Peter Sculthorpe: Eliza Fraser Sings

Abstract

In 1836 the merchant ship "Stirling Castle", under Captain Fraser, was wrecked in northern Queensland waters. The survivors took to the longboat, and, unable to put to shore, sailed southward. The boat leaked, and supplies of food and water were soon exhausted. The captains wife, Mrs Fraser, gave birth to a baby, but it was drowned in the boat water. After putting ashore on a coastal island, later known as Fraser Island, the captain and his crew were killed by natives. Mrs Fraser was taken prisoner, stripped of her clothes, beaten and made to work in what was to her a degrading manner. The natives, the Kabi people, believed white men and women to be returned spirits of the dead, having observed how black flesh pales when burning. They called together a corroboree, in order to bring about the ritual mating of their She-ghost, Mrs Fraser, with a He-ghost, an escaped convict living with a neighbouring tribe. The corroboree caused Mrs Fraser to take refuge in a dream that the convict would return as a lover and lead her away into a paradisal existence. Immured in this fantasy, she was then able to endure her miseries. Unexpectedly, however, she was rescued, and taken to the qarrison at Moreton Bay. Her dream shattered and her sanity shaken, Mrs Fraser set herself up in a showground booth in Hyde Park, Sydney, where she displayed her scars and told her stories to all and sundry for the price of sixpence apiece. The work is concerned with Mrs Fraser soliciting customers outside her booth, her mind wandering between the then present and the romantically remembered past. Eliza Fraser Sings received its premiere on 1 July 1978 by The SeymourGroup with Eileen Hannan (soprano), Geoffrey Collins (flute) and David Miller (piano) at the Seymour Centre, Sydney.