Delphi Songs was premiered at the Music Workshop, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. A collection of musical and theatrical episodes, the piece is about the last recorded words of the last Oracle of Delphi: an Oracle that foresaw its own ending.

In the ancient world, Plutarch called the Oracles obsolete, and today’s scientists regularly speculate whether the Pythia (priestesses) were intoxicated by gas formations in the rocks. Both ancient and modern voices recognise this sense of the sacred becoming mortal.

Delphi Songs is an anthology of four episodes, each exploring this through different perspectives. It uses texts from 480 BC to 2015.

COMPOSER AND CURATOR / Meta Cohen

TEXT / Evan Bryson (2015), W.B. Yeats (1908), Prophecies spoken by the Oracle of Delphi (pre-Apolline period, 480 BC and 395 AD)

PERFORMERS / Claire Burrell-McDonald, Josephine Gibson, Rowan Phemister