A national Music Theatre Symposium will be held on Saturday 12 December 2009 at the Barr Smith Library to celebrate the gifting of the Burden Collection of 18th century English music and drama to the library. UK opera authority, Dr Michael Burden, will present the first part of his collection as the culminating highlight of the Symposium.

The Music Theatre Symposium is hosted by The South Australian Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia, in collaboration with the Special Collections Division of the Barr Smith Library, and will include papers by some of Australia’s foremost music theatre scholars. Dr Michael Burden will also deliver a paper, “A Diva at the Opera”, on his research on the London theatre in the 18th century.

Dr Michael Burden is Fellow in Opera Studies and Dean of New College, Oxford, and an alumnus of the University of Adelaide. He is an authority on the music of Henry Purcell, Director of New Chamber Opera, and in 2007 he was elected as a Visitor to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.

The Burden Collection is a wide-ranging working library of volumes on 18th-century English music and drama, with an emphasis on theatrical practice. The first instalment consists of 50 items representing 94 plays; 39 of these are first copies of these imprints in the Southern Hemisphere. The play scripts incorporate 18th-century London drama, opera, ballad opera, and burlesque. The Barr Smith Library has one of the strongest theatre collections in Australia and this new gift will significantly strengthen the library’s earlier theatre holdings.

Presenters include Michael Morley (Flinders University) and Richard Chew (University of SA) speaking on aspects of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and John Golder (University of NSW) on the topic of Baroque Opera.

Admission is FREE, but those interested in attending are asked to register with Dr Jula Szuster on 0405 103 854 or email here.

Music Theatre Symposium
Saturday 12 December 2009, 9.45am – 6.00pm
Ira Raymond Room, The Barr Smith Library, The University of Adelaide
Registrations essential: Dr Jula Szuster
Phone 0405 103 854 or Email