Institute for Australian and Asian Arts and Culture

Toggle navigation

Search query Search search

  1. IAC Home
  2. Chinese Australian History
  3. Catch up Online: 2021 Chinese Australian History Online Seminar Series 2
  4. Lecture 4 - Chinese Opera in Australia - Not Just Chinese

Lecture 4 - Chinese Opera in Australia - Not Just Chinese

Operatic forms have a long history of development in Chinese culture with sources dating from at least the Tang Dynasty. Known poetically as the artform of the 'Pear Garden' (Liyuan 梨园), this musical tradition continues to hold relevance and meaning to the overseas Chinese and was mostly likely the first performative artform to arrive in Australia. In their very first collaborative project, Dr Michael Williams and Dr Nicholas Ng discuss nineteenth and mid-to-late twentieth century Chinese opera in Australia as examples of migrant diversity and identity. Their research engages with the origins of the genre in the examination of regional, cultural and linguistic forms, the meaning of opera in a migrant context, and the experience of diversity within a much larger fluid construct of "Chineseness".

Seminar Series

About Us

The Chey Fellowship

Upcoming Events

Exhibitions

IAC Art Talks

IAC Culture Talks

Writers in Conversation

IAC Artist’s Story

My China Story

Australian Literature Translation

HDR Students

Chinese Australian History

IAC Events

Contact Us

About Us

Highlights

Contact Us


©2025 Copyright Western Sydney University - ABN 53 014 069 881 | CRICOS Provider No: 00917k