National Boys Choir of Australia in Concert

The National Boys Choir of Australia, established in 1964, is one of Australia’s finest children’s choirs. Performed by a 100 voice choir, this concert’s repertoire will include Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art with orchestra and Britten’s Three Two Part Songs.

The feature work will be the children’s opera All the King’s Men by English composer Richard Rodney Bennett (accompanied by orchestra). All the King’s Men is set in England in 1643, with King Charles attempting to take the city of Gloucester during the Civil War. The townsfolk of Gloucester manage to foil attempts to take the city. It is from this historical event that the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty possibly arose, with the original ‘Humpty’ being a large war machine that rolled into the river and broke after failing to take hold as a temporary bridge. Humpty Dumpty’s story evolved over time from a river disaster to a wall disaster, but all the king’s horses and men remained as part of the legend.