Contemporary opera Innocence will be the centrepiece of the 2025 Adelaide Festival slate.
The acclaimed production is directed by Australian Simon Stone, with a score by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and book by Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen.
The work is set in Helsinki at a wedding reception - a celebratory occasion until a waitress recognises the groom as the brother of the perpetrator of a school shooting in which her teenage daughter was a victim.
The production is performed in nine different languages and features a multi-level rotating set that allows performers to switch locations and points in time.
Since premiering in Aix-en-Provence in 2021, Innocence has played London's Royal Opera House, the Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera - and will head to the Metropolitan Opera in New York following its Adelaide run.
Principal performers include Australian Teddy Tahu Rhodes with international singers Sean Panikkar, Jenny Carlstedt, Tuomas Pursio and Claire de Sevigne.
The festival's former artistic directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy secured the opera's place on the festival's 2025 slate.
Innocence is programmed alongside the world premiere of Australian Dance Theatre's 60th anniversary show A Quiet Language, and Club Amour, performed by German dance company Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal.
"The three productions in our avant launch are each extraordinary artistic achievements," the festival's artistic director Brett Sheehy said.
Sheehy has returned to the role after the departure of British artistic director Ruth Mackenzie earlier in August to take up a job overseeing the South Australian government's culture strategy.
Mackenzie had been hired to program the festival up to 2026 but departed midway through her tenure.
The state government recently gave the event an extra $2.3 million across the next three years to fund international acts amid rising costs.
At a parliamentary hearing in June, Arts Minister Andrea Michaels was unable to say whether the festival had overrun its budget in 2023-24.
The festival runs from February 28 until March 16.
