The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra has announced its 2019 season. Now in its sixth year, the period instrument band led by Artistic Director Richard Gill looks back to its origins in a season chock full of fresh takes on old favourites.

The season opens in March with Madness & Confrontation, a concert remembering ARCO’s birth, spawned from an idea by conductor Richard Gill, concertmaster Rachael Beesley and principal clarinettist Nicole van Bruggen, during Victorian Opera’s 2012 production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. “Richard Gill was conducting Ludovico’s Band, led by violinist and friend Rachael Beesley, in which I was playing,” Van Bruggen wrote in Limelight last year. “Richard was blown away by the calibre of the musicianship, and recognised that the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) knowledge and expertise assembled in the orchestra pit was something special. So, he invited us to create a new orchestra.”

Soprano Jacqueline Porter and baritone David Greco will join the orchestra in duets and arias from Mozart’s opera (the libretto of which Lorenzo Da Ponte based on Beaumarchais’s play Day of Madness, or the Marriage of Figaro).