Stars bring added culture to Hobart Baroque festival Spanish countertenor Xavier Sabata. TWO rising stars of baroque opera, Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva and Spanish countertenor Xavier Sabata, will travel to Tasmania for the second Hobart Baroque festival in March. The festival was launched by arts impresario Leo Schofield and executive director Jarrod Carland last April with a Royal Opera production of Haydn's L'isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island). A second international production comes to Hobart next year with Handel's Orlando from the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York. It will be staged in Hobart's historic Theatre Royal by director Chas Rader-Shieber and conductor Erin Helyard. Sabata studied saxophone and singing, and was invited to join William Christie's emerging artists ensemble, Le Jardin de Voix. Last year he released an album, Bad Guys, an operatic rogues' gallery. In Hobart, he will give a similar program with the Orchestra of the Antipodes. The astonishingly young and gifted Lezhneva will appear with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at Hobart's Federation Hall. Tasmanian artists will also feature in the nine-day program, including countertenor Nicholas Tolputt and pianist James Gath. Schofield says the second Hobart Baroque will further burnish Tasmania's cultural credentials.