'Classical music has traditionally not been a welcoming environment for women composers. Opera Australia’s 2019 season, for instance, features just one work by a female composer, Elena Kats-Chernin.'
'In 1986, the Adelaide Festival staged an operatic adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning writer Patrick White’s 1957 novel Voss, a pivotal work in the Australian literary canon. The opera, with music by a leading figure of the classical music avant-garde, Richard Meale, and libretto by acclaimed novelist and poet, David Malouf, was conceived in the period leading up to the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. It certainly tapped into the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
'When Yorta Yorta woman, Deborah Cheetham attended UniSA's graduation ceremony to receive her Honorary Doctorate, one of her own compositions played as music at the ceremony. '
'It's not a question you hear very often: 'When did you grow up?' But it is one I have asked myself many times. Yes, you read it right the first time and, no, I didn't mean 'when', I meant when.' (Introduction)
