Grainger Museum

Manuscripts, published scores and supporting archival material.

Mona McBurney was born on 29 July 1862. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1896, becoming the first woman in Australia to obtain a Bachelor of Music.

McBurney was one of the founding members of the Catalysts’ Society and the Lyceum Club, networks of women who had distinguished themselves in art, music, literature, philanthropy or public service. Her compositions were regularly performed in Melbourne and her opera The Dalmatian (composed in 1905 and produced in its entirety in 1926) holds the honour of being the first opera by a woman composer to be performed in Australia.

A donation of Mona McBurney’s musical works in manuscript form, several of her published songs, programs, photographs and dolls were made to the Grainger Museum by the family of Mona’s nephew, Archibald McBurney, through his widow Linda and son James. Some of the dolls are dressed in tiny replicas of the costumes created for the characters in her opera The Dalmatian, complete with name tags.