Adelaide Festival

Adelaide Festival returns in 2025, running from the 28th of February until the 16th of March.

Adelaide Festival is internationally recognised as Australia’s pre-eminent arts festival. Widely considered as one of the top festival in the world, Adelaide Festival provides audiences with the chance to see the most original and acclaimed artists working in the world today.

For over six decades, the Festival has been renowned for artistic innovation, commissioning and championing groundbreaking new works and presenting them alongside the greatest established companies and artists.

As an accommodation partner, Sofitel Adelaide is offering Festival-goers an exclusive accommodation rate starting at $315 per night.

Innocence

Kaija Saariaho, Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière
Directed by Simon Stone

Innocence comes to Adelaide Festival for its highly anticipated Australian Premiere following sell-out seasons at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Finnish National Opera, London’s Royal Opera House, Dutch National Opera and the San Francisco Opera.

In modern-day Finland, a joyous wedding celebration takes a shocking turn when the darkest of secrets is revealed and a young bride faces an impossible decision.

Acclaimed as a “masterpiece” by the New York Times, Innocence draws us into the complex emotional journey shared by a community of students, teachers and families recovering from an inconceivable tragedy. Loyalties are tested and ghosts confronted in a powerful and enthralling story of innocence and guilt, destruction and salvation.

This is Kaija Saariaho’s final opera and one of the most important of this century. Her extraordinary score, rich in translucent textures, is reinforced by a multi-layered libretto by Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen that explores the legacy of violence and its ripple-effect across the years. Throughout, lauded Australian director Simon Stone’s cinematic production balances deep tragedy with a sense of hope for the resilience of the human spirit.

An unmissable event and a new page in the history of opera.

“Part Scandi-noir thriller, part Ancient Greek drama … [Innocence is] raw, uncompromising and utterly gripping” – Limelight 

“A thriller that is also a meditation, Innocence is the most powerful work Saariaho has written … a masterpiece” – New York Times 

“Hands down, the most moving contemporary opera I’ve ever seen.” – KQED