Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 11 May
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Ever since Puberty Blues, Kathy Lette has a long and celebrated career as a best-selling and much-loved novelist, with an unparalleled eye for a joke, an ear for a double entendre and a way with a pun. But how does her fare fare when she’s singing from a different song sheet?
To coincide with Victorian Opera’s adaptation of Kathy Lette’s comic romp How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints), the Wheeler Centre takes a look at what goes into translating a work from page to stage. Richard Gill, Victorian Opera’s music director, faces off against Kathy Lette in true operatic style, to go behind the curtain and explore a work with musical references and inspiration ranging from cabaret to Mendelssohn.
Featuring
Richard Gill
Richard Gill is an internationally respected music educator and conductor. He has been artistic director of OzOpera, artistic director and chief conductor of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the adviser for the Musica Viva in Schools program. He is currently music director of Victorian Opera.
Richard has frequently conducted for Opera Australia and OzOpera, and in recent seasons has conducted Meet the Music concerts with the Sydney Symphony, Discovery concerts with the Sydney Sinfonia, the Melbourne, Canberra, Queensland and Tasmanian Symphony orchestras, and the Brisbane and Melbourne premiere seasons of Richard Mills’ The Love of the Nightingale.
Richard Gill has received numerous accolades, including an Order of Australia Medal, the Bernard Heinze Award, honorary doctorates from the Edith Cowan University of Western Australia and the Australian Catholic University, the Australian Music Centre’s award for Most Distinguished Contribution to the Presentation of Australian Composition by an individual, and the Australia Council’s Don Banks Award.
Kathy Lette
Kathy Lette first achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series. She has written 20 books which have been translated into 19 languages. Kathy has two children and divides her time between Sydney and London. Kathy is an autodidact (a word she taught herself) but has three honorary doctorates. She is a TV presenter, newspaper and magazine columnist and also an ambassador for Their World, the National Autistic Society and Ambitious About Autism. Kathy recently completed a tour of her one-woman show, "Girls Night Out", and is pleased to report that she didn't fall out with the cast.
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Michael Shmith
Michael Shmith has worked in daily journalism for most of his professional life. He is a senior writer for The Age, Melbourne, and also the paper’s opera critic.
He is a former arts editor and travel editor of The Age. Although he specialises in arts journalism, he writes on many other subjects – mostly for The Age’s opinion and books pages. He has co-edited reference books on opera, as well as writing a biography of Gustav Mahler for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London. In 2000, he presented a nine-part series on opera, Why Sing?, for ABC Television.