‘TRIAL BY MEDIA’: AN OSCAR PISTORIUS OPERA
The Trial by Media opera, which is currently gripping audiences at the Artscape Arena Theatre, focuses on the murder trial of disgraced paralympian Oscar Pistorius, who was released on parole from Pretoria’s Atteridgeville Correctional Centre in January this year.
The bite-sized opera, which forms part of Cape
Town Opera’s season of Shorts — A Festival of Operas, had its world premiere last week and will run until April 21.
This while media reports of Pistorius now officially sweeping church floors as part of his parole “penance”, are doing the rounds.
In an exclusive, New York Post revealed that the former sporting icon reached out to at least two members of the International Paralympic Committee after his release, asking if they could work together in any capacity.
He was reportedly rejected, with one member telling The Post that the 37-year-old double amputee is “too toxic to work with now”, adding that “there’s nothing for him here”.
Pistorius was convicted for shooting 29-yearold Reeva Steenkamp four times with his licensed 9mm parabellum pistol through a locked toilet door in his Pretoria home at Silver Woods Country Estate on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
Throughout the gruelling six-month murder trial, Pistorius maintained that he had mistaken his model and law graduate girlfriend for an intruder.
The athlete served nearly nine years of his sentence of 13 years and five months before he was released into the care of his uncle Arnold
Pistorius under strict parole conditions.
London-based South African composer Conrad Asman’s score for Trial by Media was crafted over four years and finally completed just days after Pistorius’s parole request was approved in November 2023.
The opera is a musical tour de force of the complexities of the Pistorius murder trial, the public and media’s reaction to it, as well as the memory of Steenkamp.
Trial by Media stars Cape Town Opera soloist and award-winning soprano Brittany Smith as Steenkamp, with Van Wyk Venter in his first major role as Pistorius.
The festival runs until Sunday and tickets are available from Webtickets.