A Singer’s Guide to Voices: Mezzo-Soprano Pt2
In the first article, I wrote about what a mezzo-soprano is and reminisced at some length about the singers I had loved from the Golden Age of Singing in the Sixties and Seventies.
As I progressed through my own career, I have been truly fortunate to work with some of the great mezzos of our era, and I thought I might tell you about some of them.
Back in the late 70s, I spent several summers studying at the Britten-Pears School at Snape in Suffolk, where I encountered one of the fantastic mezzos who had been part of Britten’s circle at Aldeburgh, Nancy Evans. When I knew her she was married to the hugely important librettist and director, Eric Crozier, but previously she had been married to the very influential music producer, Walter Legge, who later married Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (didn’t I move in musical High Society?). Nancy was very important historically in her own right, as one of the first two Lucretias in Britten’s ‘Rape of Lucretia’, the original Nancy in ‘Albert Herring’ and Polly in ‘The Beggars Opera’ of 1948. She was also the most delightful lady, and she and Eric were splendid hosts at their lovely home near Aldeburgh.
Nancy shared the role of Lucretia with the superb Kathleen Ferrier in the premiere run at Glyndebourne in 1946, although unlike Ferrier she was more of a mezzo than a contralto. Her marriage to Eric was both happy and fortuitous, happy for the comfort and solidity it afforded her to develop as an artist, and fortuitous in allowing her to be at the cutting edge of the Britten creative engine. Eric Crozier was a supremely dominant figure at Aldeburgh for many years, relied on by Britten for many reasons and he remained pivotal to the place after Britten’s death in 1976. Nancy had a lovely voice, and it must have been wonderful for her to have roles created by arguably Britain’s greatest composer. Sadly, like Peter Pears she wasn’t a great teacher, but was always interesting to talk to, with a fund of stories, and her lack of a dominant ego meant that some great singers and teachers were always happy to come to Aldeburgh for the summer school.
Coming more up to date, some of my contemporaries at Guildhall, Aldeburgh and various competitions have now been recognised as very fine singers. From Anne-Marie Owens and Jenny Miller, through Catherine Denley and Cynthia Buchan, to Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Jean Rigby, I have indeed been fortunate to work with the best in the business.
Cath Denley, whose Facebook page notes that she studied “beer-drinking and singing” at Trinity College of Music, was a most convivial and excellent colleague in several productions, notably ‘The Coronation of Poppea’ with Sir Richard Hickox at the Spitalfields Festival and on a recording made at the same time, where her performance as Ottavia’s Nurse was very moving. I see she still hedges her bets between mezzo and contralto, but, as I’m not likely to devote a whole article to contraltos, she gets in here! That same project introduced me to the great Welsh mezzo, Della Jones, who sang Nero, and who made her name as a firecracker exponent of coloratura, especially in Handel and Rossini. This powerful whirlwind of energy made a great impression on my younger self, but also scared me half to death. Not someone to offend!
Anne-Marie Owens and I go right back to Guildhall days, when she and I were both pupils of the wonderful Laura Sarti, herself a fine mezzo before becoming one of the leading vocal teachers of the last fifty years. Laura is still going strong, at the age of 97! Anne-Marie, from South Shields, has been one of the most consistent mezzos of the last few decades, and we kept on meeting up on various projects through the years. I was delighted to get together with her after a Guildhall reunion, a couple of years ago in London, when we shared lots of happy memories, including a fabulous BBC Prom of Ethel Smythe’s ‘The Wreckers’, and I hope she won’t mind if I recall the performance of Handel’s Messiah in Ceramic City Hall, Stoke on Trent, when she missed her chair after her aria and collapsed on to the floor in a cloud of taffeta and lace. It was perhaps the funniest moment of my career up to then, and it was typical of Anne-Marie that she saw the funny side as much as the rest of us. She has been a superb singer, with a warm mezzo timbre and a keen intelligence.
It was also at the Guildhall that I met the terrific American mezzo, Jenny Miller, who has been another constant in my life over the years. Another of Laura’s babies, she and I sang together for the first time in the Rossini opera ‘La Cenerentola’, she as Cinderella and me as her fierce stepfather, my first role at Guildhall. Now, no one would ever think of me as a Rossini Buffo Bass, but there I was, rolling out those little black notes in great number and singing more words to the minute than anyone else! Fortunately, sense and history combined to make this my last buffo part, but it cemented a friendship, both artistic and personal, which has lasted many decades.
Jenny and her director husband, Alan Privett, were in at the beginning of Midsummer Opera, that splendidly quirky venture which began in an Ealing garden in the late 80s, founded by David and Lorelle Skewes. She and I sang together in several productions by Alan, culminating in a marvellous ‘Cosi fan Tutte’, set in British India, which miraculously found its way to the Bermuda Festival, one of my coolest gigs!
