No place like home

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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> Claire Barton performs at the mayoral launch of the Dunedin Branch of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation at the Glenroy Auditorium in 2009. Photo by Linda Robertson.  </p>
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Claire Barton's experience studying music and performing in Dunedin gave her an advantage over other emerging singers in London, the mezzo-soprano tells Charmian Smith.


After three years in London, Claire Barton has returned home to Dunedin with her husband, Simon Wilson, and their baby daughter Margaret. The mezzo-soprano's first concert back in Dunedin is Gloria! A Baroque Christmas, with the City Choir Dunedin tomorrow.

''Dunedin is a vibrant town artistically and it's rejuvenating to come back to that,'' she said.

London may have prestigious companies and lots going on but it is a mission to get anywhere. You have to make sure you leave several hours before you have to be somewhere j1ust to make sure you are there in time.

When the northern tube lines were down it took her three hours to get from Greenwich in the southeast to north London for practices and to perform an oratorio, she said.

''Even going to Christchurch is going to feel like a treat after that. In Dunedin you get into your car and have a complain about parking!'' she said with a laugh.

It was the opportunity for music students to perform with Dunedin companies and music groups that she found the most valuable in London. Unlike many of her fellow students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, she had a lot of experience behind her.

In London emerging singers, especially women, often had to pay to be in shows to gain experience and list them on their CVs.

''It's such a different experience from mine. When you are studying here, you are embraced by the community. You get all of those things. You are treated like a professional, even when you are a student,'' she said.

''I had my first professional gig with Dunedin opera when I was in my fourth year at university in 2006, as Mrs Slender in Salieri's Falstaff.''

That sort of experience gave her confidence to go to auditions in London and to believe that she could do the roles she was auditioning for, she said.

''It's much easier if you've been able to start out in a place that embraces you in a way that London can't because it's got however many colleges churning out however many students each year. It's just enormous and there are so many talented people.''

After a year's study in London and years of study in Dunedin, she decided it was time to say she was a singer and find work, she said.

''It was very much my three years of doing little concerts in churches and really interesting things. Improvised singing for an art installation in Bermondsey was probably the weirdest thing I've done. I did a private concert for someone's birthday at Trinity College Chapel in Oxford and various little concerts with friends.''

She started Black Robin opera company with friends so they could make their own work and gain experience managing and staging a production, she said.

She also took part in several operas, including Britten's Paul Bunyan with British Youth Opera, Rossini's Le Compte Ory, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, singing in the chorus or taking small roles, even when she was pregnant and had morning sickness, she said.

After Margaret (now 8 months) was born, Barton and her husband thought they would stay in London for another couple of years because things were going so well.

However, while she was working in operas, she had to get friends to babysit and Simon used up all his holiday entitlement looking after their daughter.

''We thought, if we do this we are going to have her in childcare 12 hours a day and that's not why we had a child. So we decided we really needed to come home. Both sets of grandparents are in Dunedin,'' she said.

''We had thought we'd bring her back here eventually, because we'd both grown up here and we both love it here and we couldn't really think of a better place to bring up children.''

It was good to go overseas to study and see what it was like and how far she could go, but the idea of a big career in opera didn't excite her and as a mezzo she didn't have a ''prima donna's voice''. She also enjoyed doing smaller, local things, she said.

''It wasn't until I got married that I knew I wanted to have a career but also to have a family, and I wanted to make sure I was able to be fully involved with Margaret, as well. The nice thing about Dunedin and New Zealand is that although it can be hard to be a full-time opera singer, you can actually do it for a job to a certain extent. You can combine it with parenthood and you can do it for love as well, and that's important.''

Barton (33) started singing lessons with Judith Borrick when she was 11, worked through competitions and exams then studied with Isabel Cunningham at the University of Otago, completing an honours degree then a master's in music.

After a year as an Opera New Zealand emerging artist, she gained a scholarship to Trinity Laban and spent three years in London.

They returned to Dunedin in September this year and enjoyed ''getting used to living in such a lovely quiet place again, not hearing the sirens whistling down from Woolwich Rd and not going on the tube everyday. Actually driving a car!'' she said.

She has a few engagements lined up here, including tomorrow's concert with the city choir, and one next year with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra singing Bach's Magnificat.

Although tomorrow's concert is of music from the Baroque period (around 1600-1750) to celebrate Christmas, it's not full of carols.

She is one of the soloists in Vivaldi's Gloria, a work that is special for her as the ''Gloria in excelsis deo'' was sung by Knox Church Choir at her wedding.

She also sang the work a few years ago in Dunedin and describes it as a fascinating and beautiful timeless piece of music.

''It's a funny thing when you know a piece so well. Going back to it, you always find new things that excite you. It's really nice doing something you've done before. It gives you a real chance to look at it again and decide what you want to do.''

She will also be singing Telemann's cantata Erquickendes Wunder der ewigen Gnade and Bach's Christmas cantata Ich freue mich in dir.

 

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