Last night my friend Meredith accompanied me to the State Library for another of their special 200th anniversary events. This one was devoted to Harriet and Helena Scott, two of Australia’s best natural history illustrators. I knew that the Haydn Ensemble would be playing, but other than that I really didn’t know what to expect.

We got there early to get good seats, and gradually the auditorium filled up. The ensemble sat on the left, and then there was a small theatrical set to the right.

The show was wonderful! (Here’s the PDF Program.) In addition to the four musicians, there were four cast members (three women and a man) who acted out small vignettes to illustrate scenes from the lives of the Scott family. The show started with Lucy, a First Nations woman, who acted as narrator and made sure this important perspective was represented. The other three all played multiple characters, and they directly addressed the audience at times to crack jokes and point things out. (They even got quite “meta,” referencing the Library itself which started with the bequest of a relative of theirs—David Scott Mitchell.) The scenes were interleaved with musical performances, many of them selections from Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. Other pieces from contemporary Australian composers were woven in too. I especially loved the last one, which I believe was “Ripples and Reflections” by Tullia Cairns and was written for this production. Along with the music, original illustrations from the Scott sisters had been turned into beautiful animations by Studio Gilay and were played on the big screen. (The Library also had set up a small exhibition of these original materials in the Glasshouse so we could check them out during the intermission.) There was a lot happening, but it all just worked. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and learned a lot about the lives of these two women. Well done to Skye McIntosh and all the musicians, actors, animators, and researchers involved!