Some years later, Alan and Jenny became involved in the even quirkier enterprise that is Longborough Festival Opera, located in the Cotswolds. By this time, Jenny had started to sing some dramatic soprano parts (see the beginning of my first article on mezzos), and the crazy decision to put on a version of Wagner’s Ring in a chicken shed began to become a reality. I remember a phone call from Jenny, supposedly to pick my brains about potential Wotans, which metamorphosed into an offer to sing the role and a hardly believable decision on my part to agree to it!
Thus began one of the most fantastic episodes of my career, culminating for me in singing Wotan’s phenomenal farewell to his beloved daughter, Brünnhilde, at the end of “Die Walküre”, one of the most fabulous scenes in all opera, and sharing it with Jenny as Brünnhilde, and then in ‘Siegfried’ passing on my powers to Siegfried, as he climbs the hill to waken her after her long sleep.
That whole enterprise at Longborough, over the Millennium, also featured some more of Britain and Ireland’s finest mezzos, including Fiona Kimm and Colette McGahon, and was an absolute joy!
Cynthia Buchan was a Scottish mezzo with whom I worked on several occasions. Born in Edinburgh, this fiery singer was always exciting to work with, as you never quite knew what she was going to do next. My last encounter with Cynthia was in Nantes in France, in a production of ‘Peter Grimes’ which I wrote about in ‘A Singer’s Life’, where she played Mrs Sedley, normally a role cast as an elderly lady who fancies herself as a bit of a Miss Marple figure. This production had her more controversially as a drug addicted, sex maniac teenager. Cynthia played it to the hilt!
A mezzo whom I rate very highly is Jean Rigby, with whom I worked on several occasions, most notably in ‘Rigoletto’ with ENO at the London Coliseum. The first time I met Jean was when she beat me to the First Prize in the Royal Overseas League competition in London. It was the same year that I won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize, and I thought I was a shoe-in for the prize, but Dame Eva Turner, the legendary diva, who had been one of the first singers to sing Turandot, was the head judge, and told me afterwards that Jean had been in a class of her own, and her career would seem to justify that confidence.
Another fine mezzo, still working at the height of her powers, is Catherine Wyn-Rogers, with whom I have sung on numerous occasions. Equally capable on stage and in the concert hall, Catherine has established herself as perhaps the finest British mezzo of the last thirty years. Possessed of both a beautiful voice and great intelligence, she has given much pleasure to successive generations of music lovers, particularly in the works of Edward Elgar. My favourite collaboration was a wonderful Bach Mass in B Minor with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, in Cremona and Turin. The other soloists were Nancy Argenta and Markus Schäfer, and those performances will live long in my memory.
I must also mention the fabulous Christine Cairns and Dame Sarah Connolly. Christine and I met at the famous Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Masterclasses at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival. I was only 25 and she was younger still, but she and Schwarzkopf seemed to hit it off, and their sessions together made for great television. Coming from the west of Scotland, her bubbly personality and gorgeous creamy voice were a great combination, and a chance audition a few years later with André Previn resulted in an international career. I sang again with her and Simon Rattle in Schoenberg’s mighty ‘Gurrelieder’ at Symphony Hall in Birmingham and she was still terrific. She moved into teaching quite young, and continues to do so, I believe.
Symphony Hall in Birmingham was also where I first met Dame Sarah Connolly, although singing a Haydn Mass rather than a huge late Romantic blockbuster. It was, nonetheless, apparent that here was a major talent, and this early opinion has been proved right. One of Britain’s best loved singers, Sarah has become a huge star, and often speaks out on behalf of singers and musicians in public life. She brings a sharp intelligence and a superb instrument to her performances, and she has been rewarded with a Damehood and worldwide recognition. She is also a fun person!
Scotland seems to be a good breeding ground for mezzos, as can be seen by the success in recent years of Karen Cargill, originally from Arbroath, and Catriona Morison, from Edinburgh. Catriona, in particular, followed the route that many Scottish singers have to take, by going to Germany and establishing a career there, before returning to the UK, where she was successful in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
We are lucky in that this conveyor belt of Scots mezzos continues to function, with the emergence of Catherine Backhouse, and most recently Beth Taylor. I am delighted to be able to announce to our readers that Beth and I will be sharing a recital (Covid permitting) on August 22nd in St Michael’s Church in Edinburgh, coinciding with the Edinburgh International Festival, and including songs by Mahler, Alma Mahler, Schubert and Respighi. We will end with the first performance of Tom Cunningham’s newly expanded song cycle, ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, with poems by Alexander McCall Smith, which promises to be fantastic. Sandy and Tom premiered their cycle back in 2014, but this will be the first public concert of the new version, with changed emphasis and a brand new closing duet. The young Polish pianist, Michal Gajzler, will accompany us, and I hope as many EMR readers can come along as possible, always providing that the government regulations allow us to perform. This will be my first public appearance since late 2019, and I can’t wait to get back to performing again.
I will be sharing an interview with Beth Taylor on this website soon, and details of the concert will be announced then.
I hope you have been inspired by these articles to go out and listen to recordings of the many wonderful mezzos I have been writing about here. I’m sure I have missed some great singers out and can only apologise for any omissions I have made. Feel free to suggest others, in the comment section.
