Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:59:09.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Carmen in the Antipodes

from Part II - Across Frontiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Richard Langham Smith
Affiliation:
Royal College of Music, London
Clair Rowden
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Get access

Summary

There were no permanent professional opera companies in Australia in the nineteenth century. However, visits from touring companies were frequent, especially after the Gold Rush, when, as one critic put it, ‘all the glittering operatic repertoire of mid-nineteenth century Europe filled the antipodean air.’ In the period under consideration, there were many productions of Carmen by major touring companies and also by more ad hoc touring artists who joined up with local groups.  I have chosen to focus on the four most significant productions of the period.

The first production of Carmen was in 1879 by William Saurin Lyster’s opera company. This production established the opera’s popularity in Australia and was followed by a number of less satisfactory productions in the final decades of the century. In 1907, Lyster’s nephew, George Musgrove brought a German opera company to Australia who performed Carmen in German. This was followed by a spectacular performance by the Melba-Williamson company of 1911 and then perhaps the most professional productions to date, by English entrepreneur Thomas Quinlan’s touring companies (1912, 1913).

This chapter examines the controversy surrounding the opera and the critical response to the character of Carmen in light of the colonial desire for respectability.

Type
Chapter
Information
Carmen Abroad
Bizet's Opera on the Global Stage
, pp. 171 - 185
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archives

J. C. Williamson Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra.

J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd collections, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

Newspapers and Periodical literature

The Advertiser (Adelaide)

The Age (Melbourne)

The Argus (Melbourne)

Australian Star (Sydney)

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney)

Ballarat Star (Victoria)

The Evening Journal (Adelaide)

The Evening News (Sydney)

The Examiner (Launceston)

Geelong Advertiser

The Herald (Melbourne)

The Leader (Melbourne)

New York World

Punch (Melbourne)

The Quiz and the Lantern (Adelaide)

The Star (Sydney)

Sydney Mail

Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser

Sydney Morning Herald

Table Talk (Melbourne)

The Truth (Sydney)

The Week (Brisbane)

Scores and libretti

Bizet, George. Carmen, trans. Henry Hersee, London, Dickens & Evans [1879].

Carmen. An Opera in Four Acts. Libretto by Henry Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Composed by Georges Bizet. English Adaptation by Henry Hersee. Book of Words. Authorized version. London, Metzler, n. d. [1879].

Carmen: a grand opera, music by Georges Bizet; words by H. Meilhac & L. Halévy; translated from the original French by Fred Leyster [sic], Melbourne, Wk. Marshall Printer [Lorgnette Office], 1879.

Carmen up to data. Edited by P. F. Campiglio, libretto Geo. R. Sims & Henry Pettitt; music by Meyer Lutz, London, E. Ascherberg & Co., 1890.

Faust up to date. Libretto Geo. R. Sims & Henry Pettitt; music by Meyer Lutz, London, E. Ascherberg & Co., n. d. [1888?].

General Bibliography

Anthony, Barry. Murder, Mayhem and Music Hall: The Dark Side of Victorian London. London, I. B. Tauris, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blainey, Ann. I am Melba. Melbourne, Black Inc., 2009.Google Scholar
Bonyhady, Tim. ‘German Melbourne artists, scientists, explorers’, in Gercke, Hans, ed., Australische Impressionen: Landschaftsmalerei aus hundert Jahren. Heidelberg, Braus, 1987, 1833.Google Scholar
Brisbane, Katherine, ed. Entertaining Australia: An Illustrated History. Sydney, Currency Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Goacher, Roger. ‘Satin ‘n’ velvet Goatcher’. Sussex Family Historian, 13(6), 1999, 211–12.Google Scholar
Gyger, Alison. Opera for the Antipodes. Sydney, Currency Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Love, Harold. ‘Early Melbourne theatrical ephemera’. Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 4(1), 1979, 311.Google Scholar
Love, Harold. The Golden Age of Australian Opera: W. S. Lyster and His Companies 1861–1880. Sydney, Currency Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Murphy, Kerry. ‘Volk von Brüdern: the German-speaking Liedertafel in Melbourne’. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2(2), 2005, 5576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Kerry. ‘Thomas Quinlan (1881–1951) and his “All-Red” opera tours, 1912 and 1913’, in Aspden, Suzanne, ed., Operatic Geographies: The Place of Opera and the Opera House. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2019, 133–47.Google Scholar
Neil, Roger. Divas: Mathilde Marchesi and Her Pupils. Sydney, Newsouth, 2016.Google Scholar
Purtell, Simon. Tuning the Antipodes: Battles for Performing Pitch in Melbourne. Melbourne, Lyrebird Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Skinner, Graeme. ‘A biographical register of Australian colonial musical personnel’. Australharmony, http://sydney.edu.au/paradisec/australharmony/register-S-1.php.Google Scholar
Sowerwine, Charles, and Wolf, Gabrielle. ‘Echoes of Paris in the Antipodes: French theatre and opera in Melbourne (1850–1914)’. Australian Journal of French Studies, 45(1), 2008, 8198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, John. ‘The Rosa Troupe’. Carl Rosa Trust, www.carlrosatrust.org.uk/troupe/troupe_Hersee_Rose.html.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×