No Charm Equal—Music from Jane Austen's Drawing Room (Sydney)

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”
—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth with a concert program centred on grace, wit and musical storytelling.

Before the pianoforte keys were struck and the first note sung, music was already at the heart of Jane Austen’s world. In drawing rooms lit by candlelight, music was a shared language of love, longing, and polite rebellion—a pastime for women, a courtship ritual, and a glimpse into wider artistic worlds.

No Charm Equal brings this world vividly to life, with a concert of songs and operatic excerpts beloved in Austen’s era. From the sentimental ballads copied by hand into Austen family songbooks, to arias from the comic operas that swept through 18th-century England, this program recreates the musical soundscape of a Georgian parlour—where heroines once sang for guests and lovers, and where music revealed what society often silenced.