If Deborah Cheetham Fraillon is a diva, it's in her uncompromising insistence that opera includes everyone: telling stories that matter to contemporary audiences.
Not that the celebrated Australian soprano is giving up on Mozart, Puccini or Wagner.
"I still sing that repertoire. It's good repertoire. I'm not going to abandon it," Cheetham Fraillon explained.
"However, the real purpose of my career at the pointy end, right now, as a composer and a performer, is to bring new repertoire to audiences."
Yorta Yorta by birth, soprano by diligence
Cheetham Fraillon won't be pigeon-holed.
At 58, she's a "21st century urban woman" — or as she puts it: "Yorta Yorta by birth, stolen generation by government policy, soprano by diligence, composer by necessity and lesbian by practice". (Cheetham added Fraillon to her name after marrying partner Nicolette in January.)
She has brought First Nations artists and First Nations stories to the stage.
Her first opera composition, Pecan Summer, told the story of an historic moment of protest for her Yorta Yorta clan, the 1939 Cummeragunja walk-off.
And she's proud to be the most senior First Nations person in the history of the sandstone Sydney Conservatorium of Music, her alma mater, after being named professor of vocal studies in February, with one important caveat.
"There are musicians who are my ancestors who played an equally pivotal role in their societies over millennia and we're yet to uncover their stories and to recognise them," she said.
Cheetham Fraillon talks about applying an "Indigenous lens" to an art form rooted in Western heritage and, for First Nations people, colonial dispossession.
However, she also advocates digging deeper into the traditional canon to find contemporary resonance.
And she wants her students to bring more of their own backgrounds and experiences to the opera stage, to show younger audiences that opera just might be for them too.
Art as a way of knowing and being
The Drum joined Cheetham Fraillon in a workshop with three second-year vocal performance students at the inner-city Sydney Conservatorium campus.
There was feedback on vocal technique, precise and encouraging, but also on the connection to body — she demonstrates an Elvis-like hip swivel to centre the voice — and, most importantly, connection to character and story.
"What's his name? Lindoro, right? Lindoooooooro. The first time you say it out loud, make it a thing," she tells Younji Yi, 27, of a swooning aria to the The Barber of Seville protagonist.
Cheetham Fraillon smiles when hearing the passion in Yi's second attempt.
Yi fell for singing while performing in a children's choir in her native South Korea, and shared her mother's love of the famed Korean coloratura soprano Sumi Jo.
Baritone Daniel Otto, 25, was attracted to English pastoral music.
"I like to find things I can make a personal connection with that helps me perform them better," he said.
For Eden Shifroni — who, at just 22, showed off her diva chops to Cheetham Fraillon with Musetta's fiery aria from La bohème — understood why connection to ancestors was important.
"I come from a Jewish background, and it's very important for me to sing Jewish music, because that's something that's been passed on for generations," she said.
"Similarly, with Australian music, it's important for Indigenous Australians to be singing that music and also share the stories that have been shared for thousands of years."
And not just Indigenous Australians.
"We're living in a time when more and more people are reaching out for that connection," Cheetham Fraillon said, "and I think that's where music plays a huge role."
"The arts … are our way of knowing and being and giving meaning to everything in the world.
"So I want these students to bring an understanding … of what it is to live on this continent and what it is to be part of a nation [that], alone in the world, can claim the longest continuing music practice."
'Connection to country goes to the heart of identity'
Cheetham Fraillon said "finding my way home" has been "the single most important achievement in my life".
It was a longer journey than most, from "white, Baptist ABBA fan to gay, Koori opera singer".
She was 22 when she discovered the truth of her forced adoption — and the family ties to another trailblazing Indigenous artist, her uncle Jimmy Little.
"I knew that I was somehow related to him but, in re-establishing that connection … that was my pathway into understanding that I come from a very long and well-regarded and celebrated music tradition."
And a storytelling tradition which, Cheetham Fraillon said, transcended genre.
"I don't see Western music and traditional First Nations musical practice as mutually exclusive — and I don't see my uncle's practices as very different from my own," she explained.
"We want to connect with an audience. We want to help people connect with themselves, the world, much better."
New stories for new audiences
It's storytelling, which is central to Indigenous culture, that Cheetham Fraillon wants to see at the heart of opera.
For old work — beloved for soaring melodies, bemoaned for archaic female roles — companies have to excavate the themes that matter now.
For example, Cheetham Fraillon has been asked numerous times whether Carmen should no longer be performed.
"She dies at the hands of her domestic partner, a brutal death — so does one Australian woman every single week," Cheetham Fraillon said.
"It's relevant, but we need to contextualise that.
"It needs to go beyond some catchy tunes that we all love and a kind of fait accompli in those final moments."
And then there's new work.
Cheetham Fraillon believes she's done a lot of heavy lifting.
Her production company, Short Black Opera, is in its 14th year of bringing First Nations artists and stories to the stage.
She sees a hunger for it in audiences.
"They want to hear stories that they can relate to. They want to hear stories that reflect their times, and that elevate their thinking," Cheetham Fraillon said.
However, there's a gulf between nimble companies such as Short Black and the richly funded Opera Australia, which rarely brings new work to the stage.
Its big-budget model is built on long runs in large theatres of known works, with very white, very old audiences.
Instead, Cheetham Fraillon said, it was audience development and diversity on stage that could "save opera from itself".
"We have always punched above our weight," she said.
"We have produced the greatest sopranos the world has ever known in [Dame Nellie] Melba and [Joan] Sutherland and so many other great artists. There is no reason why opera should fail in this country.
"I think opera can do more, and that takes real dedication from people who are absolutely steeped in the art form [and] a dedication to contextualising, to bring it into the 21st century."
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon will be on The Drum tonight, Monday April 17, on ABC TV at 6pm AEST, ABC News at 11pm AEST, or catch up anytime on iview.
