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Donald Munro was an academic and a university administrator but will be most remembered as a champion of the performing arts in Queensland where he lead the creation of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
He had a senior role at the University of Queensland, managed the Mayne Hall performing arts venue and was on the board of many national and Queensland music and opera bodies.
Born in Brisbane in 1927, he went to Sandgate State School and later Brisbane State High School. His highly articulate fellow students would go on to have roles in the world of art, music and literature and included Verdi scholar, Charles Osborne, Lillian Roxon of “The Encyclopaedia of Rock” fame, writers Barbara Blackman and Thea Astley, music critic Roger Covell and others.
After school, he trained at the Queensland Teachers College and was granted a fellowship to study for an arts degree at the University of Queensland. After a short period teaching at Gatton and Dalby he joined the staff of the Teachers College becoming head of the English Department and lectured in the Diploma of Education course at the University. At the same time, he undertook a post-graduate degree in education under the leadership of Professor (later Sir) Fred Schonell.
After a period working for the Commonwealth Office of Education in Sydney with responsibility for UNESCO activities, he returned to Brisbane, becoming the first Director of the University of Queensland’s Institute of Modern Languages and later held the university positions of Deputy Registrar and Deputy Secretary at the invitation of Sir Zelman Cowen whom he had come to know through the Institute work.
He was a fluent French speaker, his interest aroused by his father’s time as a field ambulance bearer in France during the First World War as was his interest in music, particularly opera, which his father attended in Paris during periods of leave.
He was passionate about music and had an encyclopaedic knowledge. As a school boy, he attended concerts with the score in hand. At eighteen he wrote program notes for the ABC Youth Concerts in Brisbane and was a music critic for the University student newspaper Semper Floreat.
It was a particularly rich time in Australian music, and he covered concerts by illustrious conductors like Otto Klemperer and Rafael Kubelik. Nevertheless, he still regarded having lunch as a student with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier as the highlight of his student life.
He went on to write about music and drama for The Bulletin, The Courier-Mail and The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and Opera Opera. He also reviewed films regularly on air for the ABC in Brisbane. When the ABC began educational broadcasting in Brisbane, he was one of the first presenters. He also appeared on the ABC as a panellist on programmes such as “The Critics” and “Any Questions” and “The Modern Music Forums”.
He was President of the Queensland Branch of Musica Viva for eight years (of which he was subsequently made an Honorary Life Member), Vice-President of Twelfth Night Theatre, advised Charles Lisner on the founding of the Queensland Ballet Company and was one of the founders of the Brisbane Festival. As manager of Mayne Hall for the first ten years of its operation, he administered the UQ Sinfonietta and the Mayne String Quartet, both of which gave their performances in the Mayne Hall. He was Chairman of the Queensland Council of Children’s Films and Television and also President of the Modern Language Teachers’ Association of Queensland.
Most importantly, in 1978, he was appointed Founding Chairman of the Queensland Performing Arts Trust, which was set up to plan, build and manage the new Concert Hall and the Lyric Theatre on the South Bank of the Brisbane River. He held that position for thirteen years until 1991.
His passionate interest in the performing arts was such that he had a working knowledge of theatre sizes, mechanics and operations around the world which led to the appointment.
It was an era when QPAC was host to famous groups such as Sir George Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal and Bolshoi Ballets, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Comédie Française, and actors such as Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert. He was also a member of the Queensland Cultural Centre Trust, which managed the whole South Bank cultural site under the Chairmanship of Sir David Muir.
In 1981, with the support of Dame Joan Hammond, who did not, herself, want to be an administrator, he became Chairman of the ABC Music Advisory Committee. He led the Advisory Council of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and was Deputy Chairman of the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1985, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to the arts, particularly in the area of arts administration.
At the invitation of the Japan Foundation, he visited Japan in 1990 to inspect Japanese universities and musical institutions. While in Tokyo, he broadcast about his experiences in Japan on the overseas service of Radio NHK.
He published Diaries of a Stretcher-Bearer 1916–1918 by Edward Munro MM (Boolarong Press, Brisbane), his edition of his father’s First World War diaries. After that came Edward on the Somme, published with his wife, Jacquelyn, a book for young people to show them what it might have been like to fight in the trenches in France during that war.
He took a keen interest in educating his children and grandchildren in music and literature. He always had two jobs, a “day” job in education in its various forms and a “night” job which revolved around music. It was fitting that his memoir, published in 2022, was titled “The Music Never Stopped”.
He died peacefully on 2 July 2023.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Jacquelyn, two daughters Sally Jane and Julienne and four grandchildren, Laura, Caitlin, Robert and Simon.
