AustLit
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2019
winner Lorelei Julian Langdon (composer), Casey Bennetto (composer), Gillian Cosgriff (composer), 2018 single work musical theatre opera'All aboard! You’re on a boat, sailing down the River Rhine in Germany heading toward a particularly tricky bend in the river. A bend which few vessels manage to navigate without crashing and where sailors always drown.
'Legend has it that it’s because of three sirens, the Lorelei, who sit atop the cliffs singing a song so alluring and irresistible that the sailors can’t seem to stay focused on the task at hand. You’ll meet this famous trio, who will prepare you to hear the most incredible songs of your life.
'But you’ve caught the Lorelei on an odd day. Because today they're wondering if they’re sick of singing sailors to their death. Do they all really deserve to die? Can the Lorelei help being so irresistible?
'The Lorelei seem to be having a crisis of conscience. Maybe they’ll shake things up a bit and see what happens if they change their tune.'
Source: Victorian Opera.
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Year: 2008
winner Through the Looking Glass Alan John (composer), 2008 single work musical theatre opera 'On a boating trip with seven year old Alice Liddell, Carroll gifted her with the fantastic story which would soon be indelibly associated with her name - a gift that would re-cast her as a pawn in the fantastic underworld of The Looking Glass. This glass is as much kaleidoscope as mirror, where space and time are refracted, splintering into chaos as rhyming flowers, roaring royals and reluctant foodstuffs wage war on sense and sensibility. While beneath it all stretches the long shadow of this mad world's creator, Master of Divinity, Lewis Carroll ... the writer and photographer - whose twinned passions he employed to freeze the object of his affection, where age and memory could not work their ways. Is this what Alice comes to discover in her looking glass: that her image, perhaps, was never her own? -
Year: 2007
winner Best New Australian Opera Work Crossing Live Bryony Marks (composer), 2007 single work musical theatre opera 'The work melds the combined skills of a diva, anchor-woman Paula Day, as hard-edged as her eye line theatre actors who work to music and musicians and stage crew who perform as actors. The live score is played seamlessly with pre-recorded music and a sound-scape as well as pre-recorded and live visuals from cameras wielded by the actors on stage. All this allows the theatre audience to see the television show as viewers at home in their living rooms would see it and, at the same time, experience the unexpected human drama that unfolds behind the scenes.' Source: www.malthousetheatre.com.au (Sighted 19/09/2007).
