Adelaide Festival 2027: Castellucci's Bluebeard Anchors Vocal Lineup

The Adelaide Festival has announced its 2027 season, and the vocal program runs on two anchors: Romeo Castellucci's staging of Bartók's "Bluebeard's Castle" and the world of new Australian opera "Eucalyptus," plus a concentrated residency by the Latvian vocal ensemble Latvian Voices.

The announcement, first reported by OperaWire, lists five vocal events across a season window running from late February into mid-March 2027. What it does not list, notably, is venues — no theatre or concert hall appears anywhere in the release. That gap will matter to ticket buyers long before it matters to critics.

Who is staging what?

The headline production is opera. Romeo Castellucci directs Bartók's "Bluebeard's Castle" with John Lundgren and Christel Loetzsch in the cast — a two-singer work, so these are the leads. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducts. Performance dates are February 26 to March 2, 2027.

The second opera is "Eucalyptus," credited to Jonathan Mills and Meredith Oakes. Its cast lists six singers: Desiree Frahn, Simon Meadows, Michael Petruccelli, Samuel Dundas, Natalie Jones and Sian Sharp. It plays a single performance on March 13, 2027.

A single date for a new opera is worth flagging. Festival productions with one scheduled performance leave no room for word-of-mouth to build demand, and no announced second chance if a premiere misfires. Whether March 13 is the only date or simply the only one disclosed, the release does not say.

What do the concerts add?

The concert wing belongs almost entirely to Latvian Voices, the Latvian ensemble, which appears three times across five days:

• February 27, 2027 — a performance titled "Timeless."
• February 28, 2027 — a program titled "Sacred Chord."
• March 2, 2027 — a joint appearance with the Adelaide Chamber Singers in a program titled "Moon and Stars."

The March 2 collaboration is the only announced pairing between the visiting ensemble and a local group, and it lands on the same day "Bluebeard's Castle" closes its run. A festival-goer could, in principle, hear Castellucci's Bartók and a Latvian-Australian choral program within hours of each other.

What does this change for audiences?

For now, mostly the calendar. The announcement fixes names, works and dates but withholds casting detail beyond the leads, venue assignments, running times and ticketing information. Mills and Oakes's "Eucalyptus" carries the strongest local stake — an Australian-made opera by established creators with a six-singer cast — yet the release offers no synopsis or production credits.

The full picture, including where any of this happens and how much it costs, waits on the fuller season launch. Until venues and booking dates appear, this remains a lineup sketched in outline: five events, three of them by one ensemble, spread across sixteen days in Adelaide.