William Saurin Lyster 1828-1880

Lyster’s company played in New Orleans in 1857, Chicago in 1858 and San Francisco in 1859.
With the Civil War looming, they decided to take the company – now including soprano Lucy Escott and tenor Henry Squires – to the newly gold-rich colony of Victoria. They sailed with a full complement of soloists, chorus and orchestra, and a repertoire of 30 operas. On 25 March 1861 William Saurin Lyster’s Royal English and Italian Opera Company presented Lucia di Lammermoor at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne – and so started the two decades in which this energetic, often fiery, but totally dedicated man dominated opera in the Australian colonies and in New Zealand.

Though his initial Melbourne season lost money, Lyster persevered, and soon his fortunes changed. What he had planned as a brief colonial foray extended to a six-year stay; his company toured widely, visiting every major Australian city and venturing to New Zealand. Lyster’s repertoire of established favourites was continually expanded. His production of Les Huguenots, in November 1862 – its Australian premiere – was regarded as the most impressive theatrical presentation so far seen in the colonies. Other operas he introduced to Australians during this period included Lurline, Don Giovanni, I Puritani, The Lily of Killarney, Faust, Le Prophète, Oberon, Semiramide, L’Africaine, William Tell and A Masked Ball – sometimes within months of their European premieres. Through the years Lyster’s roster of singers remained largely intact, though a notable addition was Armes Beaumont, a fine Australian tenor.

Lyster invested some of his considerable profits in 162 hectares of attractive farming land along the Monbulk Creek in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, outside Melbourne. Later Lyster purchased a further 486 hectares. He called his estate ‘Narree Worron Grange’ (from the Aboriginal Narree Nareen, meaning ‘small hills’) and he dilligently transformed it into an extremely profitable showcase of modern farming practice. When he employed a group of Aborigines to drain a swampy area known as The Flats and re-route the creek, sceptical neighbours ridiculed what they called Lyster’s Folly, but when they saw the fertile black soil that resulted, they followed his lead. Lyster grew vegetables, cereals and rich pasture for his prize dairy herd.