Deborah Cheetham Fraillon

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon ‘is the single most outstanding Indigenous classical music artist that Australia has produced’ and is the Chair of Vocal Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

She was born in 1964 in Nowra. Her mother was a Yorta Yorta woman (from lands along the Murray River). At 3 weeks old she became one of the Stolen Generation, taken from her mother to be raised in Sydney by a (‘loving’ – Deborah’s word) Baptist family who told her she had been abandoned. She was not to reengage with her Aboriginal family until she was in her thirties, discovering then that they – including her uncle, renowned Australian singer and musician Jimmy Little - were musical.

Deborah was schooled at Penshurst Girls High School before being accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

She recalls a school excursion. “I sat in Row L, Seat 23. It was the 19th of February 1979, at the Sydney Opera House. Dame Joan Sutherland was in the title role of The Merry Widow. It was life-changing…I fell in love with opera that night. How could I not?…and I just thought, ‘Where has this been all my life?’” From that point, she harboured the desire to be an opera singer, although she had no idea how that might come about. “My adoptive family were working-class people and there was no expectation that I would finish Year 12, let alone be the first in my family to head off to university.”

The same year “when I was 15 years of age, I visited the south coast of NSW - the area around Narooma and Bermagui known as the beautiful Sapphire Coast. I was mesmerised by the sparkling blue of the ocean and the sky, the coastline stretching on for miles and miles. When I returned home from that journey I was visited by a recurring dream. Night after night the image of a mountain reaching down to the sea came to me in my dreams.” 

“For 35 years this dream returned again and again. In 2018 I returned to the Sapphire Coast, this time to connect with my Grandfather's country and the people of the Yuin nation. Once more I was struck by the beauty of the ocean and the brilliant blue sky but this time, I turned my attention to the land as well and there was the mountain which had appeared to me in my dreams for so many years. Gulaga, Mother Mountain, sacred to the Yuin people. When I was 15 years old, I knew very little of my Aboriginal heritage…All those years ago I did not see the mountain, but the mountain saw me. Gulaga, Mother Mountain, called me home.”

After graduating, Deborah studied at the Julliard School of Music and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, then worked as a high school music teacher in Australia – although her performances, which involved frequent travelling, eventually drew her away from teaching.
Her first major work was an autobiographical one-woman play, White Baptist Abba Fan, which told of her experience of discovering that she was a member of the Stolen Generations and confronting attitudes towards her sexuality and Aboriginality. The inspiration for this landmark work came after her reunion with her birth mother, Monica Little.

In 2009, Deborah founded the national Indigenous opera company Short Black Opera, creating opportunities for First Nations singers wishing to pursue a career in classical vocal music. Then in 2010, she wrote Australia’s first Indigenous opera, Pecan Summer.
Among other things, the “Short Black Opera set out to confront the fact that there were no Indigenous players in any of our state orchestras…(including) working with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to create meaningful (Indigenous) development and mentoring programs.”

Deborah has used her success as a renowned opera singer, composer and educator to speak out on issues close to her heart. She has particularly championed the causes of women and First Nations musicians.