As Melbourne farewells the action-packed summer season of sporting events and back-to-back festivals, the city readies itself for another blockbuster season of exhibitions and theatre shows. From the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces program, to the highly anticipated world premiere of KING KONG Live on Stage, Melbourne consolidates its reputation as the arts and culture capital of Australia.

The 2013 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series will appeal to lovers of art, film and costume design, with two Melbourne exclusive exhibitions.

Melbourne's Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) presents Hollywood Costume. Featuring iconic and rarely seen items from classic Hollywood films worn by some of the most recognisable actors in cinema history, the exhibition showcases the art of costume design in all its glorious detail and comes direct to Melbourne from London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

With costumes from classic films including The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wine, Titanic, Ben Hur and Breakfast at Tiffany's to more recent blockbusters such as Moulin Rouge!, The Iron Lady and The Dark Knight Rises, the exhibition will chart more than a century of work.

The National Gallery of Victoria will host Monet's Garden from 10 May to 25 August. The exhibition will include more than 50 masterpieces from Paris'Musee Marmottan, which is home to the largest collection of Monet's works in the world, plus other key Monet paintings sourced from leading international museums and private collections from around the world.

The exhibition will feature Monet's most well-known works from a stunning suite of enormous waterlily paintings to his iconic garden motifs, as well as rarely seen late works created in the garden as the artist began to lose sight.

Melbourne Winter Masterpieces is an annual series of major exhibitions sourced from prestigious galleries and institutions from around the world which balance curatorial excellence with popular appeal. Since beginning in 2004, the series has treated more than 3.5 million people from around Australia and beyond to exclusive and once-in-a-lifetime cultural experiences with exhibitions sourced

In a massive world-first for Melbourne, the ground-breaking new theatre production, KING KONG – Live on Stage will have its global premiere at Melbourne's Regent Theatre on 15 June 2013 for an exclusive, Melbourne only season.

One of the greatest love stories of all time, King Kong will come to life on stage with a cast of 49 actors, singers, dancers, circus performers and puppeteers; a crew of 76; and arguably the most technologically advanced puppet in the world – a one-tonne, six-metre tall giant silverback.

This world-first adaptation of King Kong as a large-scale musical was an idea that was born in Melbourne, brought to life by animatronic masters Global Creatures, and shaped by an award-winning international production team. King Kong will without doubt be an epic and dazzlingly original theatrical experience for fans of film, music and theatre to enjoy.

Another great love story and Australian premiere comes to Melbourne with Ghost the Musical set to open at Her Majesty's Theatre in August, 2013. Audiences will be captivated by the production which is bound for Melbourne after the world premiere in London, and Broadway. Composer and lyricist Dave Stewart reveals that the stage adaption has a fresh interpretation of the original 1990 film, while retaining the magic and romance accentuated by highly visual sensations, special effects and illusions.

This October, Melbourne will also play host to the nation's most gifted musicians when the Australian World Orchestra(AWO) performs two spectacular concerts at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Led by one of the world's finest conductors, Maestro Zubin Mehta, the performances will bring together the very best of Australia's classical music talent from all around the world.

Maestro Mehta has conducted the world's most celebrated orchestras including the Berlin, Los Angeles, New York and Vienna Philharmonics, is the longest serving Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, and is Music Director for life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a household name throughout India and Europe and he has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the USA.

The Australian World Orchestra was created in 2011 by Alexander Briger, an internationally acclaimed conductor with a vision: to bring together Australia's finest musicians from home and around the world to form one of the country's most electrifying orchestras. In a triumph of logistics and passion, more than 110 performers will be taking part in the 2013 series, with 54 internationally based artists from 47 orchestrates from around the world, joining 56 acclaimed musicians from across the country.

The performances will take place in Melbourne on Wednesday 2 October and Friday 4 October, 2013. A third performance will take place in Sydney. Tickets are on sale now through the Arts Centre Melbourne.

From November 2013, Melbourne Museum plays host to Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style. As the world's longest running and most successful film franchise, this exhibition will look at Bond's influence on art, music, lifestyle, automotive design, travel, technology and fashion over the course of five decades.

Featuring over 400 objects, Designing 007 – Fifty Years of Bond Style is curated by the Barbican Centre in London, with guest-curation by fashion historian Bronwyn Cosgrave and Academy Award®–winning costume designer Lindy Hemming, and designed by Ab Rogers who have had complete access to the 23-strong archive of movies to source objects and artwork.

And if that wasn't enough for November, the Opera Australia will be presenting Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle) at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner, during November and December, Opera Australia will perform three complete cycles of the four mighty operas which make up his epic vision: Das Rheingold (Rhine gold); Die Walküre (The Valkyrie); Siegfried Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods).

Director Neil Armfield AO and conductor Richard Mills AM lead this production, supported by film and theatre designer Robert Cousins. The international cast includes English soprano Susan Bullock as Brünnhilde, Finnish bass-baritone Juha Uusitalo as Wotan, American Heldentenor Gary Lehman as Siegfried and Australian Helden baritone John Wegner as Alberich. Further casting details will be announced over the coming months.

To celebrate The Melbourne Ring Cycle, Opera Australia has devised a four week festival including comedy, cabaret, mini versions of The Ring of the Nibelung, film, food and wine events, lectures, pre-performance talks, plus a host of other surprising performances in unexplored corners of the City of Melbourne.

Media contact: Madeleine Blake, Tel: +61 3 9653 9814; Email: internationalpr@tourism.vic.gov.au

Images: www.visionsofvictoria.com  

Notes to editors:

The team behind KING KONG Live on Stage is Global Creatures – an international entertainment group that develops new and exciting theatrical productions to take to audiences all around the world. Their animatronics arm, The Creature Technology Company, invents and deploys the latest in animatronic design from their warehouse in Melbourne. Global Creatures is the company behind the hugely successful Walking with Dinosaurs – the Arena Spectacular, which established a new entertainment genre that has been seen by millions of people and broken box office records in Australia, Europe, Asia and North America since its inception in 2007.