An all-Dunedin line up of singers, including two of Dunedin's favourite sopranos, Anna Leese and Emma Fraser, will be singing in the Southern Sinfonia's last subscription concert for the year on Saturday. Charmian Smith catches up.
Four soloists trained at the University of Otago feature in the Southern Sinfonia's concert on Saturday, singing Mozart's Mass in C Minor.
Sopranos Anna Leese and Emma Fraser now have international careers, while baritone Joel Amosa and tenor Benjamin Madden are current students.
Philippa Harris, Sinfonia general manager, says: ''We were looking for a work that would be a showpiece for the City Choir Dunedin as 2013 is their 150th anniversary year, and thought it appropriate to make it an all-Dunedin line-up of vocal artists, and hence also invited the Southern Youth Choir to join us too.
So, for a change, the selection of repertoire was influenced quite a bit by selecting the soloists at the same time as the repertoire was selected. So we next faced the question of finding four soloists who would match the style, have the tonal qualities and vocal range required, and on top of that who would also be available. And, happily, that's exactly what we have.''
Anna Leese, who came to the attention of the music world when she won the Mobil Song Quest in 2002 while a student at Otago University, graduated in 2003.
Her career as an international opera singer is going well, her diary filled a year and a-half ahead, she says. She's recently been singing Donna Elvira in Opera New Zealand's production of Don Giovanni and will sing in La Boheme in London in a few months time. Meanwhile, she has several concerts booked, including singing Mozart's Mass in C Minor in Dunedin and Wellington and a vineyard concert in Australia.
She's happy to have concerts on her schedule as it means she can spend more time at home in Tuscany, Italy. She moved there a year and a-half ago to live with her fiance, Stephano Guidi, a winemaker.
''I don't like having a diary completely full of opera as it means you are away from home all the time,'' she says.
''It wasn't really an issue before, but now I'm serious about someone, I have to take that into consideration.''
It's only now she appreciates the value of Kiri Te Kanawa's comment when she was a student in London that you had to be selfish and make sacrifices if you wanted to make it in a singing career.
''I remember thinking, `oh, yes, I'll make sacrifices, I'm selfish', but now when it gets to the point where I have to decide between being at home or being away, now I understand what it means.
''Having someone at home keeps you grounded and gives you something to refer back to and it's also someone to share your highs and lows with. To some extent, your family and friends can do that but not in the same way. He seems to understand the opera world quite well and he's a really good person to talk to when I need advice and support.''
She met her fiance after a concert in Italy. He loves opera and from an early age waited at stage doors to collect singers' autographs, Leese explains.
Unlike Leese, whose father is British, allowing her to live and work in Europe, Emma Fraser returned home after a two-year OE. While in Europe she sang Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro at a festival in Bath. It was a stroke of luck getting the part, about who you know and being in the right place at the right time, she says.
However, the economy took a downturn and she struggled even to find temporary office work so came home to complete the last year of her commerce degree.
''I had to come home because my visa was expiring, but partly I thought I should finish my degree because it will help me in the future, depending on how the arts situation is. I'm pleased I did, it's been a really big help,'' she says.
Despite working as a PA to make ends meet, making a living as an opera singer is still her aim, however difficult. Having recently moved to Sydney, she has auditioned for work at Opera Australia and is looking into auditioning for musicals as well. Earlier this year, she sang Galatea in Handel's Acis and Galatea for Opera New Zealand in a special Glyndebourne-style presentation in the grounds and woolshed at Tipapa homestead, north of Christchurch.
''The last few years have been quite hard, although I have had some work. A lot of my singer friends are finding it really tough. The arts are the first thing to go and the fees are going down as well because they don't have as much money to offer us. Businesses are not sponsoring as before and the Government is cutting down on its arts funding as well. I think Europe's worse than here. I've heard it's really struggling there,'' she says in a phone interview.
Leese agrees work is not as plentiful as it was.
''I've got fewer bookings into the distant future. Opera houses are booking much later and doing fewer performances. With the credit crunch a lot of private finance was withdrawn from things like opera, and in many countries the government has withdrawn a lot of funding for the arts. These things all hit the pockets of the singers and players, and administration is getting cut too.''
She says audiences are still supporting arts in New Zealand despite declines in London and elsewhere in Europe, where it's hard to get bums on seats.
''The thing that gives me hope is that there are so many people interested in going and lots of young people,'' she said.
The sopranos are looking forward to singing together again. They studied with Isabel Cunningham at Otago and know each other's voices well.
Fraser says she is enjoying learning the Mozart mass as it's very beautiful.
''Mozart never finished it and nobody really knows why it wasn't finished,'' she says.
''He'd fallen out with his father because he left Salzburg without his father's permission, so his father wasn't happy with him. When he came back he'd written this mass and turned up with his new wife [Constanze] who sang the soprano solo.
''There's some speculation that it was to prove to his father that she was musical, so he would approve of her, but I think he got a frosty return. I don't think they were that impressed with his wife. Some people think that might be why he got her to sing it. He wrote lots of things for her.''
Leese says Constanze was an incredible singer and Mozart wrote a lot for her, which is why his soprano roles are so challenging and you have to be on form to get through them.
Catch it
The Southern Sinfonia's concert ''Journey to Central Europe: Mozart and Dvorak'' is at the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday at 8pm. Conducted by Simon Over, it features Mozart's Mass in C Minor with Anna Leese, Emma Fraser, Benjamin Madden and Joel Amosa with the City Choir Dunedin and the Southern Youth Choir, and Dvorak's Symphony No 6. The Southern Sinfonia will give a fundraising concert on October 2 for its Japan tour for the 2013 Japanese Asia Orchestra Festival Week.
