Shepparton Festival’s new direction raises the culture stakes

Kristen Retallick was appointed as the new Artistic Director of the Shepparton Festival in August 2022, with a brief of creating a program for the 17-day 2023 festival, scheduled from 17 March to 2 April.  Subsequently, this relatively tight time-frame was made even more difficult when floods hit the region in October 2022.  

Giagu says: ‘I thought it was a predominantly visual arts-based festival and didn’t imagine that classical music had much of a home there … but I’m always looking for unusual places for opera and chamber music to surface so I contacted Kristen.’