.
After going to London towards the
end of 1974, she entered the London Opera Centre for a further
two years' study, part of it under scholarships from the Ralph
Vaughan Williams Trust and Friends of Covent Garden. She was a
soloist in several oratorio performances for London choral societies,
and in 1977 the late Pierre Bernac, a well-known exponent of French
song earlier this century, and a close associate of Francis Poulenc,
invited her to participate in a series of master classes in that
repertoire. Since her return to Australia in
1982, Frances has been soloist in a number of oratorio performances
with the Western Choral Society and elsewhere, spent four years
with the Australian Opera, and played the rÙle of Elvira in the
Rockdale Opera production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. In
1989, Frances adjudicated the vocal sections of the Music Illawarra
Young Musicians competition, and in 1990 the Central Coast Eisteddfod.
Taree and Gulgong Eisteddfods followed in 1994. She has also given
recitals for the Lieder Society and the Australian Opera Auditions
Committee, and on radio. In the years since she left the Australian
Opera, Frances has built up a teaching practice as a voice teacher,
with consistently good results from those students who choose
to enter the AMEB examinations.
Between
1970 and 1974, Frances Chambers spent three years studying at
the N.S.W. State Conservatorium Opera School, was runner-up in
both Sydney Sun and Canberra Shell Aria competitions, and appeared
a number of times on Crawford Productions' Showcase television
programme, becoming a grand finalist in 1973. In those years she
also performed the rÙles of Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor)
and Micaela (Carmen) for the Sydney Opera Company. 
She
was subsequently granted a scholarship to take part in a summer
school for the AcadÈmie Internationale de Musique Maurice Ravel
at St-Jean-de-Luz, in the course of which she performed with the
Toulouse Orchestra under Michel Plasson. In 1979 Frances undertook
a series of engagements for the English Bach Festival, including
Rameau's Pygmalion at the OpÈra Royale at Versailles, a
Charpentier mass in London and at Versailles, and a recording
of another Rameau work, La Princesse de Navarre, for Erato
records.
