Captivating singer shared her skills with students
Emily Mair opera singer, voice coach b May 16, 1928 d May 15, 2021
Emily Mair, who has died aged 92, was an opera singer and voice coach, who helped to train many award-winning New Zealand singers.
She grew up in Ayrshire – in the heart of Robbie Burns country. Her mother was cockney and her father ran a lace-making factory. He was an elder in the Loudoun Presbyterian Church. Emily was to become a professed atheist, but she retained in abundance the Christian virtues of integrity, humility and kindness, with an active social conscience and an extraordinary work ethic.
She began learning piano at age 11. Just four years later she was taken on as a full-time student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. From there she went to the Royal College of Music in London on the Sir James Caird scholarship. There she studied piano with Arthur Benjamin (to whom Benjamin Britten dedicated his ‘‘Holiday Suite’’) and Anthony Hopkins (the presenter for nearly four decades of Talking about Music on BBC Radio 3).
Singing began to rival piano. In her final year at the RCM she entered its opera school, singing Frasquita in Carmen, and Anna in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Three years in the BBC Chorus followed, working with eminent conductors. She met and, in 1951, married New Zealand cellist Wilfrid Simenauer. They gave many concerts together. The Radio Times reveals that, before 1960,
Emily broadcast on the BBC (at least) seven times as a collaborative pianist (mostly with Wilf) and twice as a singer. This changed. Between 1960 and 1964, she made just three broadcasts as a pianist, but seven as a singer.
1960 was a pivotal year. Emily appeared at Glyndebourne (as Emily Maire – Mair sounding just a bit too Ayrshire for Glyndebourne management) singing the First Boy in The Magic Flute with Colin Davis conducting. This was a breakthrough moment for Davis, standing in for Thomas Beecham. But it also put Emily on the map.
The Times noted that ‘‘a vocal feature of this production was the light precise singing of the two trios, the Ladies and the Boys’’. The following season she sang Gianetta in L’Elisir d’amore (directed by Zeffirelli), which was revived in 1962 (this time with Mirella Freni singing Adina). At Glyndebourne, Emily met head of music Jani Strasser, who became her teacher for the next five years.
In 1960, Wilfrid was appointed principal cello in the Liverpool Philharmonic. He and Emily moved to Liverpool with their two young sons, Robin and Raymond. Emily appeared in concerts there – numerous reviews pay tribute to her extraordinary prowess as both pianist and singer. The Liverpool Echo, covering a 1964 production of Don Giovanni, declared, ‘‘the first bouquet goes to Emily Maire for her charmingly sung and entirely captivating Zerlina.’’
In 1964 she starred (without the final e on Mair) in a ‘‘celebrity concert’’ to raise funds for the refurbishment of Loudoun Old Church. Soon after she set sail for New Zealand, where Wilfrid had been appointed principal cello in what is now the NZSO. (Her younger sister, Jean, followed Emily to New Zealand a short time later.)
Once here, Emily was immediately in demand as a singer. In August 1967 she sang Gabriel in Haydn’s Creation in the Wellington Town Hall. A few hours later she gave birth to Thomas, her third son. Emily was intensely proud of her children. Her second son, Raymond, had performed as Harry in Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring in 1966. (Robin was by then too tall.) The boys sang together in the rock opera Valdramar at Downstage. Raymond’s death in a road accident in 1989 was a devastating blow. Emily returned to
1967 – now singing Adina for the New Zealand Opera Company. Next, Blonde in their 1968 Seraglio. Owen Jensen (Evening Post) wrote that, ‘‘After Te Wiata, the most complete contribution was made by Emily Mair as Blonde. Hers was stylish Mozart singing, skilful and intelligent.’’ He added, ‘‘She was as much a joy to the eye as to the ear.’’
In that year, Emily was a dazzling Zerbinetta in Juan Matteucci’s inaugural concert as music director of the Auckland Symphonia. The Auckland Star raved: ‘‘The voice, always true and even, soared and dipped through the extremely difficult recitative and aria.’’
Then followed Anne Truelove in Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress (‘‘Emily Mair almost romped around Stravinsky’s virtuoso writing’’), Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (both for NZOC), Marie in excerpts from Alban Berg’s Wozzeck with the NZSO (again with Matteucci conducting) and, in 1973 (after the demise of NZOC) Musetta for Canterbury Opera’s La Bohe`me. In the 70s, she featured in operas that Peter Coates directed for TVNZ.
Increasingly, she was in demand as a teacher. She joined the Victoria University School of Music in 1987, and embraced ambitious operatic projects. A concert performance of Gluck’s Paride ed Elena in her first year was followed by a double bill of David Farquhar’s Shadow and Puccini’s Suor Angelica. Highlights of this programme were three of the great Mozart operas: Don Giovanni in 1991, The Magic Flute in 1996 and Figaro for the university’s centenary in 1998. She was invited to teach at the International Summer Vocal School in Salt Lake City in 1988.
In 1996 Victoria University presented Emily with a Teaching Excellence Award, the citation noting that three of the finalists and one semi-finalist in the Mobil (now Lexus) Song Quest that year (Clare Martin, Simon O’Neill, Ana James and Ursula Allan) were her students. The winners in 1985 (Robyn Lynch), 1987 (Deirdre Elliott), 2005 (Madeleine Pierard) and 2009 (Aivale Cole) had all been Emily’s students. Many more went on to careers in music.
Emily’s students (and colleagues) loved her – with good reason. They were in excellent hands – someone with firstrate musicianship and technical understanding, an extensive knowledge of the repertoire, of operatic roles, and of stagecraft. She was their able and supportive accompanist. Emily was always patient, kind, modest (never mentioning her own triumphs). And she had a marvellous sense of humour.
When made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in 2001, she told the Dominion Post she’d had ‘‘a whale of a time’’ in her career and that ‘‘as long as my health remains good and I am helping people, I’ll continue’’. Nine years later, still furiously busy coaching and playing for rehearsals, she suffered the first of several strokes.
She spent the next decade in the Malvina Major Retirement Village in Khandallah, sadly incapacitated. Her room had a massive poster of Simon O’Neill at La Scala and a noticeboard covered in photographs of her family and students. In the closing months of her life, Robbie Burns’ poetry still elicited an emotional response. –