Metamorphosis

Kafka’s novella about Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one day to find he has turned into a giant insect, is a popular source of inspiration: it’s been turned into a play by Steven Berkoff, a film, a ballet, a manga comic, a radio play and a suite of music by Philip Glass just to name a few iterations. Brian Howard’s chamber opera premiered in 1983 (with Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini as Gregor) and has now been dusted off in a new production directed by Brisbane Shakespeare Festival artistic director Tama Matheson and designer Mark Thompson. Performing inside Malthouse's biggest theatre, baritone Simon Lobelson plays Gregor, under the baton of emerging conductor Paul Fitzsimon.