CityLife

Classical highlights: June 11 to 17, 2010

Sarah Connolly

Opera North comes to town again next week, at The Lowry, and for many the most exciting show will be at the end. It’s a new production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and in the title role is mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly.

Northern-born Sarah is well known to Manchester audiences, having sung on several outstanding occasions for the Hallé with Sir Mark Elder, and she was Romeo in Opera North’s I Capuleti E I Montecchi (by Bellini) just over two years ago. She was made a CBE in the 2010 New Year Honours.

Her combination of vocal powers and performance skills may seem to show she’s a ‘natural’ on the opera stage – and her career is now in the starry sphere. After Opera North, she’s off to sing for Sir Simon Rattle in part of Tristan Und Isolde at the Berlin Philharmonic, and recent appearances have been at Munich, Boston, Salzburg, La Scala and The Met.

But for a long time, Sarah found appearing on stage an ordeal. She was musically gifted as a youngster, and went to the Royal College of Music with piano as her first study.

“Then my teacher said I should become a joint first-study singer. I won a female singing prize in my first year, which surprised everybody, but I still had a long way to go technically.”

She could have become a jazz artist, and appeared on Friday Night Is Music Night in her own arrangement of a Gershwin song with a jazz trio. She joined the BBC Singers freelanced with other choirs, and sang with the chorus at Glyndebourne. But she still had qualms about facing an audience.

And she found auditioning for the established opera companies dispiriting. She was 32, but lacked stage experience. She remembers being asked the same question again and again: “Yes, but what have you done?”

Her big break came in 1996, when Channel 4 needed a stand-in singer for a film of Handel’s music. She found herself sight-reading the middle sections of two arias, then, after quick discussion with the accompanist about ornamentation, the rest. Her long apprenticeship finally paid off, and she was able to get representation by a top agency.

But things were still tough. A psychotherapist helped. “I told him about my fears – but he said I would cope, and to give it a go,” she says. “I was beginning to get very nervous. When I sang Xerxes for English National
Opera I was a rabbit in the headlights on opening night, and the same in Ariodante at New York City Opera just afterwards.

“But the New York Times gave me the best review of my life for that. I realised I had turned the corner. The secret is a combination of determination and being absolutely true to the music.”

Maria Stuarda is based on Schiller’s play and climaxes in a dramatic, though unhistorical, confrontation between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots (Sarah’s role). “There’s also a love triangle, which isn’t in the play,” Sarah says.

“It’s a stunning production. It plays very simply, and it’s all about the people in the drama.”

*****

There’s high excitement at the Royal Northern College of Music as the next three days offer its Gold Medal Weekend, then Monday brings a special visitor.

The Gold Medal Weekend means 11 of its top performers – pianists, cellists and exponents of flute, trombone, violin, viola and voice – are on show, and last year’s winners return for the final concert.

Monday’s event is a lecture by Alfred Brendel, who will illustrate some of his thoughts at the piano, as well as using recordings and projections.