ABSTRACT
There have been several allusions to Dante and the Divine Comedy in the discussion of several of these operas; however, Dante is central in the opera, Bliss, but also can be seen as pertinent in the first opera in this chapter, Lindy. Both operas chart the journey of a character from seeming normality into an abyss, if not death, and then to a form of provisional salvation. The parallels with Dante in the opera are most striking in the final act, where the references to the Inferno are frequent and dramatically significant. The operatic adaptation of Bliss offers a vivid and distinctive representation of Australian society in the latter part of the twentieth century. The operatic adaptation has a bleaker vision of society than the novel, largely achieved through the constant allusions to Dante, offering more than a critique of just the 1970s and 1980s, but a searching examination of many of the sustaining myths of Australian society.
