Michael, Greek Theatre Now’s founder and artistic director, was an opera student at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, and Royal Academy of Music, London. He sang in operas around the world, working with leading conductors and directors including Sir John Hopkins, David Alden and Douglas Horton. In London he lived with world-famous pianist Geoffrey Parsons. He was the lead tenor in the world premiere of new Australian opera The Hive which won Green Room and Helpmann Awards, including Best Opera.
Below, clip from The Hive (Vines/Sejavka). Michael, as James Strachey, sings about the death of his close friend British poet Rupert Brooke, during WW1, and Brooke’s burial on the Greek island Skyros. Skyros is famous in Greek mythology as the hiding place of Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior in the Trojan War.
Michael’s first full opera role, when he was 17, was Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Aeneas was a Trojan prince. After surviving the fall of Troy he ends up in Latium, central Italy today, and is the progenitor, the founder, of the Roman people, according to Greco-Roman mythology. Aeneas is the bridge between the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome. “In the opera he is not the star of the show,” said Michael. “Dido is. But it explains why he must leave her, breaking her heart. He has a destiny to fulfill, to found the people of Rome.”
Michael was also a journalist and political adviser. He was a politics opinion writer for the ABC and wrote for The Australian business magazine, the Herald Sun and The Bulletin/Newsweek. He was a senior media adviser in the Victorian Kennett Government and Australian Howard Government.
Michael was an International Red Cross media spokesman during emergencies and disasters around the world, including the Ebola crisis in West Africa and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. (Below, Michael speaks to SBS Australia from Japan.)
Michael headed his own media and government relations company for 20 years, working with governments and organisations around the world, including Washington and London-based international law firm Amsterdam & Partners and Geneva-headquartered International Red Cross, which is neutral, impartial, non-judgemental and non-weapons based. It supports prisoners of war on all sides. It is a humanitarian organisation.
Tumble
Michael hit rock bottom after the death of his mother in 2007. He was broke and unemployed for 2 years from 2008 to 2010. At his lowest point he was drunk and unconscious in a gutter in Castlemaine at 3 o’clock in the morning. “A night cab driver saved me,” he said. “He pulled me out of the gutter just before a truck pulled in to overnight park.
“Hitting rock bottom for 2 years I was stripped of my identity. It was incinerated. It wasn’t until I completely surrendered that I was able to get back up on my feet.
“I had to stop blaming others, own my situation, in order to move forward. It was a powerful lesson.
“It’s also given me a much wider range of life experience. I’m grateful for that.
Mother – Father – Son
“I understand the so-called Oedipus complex, a boy being close to his mother and ‘rivaling’ his father for his mother’s affection. All my gifts, physical, intellectual, musical, came from my father. I was a kind of mini him, but the newer model. He died from cancer when I was in my early 20s. I was very close to my mother. A week before my father died, my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Later, when she was very ill, I moved in with her. When she was very sick during the night, crying and writhing in pain, I lay with her – where my father used to lie – trying to comfort her. We couldn’t get her into a hospital, even though she had full medical insurance, because Parkinson’s is a chronic condition, not an acute condition. We couldn’t get a nursing home bed – the aged care crisis in Victoria. Night after night I slept with her in the marriage bed where my father used to lie.
“Later, when she was dying, in a nursing home, I lay on a mattress next to her each night (the staff wound down her bed to floor level, placing a mattress on the floor next to her for me). On the 12th day of her end-of-life care, my siblings, politely, suggested that mum may not be leaving because I’m with her 24/7. That night I slept at my sister’s. At 2.30 in the morning mum departed her body for good.
“Most of my recordings were for mum. Even when she was not well she would smile and say “you sound just like your father”. They were soul mates. I reminded her of him.
“I’m sure mum, dad and I have had many lives together. I also know that it’s time to move on, write the next chapter. A bit like Aeneas, there’s more to do.”
Jocasta to Oedipus (Sophocles’ Oedipus the King): “Don’t worry about the prophecy. Most men, in their dreams, sleep with their mother.”
Michael also sings countertenor and fronted early music group Baroquial, singing the works of Vivaldi, Bach and Purcell. He was the voice of Nazi Heinrich Himmler in the 2020 Apple TV 6-part mini series Adolf Hitler’s War. Below, recording, Michael sings Core ‘ngrato (Cardillo). Wendy Rowlands accompanist. ABC studios Melbourne.
Michael is also an endurance athlete and physical exercise instructor. “I’ve always loved music, rhythm and dance, using my body to express my personality,” he said. He competes in marathons around the world. He is running the famous Marathon-Athens marathon in Greece in November 2026. “Endurance in the body, endurance in life,” he said.
He founded Greek Theatre Now in 2024 and is pleased to bring outdoor Greek theatre to Australia’s National Botanic Gardens in Canberra, Australia’s political capital.
“The Greek theatre plays explore the role of the individual and the role of the collective,” he said. “They are as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago when they premiered in Athens during the birth of democracy.
“I’m putting on Greek theatre because I believe in it. I believe in it for the individual and I believe in it for the collective.
“Greek theatre was part of a religious festival.
“What is God? God is love, something that’s in all of us.”
Michael sings Denver’s Perhaps Love, recorded for his mum. Glenn Riddle accompanist.
