The acclaimed director has finally returned to the Adelaide Festival with two shows, Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine and El Nino: Nativity Reconsidered, his opera written with composer John Adams.
El Nino had its Australian premiere as part of the 2002 festival, but Sellars recalls he wasn't there to see it in any official capacity, having been told his services were no longer required.
"I think the festival that we were planning in 2002 would have thrilled people, but a certain small group lost their nerve and tried to pull the plug," he said.
Decades later, there are no hard feelings, but Sellars' return has come at another moment of division in the arts community.
He was among the signatories to an open letter from former festival leaders calling for the reinstatement of author Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was uninvited from Writers' Week in January, sparking a mass boycott and the eventual cancellation of the 2026 event.
Sellars believes addressing controversies and saying the unsayable is precisely the business of artists.
"The arts are your mirror and your whisperer ... that is the job description of what we do as artists, is go into a place that nobody knows how to go into, and invite people to join us," he said.
"The things that are controversial about your own life, the things you can't face about yourself, that's why the arts are here."
This also resonates with Perle Noire, the story of French-American performer Josephine Baker.
She was among the world's highest-paid female entertainers during the 1920s, spied for the French Resistance, and fought for civil rights.
"She was the richest and most well-known Black person alive in her era, but it was based on never saying anything, never showing certain emotions," Sellars said.
Baker's music has been adapted by composer Tyshawn Sorey and is sung by Grammy-winning soprano Julia Bullock with spoken interludes by poet Claudia Rankine.
El Nino: Nativity Reconsidered features a libretto compiled by Sellars and music by leading composer Adams in a version devised by Bullock.
Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine runs from Sunday to Wednesday at Her Majesty's Theatre. Tyshawn Sorey will perform at Her Majesty's Theatre on Monday. El Nino: Nativity Reconsidered is at Adelaide Town Hall on March 12.
* AAP travelled with the assistance of event organisers.
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