Festival last year making $76.8 million for the state.

With performances over the years by the likes of Dave Brubeck and Marlene Dietrich, the work of famed painter J.M.W Turner, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Rudolf Nureyev, writer James Baldwin and jazz singer icon Sarah Vaughn, the multi-faceted Adelaide Festival has grown to be one of the top events of its kind in the world. The Fringe had launched the careers of many of Australia’s favourite comedians and cabaret acts and creates an electric atmosphere of hilarity and interest in every nook and cranny of the city that it can find.

Kicking off Adelaide Festival’s 60^th birthday celebration a free concert with Tim Minchin will be held at Adelaide’s Elder Park 29^th Feb 8pm. Events for all ages and tastes abound and a plethora of internationally acclaimed productions will be making their Australian debut: France’s Lyon Opera Ballet presents three interpretations of Beethoven’s The Great Fugue for Strings with Trois Grandes Fugue. Three celebrated female choreographers delivering three versions of the Great Fugue. The back to back performances the creative visions of Lucinda Childs, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Maguy Marin. British director Robert Icke brings audiences The Doctor, an ethical thriller with Olivier-award winner actor, Juliet Stevenson at the helm and Breaking the Waves, the sensational American Opera by Missy Mazzoli and presented by the Scottish Opera.

For the Fringe expect to see favourites Fiona O’Loughlin, Stephen K Amos and Arj Barker, while Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander’s show – Master of his Domain has sold out. Day and night, young and old there is absolutely something for everyone, well there must be, the program is 144 pages long!!

Four amazing events with experiences for every taste bud. Happy 60^th Birthday Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Fringe Festival.!

14th Feb – 15th Mar The Adelaide Fringe Festival

28th Feb – 15th Mar The Adelaide Festival

29th Feb – 5th Mar Adelaide Writer’s Week

8th Mar – 11th Mar WOMADelaide