AustLit

A merchant, pastoralist, parliamentarian (NSW) and company director, J. L. Montefiore was one of the most prominent and influential Jewish Australians of the nineteenth century. He was also a writer of note, producing some of the first Australian works on economics: A Catechism of the Rudiments of Political Economy (Sydney: W.R.Piddington, 1861) and A Few Words upon the Finance of New South Wales (Sydney: Empire General Steam Printing Office, 1856). Montefiore was also associated with the theatre, and he translated or adapted from the French several "light operas and comedies of the type which he must have seen and enjoyed in Paris", including the libretto for Don John of Austria, thought to be the first opera written in Australia (see Levi and Bergman. Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers 1788-1850).