The Young Kabbarli is a one-act chamber opera written in 1964 by the Australian composer Margaret Sutherland; it is her only work in the operatic genre.
[1] The plot is based on an episode in the life of the Irish-Australian welfare worker and anthropologist Daisy Bates.
It is scored for 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bassoon, horn, percussion (castanets, wood block, sticks, flints, wooden shaker), piano, viola, and double bass.
[3] The Young Kabbarli was premiered in August 1965 at the Festival of Contemporary Opera and Music, at the Theatre Royal in Hobart,[4] as a companion piece to Larry Sitsky's The Fall of the House of Usher.
[7] The singers were Genty Stevens, mezzo-soprano, Daisy Bates/Kabbarli; Dean Patterson, baritone, Goondowell; Carol Kohler, soprano, Goondowell's wife Yoolbian;[8] John McKenzie, bass-baritone, Trappist Brother; David Gulpilil (as David Gumpilil), Aboriginal singer; New Opera of South Australia, conducted by Patrick Thomas.