CityLife

Rebecca leaps out of parents' shadow

CHARITY DATE: Rebecca Bottone

REBECCA Bottone knew what being an opera singer was all about – and was sure she wouldn’t be one.

Both her mum, Jennifer Dakin, and her dad, Bonaventura Bottone, were in the business and, she says, "My first opera was War And Peace, when I was three.

Dad was a regular at Covent Garden in the big tenor roles and she just got taken along. But she didn’t think it was the life for her.

“I never even tried to sing at home. I mean, when your parents are both professionals, you hardly even dare.”

But then there was a school performance of West Side Story and everyone had to audition.

“I tried I Feel Pretty,” says Rebecca. “And the next day my mum got a call saying I had got the lead role.

“Mum said I could do the school show but to treat singing as a hobby and keep my feet on the ground. In reality, I couldn’t have asked for a better start than that.”

But she decided to take the ‘hobby’ as far as it would go – and studied at both the Royal College and Royal Academy of Music in London. She started getting offers of work while still a student.

She was approached by an agent after one of her first professional appearances (with the Classical Opera Company – she was a fetching Despina for them at the Bridgewater Hall two years ago).

G&S

Last year she did Gilbert & Sullivan roles at the G&S Festival at Buxton and this year she’s given two outstanding performances in the north west already – as the nimble Cricket in Opera North’s new opera, The Adventures Of Pinocchio and then as Dalila correct in the Buxton Festival staging of Handel’s Samson.

The latter has been nominated for the M.E.N. Theatre Awards.

The Cricket needed considerable physical movement skills, as she had to leap around as well as sing.

“I love a challenge,” she says. “I’ve never done any dancing in my life but the choreographer said what was wanted and I just went away and practised, 24-7.”

Astonishing

Dalila was, if anything, more astonishing, as Rebecca managed to win sympathy for a character universally regarded as an archetypal baddie.

“Yes, people think she’s just a bitch,” she says. “But I didn’t want her to be like that. I like doing something to give a character a bit of punch.”

It will be another experience again when she sings with the Hallé Orchestra and Choirs, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, on Monday (8pm), in a special World Aids Day concert at the Bridgewater Hall.

It’s in support of international charity ActionAid’s Mission Malawi, a project working with people living with HIV in Africa.

The programme is Fauré’s Requiem (the other soloist is highly regarded opera baritone, Roderick Williams) and the world premiere of Walking Along The Red Dust Road, a ‘secular requiem’ with texts by Manchester-based poet Jackie Kay and music by seven different composers.

Tickets are £15-£25 from the Bridgewater Hall box office (0161 907 9000) or on halle.co.uk.