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The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT) is an Australian theatre and performing arts company based in Sydney established in 1954. It is today especially known for its music scholarship program.
The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust was established in September 1954, with the aim of establishing drama, opera and ballet companies nationally. [1] It was founded by H.C. Coombs, governor of the Commonwealth Bank, Sir Charles Moses, general manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and John Douglas Pringle of the Sydney Morning Herald .
The arts company was so named to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Australia, after the trust raised £100,000 by a public appeal. [2] [3] The trust had an agreement with the Commonwealth government to match public donations "in the ratio of 1:3 and to provide ongoing funding". [4] With substantial contributions from both the public and the Commonwealth Government, the Trust commemorated the first visit of the Queen, who had taken the title "Queen of Australia" in 1953, and since then The Trust has been the only arts body to bear her name.
The hope in 1954 was that there would occur in the arts a new "Elizabethan age", which would be as productive as the first in the sixteenth century.
The trust has nurtured and seen to independence many of Australia's most significant performing arts companies including Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet Foundation. The trust also formed, maintained and administered two music Opera and Ballet orchestras, one each in Sydney and Melbourne, to accompany ballet and opera companies, and one smaller orchestra of Sydney freelance musicians named the Elizabethan Sinfonietta.[ citation needed ]
The trust played a key role in establishing high culture in Australia through its involvement in setting up:[ citation needed ]
It has also supported:[ citation needed ]
Following the establishment of the Australia Council for the Arts in 1968, it ceased to be a funding body for opera and ballet in 1970.[ citation needed ]
In 1974, Geoffrey Wynter Armstrong bequeathed a sum of money to the trust to establish a memorial fund to be known as the Geoffrey Wynter Armstrong and Elizabeth Mary Martin Scholarship. The annual award is currently administered by Music & Opera Singers Trust Limited.[ citation needed ]
In 1982 it helped to fund the tour of Aboriginal playwright Bob Merritt's play The Cake Man to the World Theatre Festival in Denver, Colorado. [5]
During the 1980s the Trust scaled back its operations and in the 1990s had a Sydney focus and operated a ticketing agency and organised theatre parties.
In 1990, the Trust went into provisional receivership and its operations were scaled back by its administrator. Its arts promotion role passed to the Australian Council for the Arts (later the Australia Council). [6] Management of the trust was given back to the directors in 1992.
In 2000, the trust launched its international music scholarship program for Australian singers, musicians and conductors wishing to undertake overseas music study.[ citation needed ]
In 2004 the trust purchased the Independent Theatre at North Sydney [7] and undertook a major acoustical and heritage refurbishment of the venue. This initiative resulted in the production of a fine chamber music venue with an outstanding acoustic quality for both performers and audience. The Trust sold the Independent in 2013 to Wenona School, who have continued the chamber music programs.[ citation needed ]
Jeffry Joynton-Smith AM was general manager/CEO of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust [8] from 1969 until June 1984, when Kathleen Norris was appointed to replace him. [9]
The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting the arts in Australia. [14]
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, New South Wales, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent at the Arts Centre Melbourne, where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, Victoria, attended by more than 294,000 people.
Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central Melbourne suburb of Southbank in Victoria, Australia.
Richard Alan Bonynge is an Australian conductor and pianist. He is the widower of Australian dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. Bonynge conducted virtually all of Sutherland's operatic performances from 1962 until her retirement in 1990.
The Australian Ballet (TAB) is the largest classical ballet company in Australia. It was founded by J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1962, with the English-born dancer, teacher, repetiteur and director Dame Peggy van Praagh as founding artistic director. Today, it is recognised as one of the world's major international ballet companies and performs upwards of 150 performances a year.
The Queensland Performing Arts Centre is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre and is located on the corner of Melbourne Street and Grey Street in Brisbane's South Bank precinct. Opened in 1985, it includes the Lyric Theatre, Concert Hall, Playhouse and Cremorne Theatre.
