SYDNEY—American gospel and soul legend Al Green will bring a whole lotta love to the 2010 Sydney Festival, as the summer celebration zeroes in on happiness.
Green will headline the event, alongside The Velvet Underground's John Cale, Slumdog Millionaire composer AR Rahman, US songstress Neko Case, Brooklyn four-piece Grizzly Bear and indie pop singer Laura Marling.
Theatre highlights will include a re-telling of Hamlet from Schaubuhne Berlin and the Sydney Theatre Company's Optimism, starring Frank Woodley, Barry Otto and Alison Whyte.
New festival artistic director Lindy Hume said the event would showcase a city reconnecting and celebrating after a year of turbulence and anxiety.
"Human happiness emerges as a recurring theme in the 2010 program," Hume said.
"The artists featured in the 2010 Sydney Festival share with us their contemplation of some very big idea - dark matter, happiness, reality, optimism, the Pacific.
"But it's true this festival is also about having gloriously hedonistic, deeply shallow, unashamed la dolce vita fun."
The festival of music, theatre, dance and film opens on January 9 with the return of Festival First Night - an evening of free entertainment that sees the streets of Sydney's CBD reclaimed by revellers.
The opening night party attracted almost a quarter of a million people in 2009, and this year features Al Green, The Black Arm Band, Kasey Chambers, Poppa Bill and the Little Hillbillies, and Indian music and theatre troupe The Manganiyar Seduction.
One of the festival highlights looks set to be Rogue's Gallery, an epic concert of sea shanties and pirate ballads at the Sydney Opera House forecourt, featuring Marianne Faithfull, actor Tim Robbins and local singers Sarah Blasko, Katy Steele (Little Birdy) and Glenn Richards (Augie March).
At the launch of the program on Wednesday, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said Hume had taken over the festival from Fergus Linehan at a particularly difficult time.
"Lindy took the reins of the Festival of Sydney at the time the global financial crisis was embracing us," Ms Moore said.
"We had this fabulous program ... and that was notwithstanding the very difficult financial climate. But we can assure you you really wouldn't have even known there was a global financial crisis when you see this festival."
In a nod to the tough economic times, the 2010 festival will include more free events than previous years, and is bringing back affordable initiatives like Tix For Next To Nix.
The Sydney Festival runs from January 9-30, with tickets on sale on November 9.
