Opera Panel
Angus Grant - Panel Chair
ANGUS GRANT is a graduate of Melbourne University and the VCA opera studio. He has performed with Opera Australia, Victorian Opera and Melbourne Opera. As a composer his opera, CONTACT!- a netball music drama, which he conducted, was commissioned by the Arts Centre Melbourne, toured regional Victoria and was nominated for three Green Room Awards. He is the director of Victorian Opera’s Youth Chorus Ensemble (VOYCE) where his work The Train Cantata was premiered he and conducted the company’s production of The Second Hurricane. He is heavily involved in Music education both in schools and through Victorian Opera’s education program.
Jamie Henson - Deputy Chair
JAMIE HENSON won the Elizabeth Scholarship in 1977 and was the resident Lighting Designer of the Queensland Theatre Company for 5 years. He designed lighting for Nimrod, Queensland and South Australian opera companies, Melbourne, and Sydney Theatre companies, The Stage company in Adelaide and a national tour with GFO. He was the technical manager for the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in 1995 and was the company/ production manager/ lighting designer of ‘TAP DOGS’ In Austral Asia. On returning to Australia, he studied a post-graduate diploma at Deakin university in Arts and Entertainment Management. He worked 2 productions for Cirqué de Soléil as an usher. He was the Operations Manager in production at the Victorian Arts Centre from 1999 - 2006. He ventured to the middle east in the State of Qatar to be the Manager- lighting for the 15 th Asian Games for David Atkins enterprises. He was Lighting Designer and Operator for the SEEKERS 50 th reunion tour of Australia. Jamie taught at Melbourne Polytechnic for Diploma of Theatre Arts, Production, Costume for Performance, Makeup Specialist Services and Event Management. He lectured at the National Institute Circus Arts for Cert IV and 1 st and 3 rd Year Bachelor of Circus Arts. After 48 years in the live performance and event industries, his career pathway took him to the creative development of new Australian productions. Working in various positions on two of Christopher Horsey’s dance productions – ‘2 Hits and a Miss’ and ‘Peta and the Wolf’ and with Jeremy Davies for ‘Circus Nexus Live!’. In the past year, he was worked in 4 different genres: Musical Theatre ‘The Marvellous Elephant Man’, Theatre ‘Celebrity’, Opera / Circus directing ‘The Blood Vote’ and Dance with the ‘Tempus’.
Kerry Murphy
KERRY MURPHY is head of musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne. Her research interests focus chiefly on 19th-century French music and music criticism and colonial Australian music history and she has published widely in these areas. For over twenty years she has taught historical opera studies at the Melbourne Conservatorium and she is a passionate lover of opera.
Shauntai Batzke
Wiradjuri soprano and composer, SHAUNTAI BATZKE is a principal artist with Short Black Opera and an Alumna of the Melba Opera Trust. Shauntai holds a BoM at the Melbourne Conservatorium and has spent two summers in New York in vocal and performance training at Belle Arti Center of the Arts and recently gave a world premier of her original song cycles for chamber ensemble and orchestral works at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival '19. Having recently made her debut as a solo artist with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2020, Shauntai is thrilled to be giving her professional debut performance with Victorian Opera in Deborah Cheetham AO’s new opera Parrwang Lifts the Sky in June 2021. Noted productions include; Pecan Summer (Short Black Opera), Ragtime, Showboat (The Production Company), Beginning of Nature (Australian Dance Theatre), RICERCAR (Present Tense Ensemble), Fidelio (Melbourne Opera) and Corrugation Road (Black Swan Theatre)..
Lisette Bolton
LISETTE BOLTON Born in Wagga Wagga NSW, soprano Lisette Bolton is currently studying at The Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (MCM). She is soon to complete her Bachelor of Music (Degree with Honours), majoring in Performance. She is an alumna of Opera Australia’s Regional Student Scholarship program and Opera Scholars Australia (OSA) where she was recipient of the White Foundation Scholarship. In 2019 she was also nominated for a Green Room Award in her debut role of Olive with Lyric Opera of Melbourne in their production of Barry Conyngham’s Fly. More recently, Lisette was a part of an interstate collaborative composition and performance project with cellist Clare Brazil during Wagga Wagga’s hosting of Artistate in 2020.