Summary

Souvenir programme from the EOAN Group's Operatic Concert, performed on 15th and 22nd April 1967 in City Hall, Cape Town, with the Eoan Group Chorus. Sylvia joined the EOAN Group in 1966 and performed in a variety of operas. She met her future husband, Lindsay Motherwell, through the Eoan Group's production of 'South Pacific'.

Sylvia Boyes (a South African-born orphan) and Lindsay Motherwell (a Melbourne-born drummer) met in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967 through their theatre connections. They fell in love but due to apartheid laws were forced to leave South Africa to marry in London. They subsequently relocated permanently to Melbourne in 1970.

Physical Description

Front cover, 10 'Artists' are listed, "with Eoan Group Chorus", "Conducted by Joseph Manca", "City Hall, Cape Town, Saturday, 15th & 22nd April, 1967". The cost at the bottom is "Programme 10 cents". Inside is a list of 25 songs performed in the concert, with "INTERVAL 15 MINUTES" after 12 songs. The type of song, title and Opera from which it came are listed in three columns. On the bottom right is a notice "No smoking is permitted in the auditorium. No photographing is allowed in the theatre." On the back is an advertisement for Shell petrol.

Significance

Statement of Historical Significance:
This collection provides a significant opportunity to represent political and personal freedom as a motivation for migrating to Australia within the international context of both apartheid in South Africa and the end of the White Australia policy in Australia. The personal narrative is well documented and the objects provide a material way to follow the lives of both Lindsay and Sylvia, both separately and where they coincide in South Africa and onwards together to Melbourne. While this is ultimately a love story, it plays out through the collection against the backdrop of apartheid South Africa, sixties London and an increasingly multicultural Australia.

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