Deborah Joy Cheetham Fraillon AO, is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, actor, composer and playwright.

In February 2023, she was appointed a professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.^[1]

Early life and education

Cheetham is a member of the Stolen Generations; she was taken from her mother when she was three weeks old^[2] and was raised by a white baptist family. Jimmy Little was her uncle.

She attended Penshurst Girls High School (now Georges River College (Penshurst Girls Campus)^[3][4]

Cheetham graduated from the NSW Conservatorium of Music with a Bachelor of Music Education Degree.^[5]

Career

In 1997, Cheetham wrote the autobiographical play White Baptist Abba Fan which tells of her experiences of coming to terms with her homosexuality and racial identity while trying to reunite with her Aboriginal family.^[2][6] White Baptist Abba Fan has toured internationally.^[7]

As a soprano, Cheetham has performed in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.^[8] She sang at the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 2003 Rugby World Cup.^[9][10]

In October 2010, Cheetham's opera Pecan Summer, based on the 1939 Cummeragunja walk-off, opened in Mooroopna, Victoria. She wrote, composed and performed in the production by the Short Black Opera Company.^[11][12]

Cheetham has advocated for the lyrics to "Advance Australia Fair" to be rewritten.^[13]

In 2018, Cheetham was one of 52 people who contributed to Anita Heiss's book Growing Up Aboriginal In Australia, along with Adam Goodes, Miranda Tapsell and Celeste Liddle.

Cheetham wrote Australia's first requiem based on the frontier wars between first nations people in South Western Victoria and settlers between 1840–1863.^[14] The requiem, "Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace" is sung entirely in the Gunditjmara language.^[14] The first performance of the requiem on 15 June 2019 featured Cheetham with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the MSO Chorus and the Dhungala Children's Choir.^[14]

In November 2019, Cheetham was appointed Professor of Practice at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University. She is also the 2020 Composer in Residence at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.^[15]

Cheetham's second opera, Parrwang Lifts the Sky, will premiere during Victorian Opera's 2021 season and will be sung in the Wadawurrung language.^[16]

Her work Ancient Land Processional performed in three indigenous languages, was commissioned by the University of South Australia and is performed at every graduation ceremony ^[17][18].

In 2022, a new short work, Ghost Light, was performed as part of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's 50 Fanfares Project.

Cheetham was appointed to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in February 2023 as the first person to hold the Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies.^[19]

Personal life

Cheetham is openly lesbian. In 2022 it was announced that she was dating the conductor Nicolette Fraillon,^[20] and she is now known as Deborah Cheetham Fraillon after the pair married on 2 January 2023 at their home in Church Point, NSW.^[21] Previously, she had been in a long-term relationship with Toni Lalich, with whom she also enjoyed a lengthy artistic partnership.

Awards and honours

In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Cheetham was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), for "distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance".^[22]

In April 2018, the University of South Australia awarded Cheetham an Honorary Doctorate (D.Univ.) in recognition of her distinguished service to the community.^[23]

References