ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates three operas that deal with Aboriginal issues from a diverse perspective, drawing on a range of musical idioms, all constituting an innovative and moving engagement with reconciliation. Commencing with Black River by Andrew and Julianne Schultz, with its subject matter concerning the deaths in custody of Aboriginal people, the chapter then moves to Pecan Summer, an opera by Deborah Cheetham, an Aboriginal singer and composer herself. They celebrate the triumph over adversity of Aboriginal peoples who were forced into particular areas of the country where they were often compelled to give up their children to white foster care. The Rabbits, by Kate Miller-Heidke and Lally Katz, takes a much more oblique, largely allegorical, but no less powerful view of the invasion and dispossession of the land of the original inhabitants of Australia. In all three works the silenced voices of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia sound forth powerfully, at least sonically reclaiming their land and dignity.
