1st Edition
National Identity in Contemporary Australian Opera Myths Reconsidered
1. Prologue: Into the Abyss - Batavia 2. Failure: The Establishing of Colonial Myths - Voss 3. The Bush - The Ghost Wife, Whitsunday, Fly away Peter 4. Postwar Disillusion - The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Cloudstreet 5. New Beginnings – Bride of Fortune, The Riders 6. Cultural Renaissance – The Eighth Wonder 7. Suburban Dreams and Nightmares – The Children’s Bach, Love in the Age of Therapy, Midnight Son 8. Journey to Salvation – Lindy, Bliss 9. Silenced Voices Sing – Black River, Pecan Summer, The Rabbits
Biography
Michael Halliwell studied music and literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and at the London Opera Centre, as well as with Tito Gobbi in Florence. He has sung over fifty major operatic roles in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia and was principal baritone for many years with the Netherlands Opera, the Nürnberg Municipal Opera and the Hamburg State Opera. He has recorded settings of Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads, Amy Woodforde-Finden's songs, Boer War songs, Austrailian WWI songs and Australian Shakespeare songs. His book Opera and the Novel was published in 2005. He is on the staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
National Identity in Contemporary Australian Opera: Myths Revisited occupies an important place in the field of Australian musical and cultural history from the recent past to the present day. It makes a potent and well-considered case for the artistic contributions to the global operatic landscape from this complex and rich part of the world. Halliwell interrogates the operatic rendering of national identity in an engaging manner, showing the world the plurality of Australian cultural identities: whether problematically Eurocentric, postcolonial, Indigenous, postmodern and in constant flux and transformation.
Dr Pamela Karantonis, Bath Spa University, UK
