William Saurin Lyster 1828-1880

Lyster extended the property’s original wattle and daub cottage into a rambling, comfortable
home. Members of his company enjoyed his hospitality – all except Armes Beaumont: Lyster accidentally peppered his face with gunshot during a hunting expedition in 1867. The unfortunate tenor lost the sight in one eye and most of the sight in the other. This severely limited his career in opera, though he was able to undertake concert engagements and became a respected teacher.

In 1868 Lyster made a disastrous decision: he left his farm in the hands of Georgia Hodson’s daughter, Georgina, and her husband, George Dickson, and sailed with his company back to the United States. Their principal basso, D’Antoni, died during the voyage, and their San Francisco ‘homecoming’ season was such a financial disaster that Lyster was forced to disband the troupe. His brother Frederick went his own way with his new wife, the Australian actress and singer Minnie Walton (Frederick’s first wife, soprano Rosalie Durand had died in Sydney). Frederick became manager of the California Theatre in San Francisco, for whose stock company he recruited, in 1872, a young engaged couple, James Cassius Williamson and Maggie Moore. William Lyster, meanwhile, had finally married his soprano, Georgia Hodson (they had been living as man and wife for some years).

But Lyster was far from finished. He returned to Melbourne and persuaded a somewhat more affluent entrepreneur, John W. Smith, to join him in a new colonial operatic adventure. Lyster travelled to Britain and then to Italy, recruiting singers with the help of the Australian contralto Lucy Chambers. In effect he created two companies – one to perform the Italian repertoire in Italian and the other to perform French, German and English operas in English.

Lyster’s new enterprise – the Lyster Smith Opera Company – debuted with Verdi’s Ernani at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne on 5 February 1870; he gave another Verdi work, I Vespri Siciliani, its Australian premiere a few months later. After a year of mixed fortunes most of the Italian singers returned home. Lyster boldly reorganised his company, leased the dilapidated old Princess in Melbourne for three years from George Coppin, and opened there on 27 February 1871 with the Australian premiere of Offenbach’s cheeky romp The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein, with Fanny Simonsen, Armes Beaumont and Edward Farley. It was a sensation, and ran initially for 15 consecutive performances. Despite the sauciness inherent in Offenbach’s operettas – or more probably because of it – they were immensely popular in Australia, and became a money-spinning staple of Lyster’s repertoire. The following year he introduced Orpheus in the Underworld and Bluebeard.