FEATURE STORY
The opera star on the peninsula Geoffrey Chard has been guest at Buckingham Palace and played tennis at Wimbledon, but of all his achievements, it is this Hunters Hill local’s stellar career in opera that has won him a place as an Australian icon. WORDS TRACEY PORTER
G
eoffrey William Chard AM is perhaps Australia’s most enduring and revered opera singer. For classical music and opera fans, he is a household name. In the local community, he is known as the President of Hunters Hill Music. To the country, he is a Member of the Order of Australia for services to opera. To others, he’s Dad, or Geoff. Right now, he is the man at the end of a telephone line with an exceptionally velvety and captivating speaking voice. A suite of providential events and tragic circumstances have landed Chard among the harbour views, warm sandstone walls and tree-lined streets of the sleepy Hunters Hill peninsula, and at 90-years old his memory is sharp and his recollections voluminous. His list of performing roles is staggering: Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Rangoni in Boris Godunov, Scarpia in Tosca, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Balstrode in Peter Grimes and the title role in Gianni Schicchi. Plus of course Don Giovanni on many, many occasions. In his early life as a singer and actor, he appeared in the inaugural production of the Australian Elizabethan Trust Opera Company – the forerunner to Opera Australia. In the early 60s his career went stratospheric in the UK, while he spent later years as a member of the Australian National Opera and all the state opera companies. He is well known for his part in the huge Australian success, Voss. Today, he is upbeat, energised and jokes, “We’re going to talk about my favourite subject and of course, that’s me.”
In the beginning It was Chard’s mother who was first to instil in him an appreciation of musical performance and it was the female congregation at the Anglican church in his home suburb of Hurstville Grove who introduced him to the potency of a church choir. 18 TVO
Young Chard loved to sing. But never was performing considered a career option. “I hated school, actually. I wanted to be grown-up, and so I went to the business college in Sydney. “I got a clerical job, did an accounting course and eventually became the company secretary of the firm I was working for,” he recalls. With the day job paying the bills, Chard joined amateur musical societies and spent his spare time in the evenings singing at community events and performing on the showboats in the city at the weekend. “Singing just became part of things,” he reflects. “There was an opportunity to learn those things which isn’t available today. There were all sorts of embarrassments and experiences. There was even an opportunity to sing overseas, as we called it, by going across the harbour and singing in Mosman.”
