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April 16th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Opera Australia will now have a place to house its vast collection of performance material after striking a deal with the Arts Centre in Melbourne.
The company’s archive of props and costumes, including many worn by Dame Joan Sutherland, will be preserved as part of the Centre’s Performing Arts Collection.
Opera Australia’s Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini says the agreement means the public will be able to appreciate the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.
“It’s important, very important to have this agreement with Arts Centre Melbourne,” he said.
“It means that these iconic productions, these wonderful costumes and parts of sets can be on display in the Arts Centre’s collection so members of the public can come and see them.”
Arts Centre Melbourne’s Chief Executive Judith Isherwood says Australia has an extradordinary legacy surrounding performing arts.
“The national companies, the companies like Opera Australia, are an important part of that story,” she said.
“The wonderful thing about the Performing Arts Collection that Arts Centre Melbourne has been developing for over 30 years is that it’s always had as its ambition to be truly representative of the breadth and depth of the performing arts industry in this country.”
“We have over 500,000 items in this collection,” she said.
“Everything from many of Kylie Minogue’s stage costumes, Dame Edna Everage’s costumes and so on, but also some really surprising materials, Nick Cave for example, has donated a lot of his material including notebooks and lyric sheets that he’s worked on over the years.”
Trish Butterworth is Dame Joan Sutherland’s costume maker.
She has worked on dozens of intricate costumes worn by the late Soprano.
“When she opened her mouth, no-one sings like she did and I’m not an opera buff at all but she just gave you tingles.”
“People will get an opportunity to see the kind of work that we do and reminisce about the Dame who was I suppose an icon of Australia and these days I find too that we have younger ones coming in and they don’t know who she is so at least this will give some opening to understand what she was and who she was.”
Others in the collection include costumes worn by Dame Nellie Melba in the 1800s.
There are also some of the unforgettable numbers made famous by Dame Edna Everage.
The famous gold hotpants worn by Kylie Minogue are also in the collection.
Topics:
arts-and-entertainment,
community-and-society,
performance-art,
art-history,
melbourne-3000
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-15/those-famous-gold-hotpants2c-part-of-5002c000-collection/4630374
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