#The lost masterpiece professional#
#The lost masterpiece tv#

One Sydney newspaper alone published seven portraits or views of Hayes during the first month of her arrival. This would be the culminating example of numerous images of the diva produced in her lifetime. On her return to London in 1856, Hayes commissioned a life-size portrait of herself, specifically intended to be hung in her namesake hospital. Ultimately, her donation contributed to the building of a Catherine Hayes Hospital in 1870 as part of the children’s asylum complex (now the Royal Hospital for Women) in the Sydney suburb of Randwick. And it certainly didn’t hurt that many of her Australian audiences were of Irish descent themselves!Īs well as leaving behind enraptured audiences, another outcome of Hayes visit to Sydney was her donation of a concert’s proceeds to the city’s most prominent charity, the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children. What was the soprano’s unique appeal? By presenting sentimental Irish ballads as well as operatic works she was able to appeal to a wide audience. In the words of The Sydney Morning Herald, on 4 October, she created ‘excitement wholly unparalleled’ in the colony’s history. Not surprisingly, therefore, when Hayes first performed in Sydney, in 1854, she received a rapturous welcome. Composers began writing operas for her to premiere and her popular appeal was no less marked than her critical acclaim: racehorses and ships were all named after her.

#The lost masterpiece professional#

2 Significantly, Catherine was considered the foremost Lucia di Lammermoor during the lifetime of its composer, Gaetano Donizetti.Īfter sharing a concert platform with piano virtuoso Franz Liszt in her home town of Dublin, Hayes had made her professional debut at Milan’s La Scala Opera House in 1845, to immediate acclaim. This significance is clear when we realise that after Hayes there came legendary Australians who were students of the same school of operatic singing: Nellie Melba and Joan Sutherland.ĭame Joan Sutherland was renowned as one of the greatest Lucia di Lammermoors of the 20th century, and her partner, conductor and pianist Richard Bonynge, noted that the great 19th-century English tenor Sims Reeves had also called Hayes ‘the ideal Lucia and the greatest interpreter of the role he had ever sung with’. 1Īlthough Hayes’s life story was the subject of a major scholarly biography in 2000, the author was unaware of the lost portrait and therefore of its significance to Australia’s musical history. Hayes conquered Australia so completely that one newspaper acknowledged that the country had ‘made an idol of a singer’. Her visit was seen to mark a milestone in colonial cultural heritage, a ‘coming of age’ for the colonies. International performers like the Hungarian virtuoso violinist Miska Hauser, the flamboyant Irish dancer Lola Montez, and the English actress Julia Matthews – who charmed Robert O’Hara Burke before he set off on his ill-fated expedition with William Wills in 1860 – were thus lured here.īut few, if any, had a greater cultural impact than Catherine Hayes. In their wake there followed an influx of others who saw lucrative opportunities to profit from the indulgent new lifestyles bestowed by sudden wealth. In this decade, Australia’s gold rushes attracted thousands of fortune hunters.

#The lost masterpiece tv#

The quest could be a scenario investigated by the team of art sleuths on the TV program Fake or fortune? But why is this lost painting of Catherine Hayes (1818–1861) so significant? Because, in the 1850s, Hayes became the first operatic diva with an international reputation to perform in the Australian colonies.