Christina's Lullaby (2009)
(an arrangement from "Christina's World")

Dorothy Hewett has described Christina’s World (1983) as “an allegory or fable about illusion and reality and the truth and lies of memory.”

Christina, in middle age, is obsessed by a desire to return to the house of her childhood and the life of the imagination she created there – a kind of second Eden of lost childhood and the Pastoral Dream. She succeeds in conjuring her young self, a hesitant and idealistic dream figure who gradually takes on the characteristics of a ‘real’ Christina – a contradictory, perverse, tragi-comic adolescent with a fierce egocentric life of her own.

The baby’s head was covered in down like a night jar.

Lulla, lulla, lullaby.

I wrapped him up and I laid him down like a white star

with a night light for company

I sent him out to sea.

 Lulla, lulla, lullaby,

I sent him out to sea.

The waves lapped soft on the beach that night

up, up and down,

 Lulla, lulla, lullaby.

The little lamp burned with a steady light

up, up and down,

As I waved it away from me

it disappeared into the sea.

Lulla, lulla, lullaby,

it disappeared into the sea.

I detached and arranged Christina's Lullaby from the opera Christina's World (1983), whose music I composed to a magical libretto by Dorothy Hewett, which she described as "an allegory or fable about illusion and reality and the truth and lies of memory."

Both words and music of the lullaby are deceptively simple, but with a disturbing undertow: Christina, having given birth in the sand dunes, sends the baby out to sea on a raft "with a night light for company".

The opera Christina's World, misunderstood at its early performances in Sydney, was successfully revived by in 2019 by the South Australian State opera. I so wish Dorothy had lived to see a production and reception that I think would have delighted her.

Ross Edwards