Nobody knows why or whither.
This was not, in other words, a festival noted for its operatic events. The big container ship that sailed through the centre of Jonathan Mills' festival 2000, scattering smaller craft before it, was the vessel SS J.S.Bach. It was not only the 250th anniversary of the great composer's death but also the 50th anniversary of the death of Kurt Weill and the festival program duly accommodated that fact. Weill is principally known for his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Markus Stenz paid homage to the pair with a performance of the The Seven Deadly Sins. The soloist was the American soprano, Laura Aikin.