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Opera's Farthest Frontier: A History of Professional Opera in New Zealand
Adrienne Simpson
Auckland: Reed Publishing, 1996 304 pages, N.Z. $44.95
Very little was known about the history of opera in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand before I98I, when Harold Love's excellent Golden Age of Australian Opera was published.1 Some years later Alison Gyger's even more comprehensive Opera for the Antipodes appeared,2 and finally, in 1996, Adrienne Simpson's history of this art form in New Zealand saw the light of day.
While there had been occasional performances of opera in Australia as early as the 1840s and fairly regular performances in the 1850s, opera did not come to New Zealand until I862. That was a year after gold was discovered on the South Island, near the once sleepy village of Dunedin. The town was soon transformed into a commercial hub, and the inauguration of the Theatre Royal in July 1862 was enough to attract a group of singers to make the crossing from Australia. They gave several concerts and a few operas during the spring (autumn in the Northern Hemisphere) of 1862. Two years later William Lyster brought...