Adelaide festival to post 2024 deficit despite $2.3m boost from SA government

Spokesperson says losses will be revealed in next month’s financials and the festival has access to reserves to fund next year’s program

Australia’s oldest and most prestigious arts festival made a loss in 2024, despite an injection of $2.3m from the South Australian government six months earlier.

Adelaide festival management confirmed on Friday it will post a deficit, just a week after the unexpected departure of its artistic director.

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Adelaide Writers’ Week withdrawals ‘sad’ and ‘unfortunate’, director Louise Adler says

Adler defends ‘courageous spaces to air opposing views’ as major sponsor and three Ukrainian writers pull out over comments from other invited authors

The Adelaide Writers’ Week director, Louise Adler, has vowed not to be dissuaded from creating space for “courageous” discussions of literature and opposing views, despite high-profile withdrawals and calls for her resignation.

Three Ukrainian writers and a major financial sponsor have withdrawn from next month’s Adelaide festival event in response to social media comments by two writers appearing at the event, Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd.

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Adelaide festival to stage Verdi’s Requiem with a cast of hundreds – and a star choreographer

After Covid thwarted two attempts to bring out Christian Spuck’s acclaimed Messa da Requiem, the festival has finally announced it as next year’s centrepiece

For Adelaide festival’s 2023 opera centrepiece a cast of almost 200 singers, dancers and musicians will take the stage under the direction of one of the world’s most celebrated choreographers.

Dance will be foregrounded in Messa da Requiem: the celebrated production of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Requiem by the German choreographer Christian Spuck, which debuted in Zurich in 2016.

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