THE opera world is mourning the death of Ballarat-born soprano Elsie Morison.
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The namesake of the Elsie Morison Prize for champion vocal solo at the Royal South Street competitions died last month in Prague, aged 91.
Ms Morison was a student at Ballarat Clarendon College between 1937 and 1940, when she was taught singing by her widowed mother, a teacher at the school.
Despite regularly competing at South Street in piano and singing, she was never able to win a section, taking out minor prizes and honorable mentions on several occasions.
Ironically, the South Street prize named in her honour has been taken out by such notable international talent as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in 1965.
In 1947, Ms Morison left Ballarat to study at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where she won the Nellie Melba Scholarship, before heading off to England to study at the Royal College of Music in 1947.
She made her English concert debut at the Royal Albert Hall in Handel’s Acis and Galatea in 1948.
Other notable appearances included at Covent Gardens in 1953 as Mimi in Puccini’s La boheme, a role she regularly played until 1962.
Other roles included Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Marzelline (Fidelio), Micaela (Carmen), Antonia (The Tales of Hoffman), Markena (The Bartered Bride) and Blanche (Dialogues of the Carmelites).
Her European love affair extended to productions in Denmark, the Netherlands, France at the United Kingdom. She also received the Portugese Order of Public Education in 1955.
Her many recordings included Purcell, Handel and Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, as well as Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, Opp. 52 and 65.
In 1963, she became the second wife of Czech Rafael Kubelik, who was a conductor when she was on staff at Covent Gardens. She soon retired from performing, vanishing from the opera world as quickly as she arrived.
The curtain officially came down on her career with a concert in Melbourne in 1968, an event conducted by Kubelik.
Ms Morison and her conductor husband returned to Ballarat Clarendon College in 1984 for the opening of the Elsie Morison Creative Arts Centre.
Since her husband’s death in 1996, Ms Morison commuted between Switzerland, California and Prague.
The Royal South Street Society maintains the Elsie Morison Prize as an important element of the eisteddfod’s vocal section and to the memory of one of Australia’s most famous operatic vocalists.
