A Russian opera centred around themes of power and war will go ahead as part of the Adelaide Festival, despite calls around the world to boycott Russian works, as hundreds of South Australians protest the war.
Australian theatre director Barrie Kosky is staging a production of Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel", due to begin at the Adelaide Festival Theatre this Friday.
Despite boycotts around the world of Russian work, Adelaide Festival co-director Rachel Healy said the production had the company's full support to go ahead.
Ms Healy told ABC Radio Adelaide both the cast and crew felt the current situation overseas made the production even more "urgent and necessary".
"This is a work about a Russian tsar whose paranoia, entitlement and arrogance leads him to mount an attack on a neighbouring country with his army, you couldn't write about it," Ms Healy said.
"It's been created by a company of artists from eight different nations, including Ukraine and Russia, and they are all horrified at how art is mirroring life outside the doors of the theatre.
"The work is an allegory about the foolishness of leaders who believe that military antagonism is the only way forward."
Ms Healy said many of the production's Ukrainian cast and crew had been stressed about the situation at home and were on the phone to family night after night.
"We've got the support of the Ukrainian artists in the company itself, who are working side-by-side with their Russian counterparts. Our focus is on supporting those artists and listening to how they want to proceed in this way," she said.
"They're obviously, as are our Ukrainian community, under enormous strain and stress."
Adelaide shows support for Ukraine
Hundreds of South Australians attended a passionate rally in Adelaide in support of Ukraine yesterday.
Many attendees of the march in Adelaide have family and friends in Ukraine sheltering for safety or trying to escape.
Ukrainian Australian Viktoriia Nazarova said her father in Ukraine has been inundated with injured Ukrainians requiring assistance.
"My dad is a trauma surgeon and in the first 30 hours of the invasion, he spent [all 30 hours] in the surgery theatre — he tried to [save] 27 people."
Leaders from both sides of politics attended the rally, addressing the crowd, and promising refuge for Ukrainians.
Adelaide’s Polish and Latvian communities were among those also showing support for Ukraine.
The rally organisers also encouraged people to impose their own sanctions on Russia by boycotting Russian products.
