From West End wannabe to opera’s rising star soprano
If it hadn’t been for a school trip to Edinburgh, Jennifer France might so easily have ended up on the West End stage. Instead, she’s now a sought-after operatic coloratura soprano, whose stratospheric vocal range and startling versatility have inspired and shaped brand new operatic roles, most notably that of Ice in Stuart Macrae’s brilliant new Anthropocene for Scottish Opera earlier this season.
France was 18 and awaiting her A-level results when she first came to Scotland as part of a musical her school was mounting at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was no ordinary school show: France was on the verge of leaving the specialist Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, where honing her skills as an actor and musical theatre singer had been her prime focus, though just where she was going next was undecided.
“Our musical director came up to me in Edinburgh and said, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t apply for music college.’ I was like, ‘Huh, yeah.’” But the thought struck a chord, she applied to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and was accepted.
The conversion to opera worked so well, she moved on to postgraduate study at the Royal Academy of Music, leading to a place on Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artists Scheme in 2015 and then to a budding career, including key roles in Brett Dean’s Hamlet and George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence. We spoke as she was preparing for a starring role as Tytania in Dominic Hill’s new production of Benjamin Britten’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Scottish Opera, now sadly postponed in response to the anti-coronavirus measures.
How did she manage that seismic shift from schoolgirl musical star, where West End agents had already approached her, to the stylised virtuosity required of the high-flying coloratura?
“To be honest, I was really way behind everybody when I went to college,” she recalls. “I always had a rather classic sounding music theatre voice, but as far as classical opera technique was concerned I hadn’t a clue what I was doing.
“But I was a complete sponge. I had an amazing teacher. She was a coloratura herself, and somehow opened up my voice. It was a slow process, but I just locked myself up in a practice room for a couple of years and really worked hard. No magic potion”.
It is, of course, a magic potion that gets France’s character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a bit of a fankle, when the vengeful Oberon’s herbal drops cast a spell on her, causing her to fall in love with the first person she sees on awakening. It turns out to be the ridiculous Bottom, bearing an Ass’s head courtesy of the mischievous Puck.
For France, who is fresh from creating the title role in the Royal Opera House premiere of Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, turning to Britten is welcome respite. “I’ve been so involved with crazy modern stuff, Britten almost feels vintage,” she says. “With Tytania there’s this lovely sensation of coming back to a more lyrical way of singing.”
But there’s another reason she’s been comfortable engaging with “something calmer.” France is sixand-a-half months pregnant. “The great thing for me is, we’ve been using it to shape the production,” she reveals.
“In Britten’s opera, there are fairies played by children, so I’m getting to play Tytania like an earth mother, using my maternal instincts with the Changeling Boy [the source of her marital strife] and the fight with Oberon. It’s brought a different spin and perspective to the character which I think is working really beautifully. My voice is a bit warmer than it used to be, probably because of all the hormones buzzing around.”
As an added bonus, she says, it won’t have frightened the baby. “It’s had to listen to some strange music so far!”
And working with the Citizens’ Theatre’s artistic director, Dominic Hill, she’s been able to relive the true acting experiences she enjoyed so much at school. “It’s absolutely amazing working with someone who is primarily a straight theatre director,” she says. “Right from the outset he told us to approach this as singing actors; to treat the text like you’d approach a Shakespeare play. He’s really interested in character development, which opera singers sometimes just take for granted.”
With the imminant birth of her baby, you’d have expected France to be taking things even easier. “Absolutely not,” she insists. Her intention was to take only a short break over summer, before starring in a BBC Prom with George Benjamin, a stint with English National Opera and a revival of Alice at Dutch National Opera. But with all that up in the air, the next few months are likely to see her singing lullabies to a home audience. ■
“I just locked myself up in a practice room for a couple of years and really worked hard”
Scottish Opera’s performances of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Edinburgh and Glasgow have been postponed, see scottishopera.org.uk for details