Review: Messa da Requiem Opens On A Grand New Era

★★★★☆

There are worse ways to christen a brand new theatre than with a production featuring a full ballet company, a live orchestra, more than a hundred choristers and enough emotional weight to flatten a room.

Opening QPAC’s new Glasshouse Theatre, Queensland Ballet’s Messa da Requiem is a clear declaration of intent: it is bold, it is grand, and it is completely uncompromising.

And honestly, if you’re going to show Brisbane your shiny new venue, you may as well do it with Verdi. It has grief, spectacle, and a stage full of artists moving like the end of the world has arrived beautifully on cue.

Truth be told, ballet isn’t exactly my specialist subject. Give me a musical, a play, a weird little cabaret in a basement somewhere, and I’m at home, but this will be my first ballet review for The Scoop, and also my first in about four years. If I accidentally (and inevitably) butcher a technical term somewhere along the line, my apologies in advance.

What I can say, though, is that you don’t need to know all the correct language to know when something is working, and Messa da Requiem works.

This is not one of those ballet evenings where you sit back and politely admire the technique. This feels bigger than that. It’s a full artistic event. With Queensland Ballet joined by Queensland Symphony Orchestra and not one but two choirs, including the Brisbane Chorale and the Canticum Chamber Choir, the scale alone is enough to make your brain do a quick recalibration.

Then the music starts, the stage fills, and suddenly you are not really thinking about categories anymore. You’re just in it. And it is a lot… But in the best possible way.

Verdi’s Messa da Requiem already comes loaded with enough drama, sorrow and spiritual heft to do most of the heavy lifting on its own, but hearing it performed live like this is something else entirely. It doesn’t drift nicely in the background while the dancers do their thing. It barrels through the room.

The orchestra sounds enormous. The choir sounds bigger again. Together, they create this wall of sound that, at times, feels almost impossible to escape, while the movement on stage takes all of that grief, fear, and anguish and gives it shape.

That is what stayed with me most: the shape of it.

The movement often feels wave-like, as though sorrow itself is rolling across the stage in repeated surges. Sometimes the dancers seem to drift. Sometimes they seem to brace against something. Sometimes they look like they are being pulled under. It is bleak, beautiful and strangely hypnotic all at once.

For the opening night performance, soprano Naomi Johns, tenor Kyle Stegall, mezzo-soprano Cassandra Seidemann and bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman were all tremendous. Their voices bring Verdi’s seven sections to life in a huge, thrilling way, and there are points where the sheer force of the sound makes the whole thing feel like some giant communal act of mourning.

Principal Artist Lucy Green is graceful, precise and beautifully controlled. Everything she does seemed completely effortless and yet carries so much emotional substance.

In a similar vein, Soloist Vito Bernasconi brings a combined sense of power and elegance to the performance.

Joshua Ostermann and Ines Hargreaves are delights to watch, also, while First Company Artist Libby-Rose Niederer moves with such smoothness and assurance that it is hard not to keep being drawn back to her.

Across the company, the standard is exceptionally high. In a work like this, that matters. There’s no giant set to hide behind. No flashy theatrical gimmick coming in to do the hard yards. It all comes back to the performers, and they more than hold it.

In fact, just how stripped back the entire thing is, is one of the smartest things about the production.

There is quite literally no set to speak of, which, in turn, is one of its greatest strengths. The bare stage means the storytelling has no choice but to come through the movement, the music and the images being created in the moment.

Nothing feels overdesigned, and nothing gets in the way. It’s 100% bodies and voices, light and shadow, and that gives the whole work a starkness that suits it perfectly.

In a similar fashion, the lighting also does a fair bit of the heavy lifting. The shadows are harsh, and the stage pictures are often severe. At different moments throughout the evening, the dancers look almost ghost-like, then tidal, then seemingly ritualistic.

There’s a real sense of grief hanging over the whole thing, but in a way that never feels repetitive, or makes me think, “Ok, we get it.” It keeps shifting. Keeps finding new ways to hit.

A production involving this many artists could very easily get lost in its own ambition. This never does. For all its grandeur, it stays controlled. For all its size, it stays focused. Most importantly, it understands when to let the music roar and when to let stillness do the talking.

So don’t be fooled; this isn’t a light night at the theatre. It’s heavy, sombre and emotionally demanding. But it is also one of the more striking things I have seen on stage in quite some time. Not because it is flashy, although it certainly knows how to fill a room, but because it commits so fully to what it is.

As opening nights go, this was one hell of a way to introduce a new theatre.

Queensland Ballet didn’t just cut the ribbon on the Glasshouse Theatre. It shook the walls a little. Messa da Requiem is immense. It’s moving. And it’s visually unforgettable. For a venue taking its first bow, it felt like exactly the right kind of entrance.

Messa da Requiem is presented by Queensland Ballet and runs to 4 April at the Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC.

Tickets: https://qpac.n.qtix.com.au/tickets/series/qbmessadarequiem26

Website: https://www.queenslandballet.com.au/performances/2026/messa-da-requiem

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/qldballet/

Photo credits: David Kelly