The composition of a lifetime

Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon (BMusEd ’86), remembers the moment she saw her first opera.

“I sat in Row L, Seat 23. It was the 19th of February 1979, at the Sydney Opera House. Dame Joan Sutherland (Doctor of Music (honorary) ’84) was in the title role of The Merry Widow,” Professor Cheetham Fraillon says. “It was life-changing, all those details are burnt not only into my memory, but also into the fabric of who I am as a person.”

She was there on a high school excursion. Her music teacher at Penshurst Girls High, Jennifer King (Dip Music ’69), who is still a dear friend, had nurtured her singing talent - and convinced her parents that she should pursue piano lessons. At the same time, she took up the flute when the school orchestra was handing out instruments from the music cupboard.

“I fell in love with opera that night. How could I not? Here was the greatest soprano the world had ever known, in the glorious Kristian Fredrikson belle epoque production, and I just thought, ‘Where has this been all my life?’”

From that point, she harboured the desire to be an opera singer, although she had no idea how that might come about. “My adoptive family were working-class people and there was no expectation that I would finish Year 12, let alone be the first in my family to head off to university.”

Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s distinguished career has since taken her across the country and around the world. A Yorta Yorta/Yuin soprano and composer who specialises in chamber, orchestral, choral and operatic music, working with First Nations traditional languages and narratives, her compositions are in high demand by Australia’s major ensembles. Her recent major commissions include works for The Australian Ballet (The Hum 2023), Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Ghost Light 2022), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (Baparripna 2022).

She also founded the Short Black Opera company, and in 2014 was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. The Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award and Helpmann JC Williamson Lifetime Achievement Award are amongst a multitude of accolades.

“I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t part of my life,” Professor Cheetham Fraillon says. “My adoptive parents were members of the local Baptist church, and music was central to each and every service.”

 Professor Cheetham Fraillon is a member of the Stolen Generations. Although she didn’t get to know her Aboriginal family until she was in her thirties, they were also musical, including her uncle, renowned Australian singer and musician Jimmy Little.

“In the end, I went to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music because my music teacher again intervened,” she says. “So I applied but, being first in my family to go to university, I didn’t know what to expect, and when all my friends received offers, I realised that for some reason I hadn’t even been notified of my audition. I rang up and they asked me to come in during the summer holidays. There was a train strike, so I threw my sheet music in my backpack and rode my motorbike in from Sydney’s southern suburbs in 36-degree heat in my leathers. I emerged for the audition in a sweat – but played remarkably well – and luckily, I passed!

“During my degree, I just thought, ‘What a magical place is the Con.’ The idea that you could go there and your whole life could be about music, that was some sort of paradise, utopia for me.”

After graduating, she studied at the Julliard School of Music and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, then worked as a high school music teacher in Australia – although her performances, which involved frequent travelling, eventually drew her away from teaching.

Her first major work was an autobiographical one-woman play, White Baptist Abba Fan, which told of her experience of discovering that she was a member of the Stolen Generations and confronting attitudes towards her sexuality and Aboriginality. The inspiration for this landmark work came after her reunion with her birth mother, Monica Little. Professor Cheetham Fraillon was just three weeks old when she was taken from Monica, and she was raised in a loving home by parents who had been told that she had been abandoned.

“This was obviously a profound moment for me, and the beginning of a lifelong journey to understand my belonging,” she says.

In 2009, Professor Cheetham Fraillon founded national Indigenous opera company Short Black Opera (SBO), creating opportunities for First Nations singers wishing to pursue a career in classical vocal music. In 2010, she wrote Australia’s first Indigenous opera, Pecan Summer – a powerful story based on the historic 1939 walk-off from Cummeragunja mission station.

While researching this story of Yorta Yorta people and their fight for justice, she discovered that her own Aboriginal grandparents were involved in the walk-off. Through her latest SBO project, Ensemble Dutala, Professor Cheetham Fraillon is working to increase the representation of First Nations musicians in Australia’s state orchestras, through mentorships for young instrumentalists.

“SBO set out to confront the fact that there were no Indigenous players in any of our state orchestras. Working with the professional relationships that I’ve formed during my career, we are beginning to see significant changes already, particularly in Victoria where the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has partnered with Short Black Opera to create meaningful development and mentoring programs.”

Returning to her alma mater 37 years after graduating – now as Professor of Practice (Vocal Studies) – Professor Cheetham Fraillon is looking forward to contributing to the development of Sydney Conservatorium’s next generation of musicians.

“It is a great honour to return to Australia’s most prestigious conservatorium as the inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies,” Professor Cheetham Fraillon says. “Ms Todd was a revered singing teacher, and I had the great good fortune to sing for her on a number of occasions when I was a student in Sydney.”

The Chair is funded by a generous bequest from the late Elizabeth Todd OAM (Dip Music ’42), a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium and lecturer in singing from 1948 until her retirement as Senior Lecturer in 1985. Dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Professor Anna Reid (BMus (Perf) ’87) is thrilled to welcome to the University an artist of Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s calibre and experience.

“Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon is the single most outstanding Indigenous classical music artist that Australia has produced. She has the ability to transcend musical and cultural boundaries to create music, and education, that will inspire our current generation of musical artists,” Professor Reid says

Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s performance practice and work as a composer will also form the basis of her research, with a focus on the use of First Nations languages in classical music, and particularly on her Woven Song series of chamber music.

“My aim is to strengthen knowledge and understanding of the true purpose of music as central to our way of being. The opportunity to mentor the next generation of musicians and help shape their cultural connection and approach to a life in music is a privilege, and one I will relish during my tenure,” says Professor Cheetham Fraillon.

“We celebrate the oldest, longest continuing music practice in the world on this continent. Whilst my early training was steeped in the world of Western composition and repertoire, I have found the true strength of my identity through the fusion of that tradition with my Yorta Yorta cultural practice. It is this way of knowing and being that I will share with colleagues and students during my time at Sydney Conservatorium of Music.”

Written by Cassandra Hill for Sydney Alumni Magazine. Photography by Stefanie Zingsheim