Baritone Michael Halliwell’s latest CD puts a musical spin on Shakespeare.

A mood, a situation or an emotion, captured in a few lines of poetry some 400 years ago: William Shakespeare’s songs, spoken and sung by characters in his plays, together with his 154 sonnets, have provided composers with material ever since. Thirty Shakespeare settings by Australian composers have now been released on CD, thanks to a long-term project by the baritone Michael Halliwell in collaboration with pianist David Miller. O for a Muse of Fire features music by 16 composers, including world premiere recordings of works by Moya Henderson, Chester Schultz, Andrew Ford, Richard Peter Maddox and Peter Sculthorpe.

During his career, baritone Michael Halliwell appeared on stage in Shakespeare operas from Falstaff (Verdi) to Romeo and Juliet (Gounod) and Hamlet (Thomas). With a background of studies in literature as well as music, the art of the opera libretto has long been one of his particular interests. But singing words in an opera usually means being at the mercy of librettists and translators, ‘twice removed’ from the original literary text. For a Shakespeare enthusiast, a song setting is a chance to get a step closer to the Bard....