A Singer’s Life Pt35
As my performing life has slowed down through a mixture of circumstances, I have begun to involve myself more in the future generation of singers. As these memoirs will have shown, I have been enormously lucky over my long career to work with many fantastic artists, both as teachers and as colleagues. From the beginning in Scotland with Joan Busby in Edinburgh and Lillian Liddell in Glasgow, through Laura Sarti at the Guildhall School in London, then with Norman Bailey and then Anthony Roden during my professional life, I benefited enormously from the dedication and wisdom of these fine teachers. Combined with these, all but one of whom is still going strong (indeed Laura continues to teach, now well into her 90s!), I have been able to study with true greats of the 20th century like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Hans Hotter, Peter Pears and Galina Vishnevskaya, and have met and worked with stars like Felicity Palmer, Sarah Connolly, John Tomlinson, Gwynne Howell, Placido Domingo, Robert Lloyd, Thomas Allen, Willard White and Alberto Remedios. In addition, I have sung under the batons of a wealth of Knights of the Realm, from Sir Alexander Gibson to Sir Antonio Pappano, and many Continental greats too.
One thing I have never been tempted to try was being a singing teacher. Many of my colleagues have transferred seamlessly from performing to teaching, either privately or in one of the great British Music Colleges. Until very recently, I simply did not have time to devote myself to teaching on a regular basis, since I was still continually travelling to perform in Europe and North America, but I was also quite reluctant to commit myself to the life of a teacher.
I am not really interested in the mechanics of singing, the breathing, the larynx, the tongue position, the diaphragm or the lungs. I think to be a decent teacher, you have to fully understand human physiology, and to be able to identify where things go and how they work. The actual teaching of singing and voice production is an expertise I am happy to leave to others, and the idea of teaching all day, sometimes working with excellent singers but also with beginners and teenagers who want to sing in West End musicals, fills me with dread.
What I do think I can help with is interpretation of masterworks, how to shape a phrase, where to use legato, how to make poetry in a different language come alive to a listener. I want to be able to help a new generation of singers fulfil their ambitions and achieve their goals.
To this end, I am hugely grateful to St Andrews University for appointing me Honorary Professor of Singing, a post I have been proud to hold for several years now. It was the perfect appointment for me, as all the students have their own vocal coaches and teachers who they see for lessons every week, while I was able to fit visits to St Andrews (my old University, about 50 miles north of Edinburgh, and the oldest in Scotland, with a famous history of over 600 years) into my busy international performing schedule. Each year, the University Music Department puts on an opera in the Byre Theatre, showcasing the wonderful vocal talents of the undergraduates and postgraduates enrolled at the university. It is funded directly, and we have a fully professional orchestra and guest directors to work with the students. In my time, we have been able to perform ‘Acis and Galatea’, ‘Albert Herring’, ‘The Turn of the Screw’, ‘Xerxes’ and ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’, among others, and a succession of fine student singers have passed through our hands, several of whom are beginning to achieve success in the profession, and several others who are on the cusp and studying their craft at music colleges. St Andrews no longer has a graduating music degree available to students but, thanks to the wider scope of the Scottish MA and BSc courses, the students can take music related modules as part of their degrees, or just sing in their spare time. The St Salvator’s Chapel Choir is now acknowledged as one of the finest university choirs in Britain, there are hugely successful A Capella groups (notably the Other Guys), and the students themselves have formed an Operatic Society, putting on performances of ‘The Magic Flute’ this year of splendid quality.
I make myself available to the students as a coach, either individually or in masterclasses, and am overwhelmed by the commitment and devotion of the singers. Usually, in the profession, a coach is a pianist and accompanist, but I find that I have something to offer as a performer of long standing, and someone who has made a living treading the boards all over the world. As long as I can use the services of a fine pianist (I can’t play the piano at all, much to my regret), I can work on interpretation and presentation, and hopefully lead the youngsters into the world of great music that I love so much. The great advantage of teaching in a smallish university like St Andrews is that, just to be accepted as an undergraduate, you have to be pretty smart. The number of my students coming through each year, and gaining First or Upper Second Class degrees is extraordinary, and makes the process of teaching very pleasant. To be able to suggest one nuance or another, and to feel that the student immediately picks up on what you have said, is wonderfully satisfying as a mentor, and makes life very easy. This is not to say that you have to be bright to be an opera singer, and there are countless examples over the years of singers unable to read music or memorise a language. I don’t wish to imply that intelligence is a pre-requisite to be a singer. A decent voice, a willingness to learn and a good sense of self-discipline are the most important factors, but a quick witted and clever student can be a blessing. The combination of all these factors usually results in a pretty good singer.
For the moment, I’d like to take this opportunity to muse a little on the immediate future of live culture in Scotland and beyond.
We don’t really have any idea what will happen to the Arts over the next year or so. Covid-19 has proved to be a disaster not only for many families, and the economy in general, but also in destroying the solid base of theatrical and concert life. Theatres and concert halls in Britain remain closed with no real prospect of opening any time soon, and yet pubs and restaurants are open and people are travelling in trains and planes again. The assumption that singing is a deadly spreader of the disease has taken root, despite the recent information that this is not necessarily so. Consequently, and understandably, governments and arts organisations have been forced to prohibit any loosening of the draconian laws which were brought in at the height of the pandemic, amid fears of a new outbreak. And yet, and yet... Many of my colleagues and friends are returning to work in European theatres, and rehearsals are underway throughout the continent. Now, it is clear that here in Britain we were very late to enforce lockdown and very slow (glacially so) to bring in a serious track and trace system. However, it is a fact that the Salzburg Festival has taken place, Hugh Kerr of this very website is presently in Vienna and will be going to the Wiener Staatsoper to watch performances, I have a friend in Brno rehearsing for a Janacek opera and another friend in Berlin rehearsing Wagner’s Ring. Meanwhile, here there is virtually nothing. Some work is being done, in front of cameras, and some singers and instrumentalists are finding a little employment, but we are no nearer a proper opening up of theatres and concert halls than before. The problem of course is that European arts are state sponsored and highly prized, while here we languish as an add-on luxury item!
Choral Societies around Britain have cancelled all performances for the autumn, as a result of the prohibition, along with a fear for their members, many of whom are in the vulnerable demographic. We are also told that, as singing is so dangerous, we cannot expect to be singing together again soon. I myself have had concerts cancelled in October/November in St Andrews, York and Chester. Yet, in Europe, concerts are going ahead. Is the virus more dangerous in Britain? Do Scottish singers expectorate more than European ones?
Singers and musicians in general, along with theatre staff and stage crews, costume makers and make-up artists have had no work here in Britain for over six months, with little prospect of a change in the rules. For me, Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government have done an admirable job in keeping us as safe as possible from the horrors of this disease, and their slowly, slowly policy has proved to be quite successful, certainly in comparison with our friends in England. However, as usual, the Arts are seen as non-essential, and we will be the last to get back to work, I fear. It took immense effort on the part of several worthy members of my profession to alert the government of the UK to the fact that most artists are self-employed and that a furlough scheme, although excellent in theory, ignores large swathes of the population who are not employed by a firm or a management. It also ignored those members of my profession who had earned a reasonable but not outrageous sum over the past years, as if having earned a decent fee for a while meant that we had all saved great sums for a scenario like this virus. Most artists earn enough to pay rent or mortgage plus food and sustenance but little more. To deny any help to people earning less than a small fortune was shocking. It will be very interesting to see how all this develops over the next months, and I hope to be able to give you an update in the new year.
I’ll come back next week to try to form an overview of my 40 years as a singer, and also to have a look into my crystal ball about the future for classical music and opera in particular.
