“When the truth is known all that is hidden will appear, nothing will remain unknown.”

So runs the English translation of part of the Gunditjmara text of Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s magnificent and powerful Eumaralla, A War Requiem for Peace released on the ABC Classic label. The composer soprano, who sings on the album alongside Indigenous singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock and Opera Australia regular bass Judd Arthur, wrote the work in 2018 when it was premiered on Gunditjmara country in southwest Victoria on the site of the Eumaralla wars in which the Aboriginal population was reduced from around 9000 to just 77 survivors in the 1830s and ‘40s.

The work is based on the 19 Latin texts which Cheetham Fraillon commissioned Vicki Couzens and Travers Eira to translate into the Gunditjmara language. Performed originally as a chamber work, it was first given in its symphonic form in WA, and has been staged in Melbourne, Brisbane and finally in Sydney with the SSO in 2024 when this recording was made.

It is a powerful and moving...