Ceremonial dancing has a very important place in the Indigenous cultures of Australia. They vary from place to place, but most ceremonies combine dance, song, rituals and often elaborate body decorations and costumes. The different body paintings indicate the type of ceremony being performed. They play an important role in marriage ceremonies, in the education of Indigenous children, as well as storytelling and oral history. The term corroboree is commonly used to refer to Australian Aboriginal dances, although this term has its origins among the people of the Sydney region. In some places, Aboriginal people perform corroborees for tourists. In the latter part of the 20th century the influence of Indigenous Australian dance traditions has been seen with the development of concert dance, with the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts (ACPA) providing training in contemporary dance.
The Princess Theatre, originally Princess's Theatre, is a 1452-seat theatre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Established in 1854 and rebuilt in 1886 to a design by noted Melbourne architect William Pitt, it is the oldest surviving entertainment site on mainland Australia. Built in an elaborate Second Empire style, it reflects the opulence of the "Marvellous Melbourne" boom period, and had a number of innovative features, including state of the art electric stage lighting and the world's first sliding ceiling, which was rolled back on warm nights to give the effect of an open-air theatre.
Sir William Ian Potter, known as Ian Potter, was an Australian stockbroker, businessman and philanthropist. Potter was knighted in 1962. The Ian Potter Foundation, which he established in 1964, has made grants to research institutes, charities, universities and arts organisations. Since 1993, the Ian Potter Cultural Trust has awarded grants to individuals in the arts.
The Arts in Australia refers to the visual arts, literature, performing arts and music in the area of, on the subject of, or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Indigenous Australian art, music and story telling attaches to a 40–60,000-year heritage and continues to affect the broader arts and culture of Australia. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary, visual and theatrical traditions began with strong links to the broader traditions of English and Irish literature, British art and English and Celtic music. However, the works of Australian artists – including Indigenous as well as Anglo-Celtic and multicultural migrant Australians – has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent to the global arts scene – exploring such themes as Aboriginality, Australian landscape, migrant and national identity, distance from other Western nations and proximity to Asia, the complexities of urban living and the "beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the live performing arts in Australia: performed, written or produced by Australians.
The Victoria State Opera (VSO), based in Melbourne, Australia, was founded in Melbourne in 1962. The company, founded by Leonard Spira, was a move into grand opera by the then amateur Gilbert and Sullivan-oriented Victorian Light Opera Co. The name changed to the Victorian Opera Company in 1964 in a move to enable the company to perform a broader repertoire.
Orchestra Victoria is a full-time salaried orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia, and wholly owned subsidiary of the Australian Ballet. Founded in 1969, the orchestra is now a principal performance partner for the Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and larger productions of Victorian Opera.
The Tivoli Circuit was a successful and popular Australian vaudeville entertainment circuit featuring revue, opera, ballet, dance, singing, musical comedy, old time black and white minstrel and even Shakespeare which flourished from 1893 to the 1950s, and featured local and international performers from the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Opera Australia Orchestra is a full-time salaried orchestra, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Opera Australia. It is one of three salaried orchestras in Sydney, along with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The OAO performs almost exclusively in the Opera House Orchestra pit of the Joan Sutherland Theatre.
Gertrude Emily Johnson was an Australian coloratura soprano and founder of the National Theatre Movement in Melbourne.
Tibor Paul was a Hungarian-Australian conductor.
Tessitura is an enterprise application used by performing arts and cultural organisations to manage their activities in ticketing, fundraising, customer relationship management, and marketing. It refers to itself as "arts enterprise software."
Rites of Passage is a music theatre work written by the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe in 1972–73. It is often categorised as an opera, but it does not conform to the traditional concept of opera. It is written for dancers depicting the ritual of initiation of the Aranda people, an indigenous tribe; double SATB chorus singing words from Boethius and others; three percussionists, two tubas, piano (echoed), six cellos and four double basses; but no parts for individual singers. Sculthorpe drew on the approach espoused by Jean-Baptiste Lully, in which dance, drama and music are not separated.
Brian James Stacey, was an Australian conductor who started his career with the Queensland Ballet, the Australian Ballet, and Victoria State Opera, latterly becoming known for his work in Australian musical theatre but continuing his cross-genre career to the end of his life.
Vanessa Scammell is an Australian pianist and conductor in the field of ballet, musical theatre, concert, and opera.