Paul Riley
Music journalist
‘It’s always nerve-wracking meeting a performer you’ve long admired from afar. No fear of disillusionment with mezzo Sarah Connolly. Whether on or off stage, her sovereign artistry and can-do resolve inspire!’
‘Iguess you could say I was a bit of a song nerd,’ giggles Sarah Connolly. The go-to mezzo for operatic roles spanning Monteverdi to Markanthony Turnage, Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and all-round good egg is fondly remembering her student days at the Royal College of Music. ‘I’d be on my hands and knees in the bowels of the library rifling through old scores and recordings of English song, discovering wonderful material that had fallen into neglect. It seemed reasonable that if the likes of Ivor Gurney could have written a truly great song such as “Sleep”, there had to be more’. And thereby hangs a tale.
We’re standing in a chantry chapel gracing Gloucester Cathedral’s exquisite Lady Chapel. From the nave wafts the sound of massed youth choirs rehearsing enthusiastically, and as snippets of Howells ricochet ethereally aloft, we contemplate a window that owes its very existence to Connolly’s vision and dogged determination. She might be a diva in the sense of a great singer at the top of her game, but she’s also an unstoppable force of nature who gets things done.
‘Having written a dissertation on Gurney at College,’ she recalls, ‘it struck me that while the cathedral boasts a fine Howells window, there was only a modest plaque near the organ commemorating Gurney. For heaven’s sake, he was the city’s finest poet and song composer, and as a boy chorister had taken a solo in Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the Three Choirs Festival. Surely he deserved more?’
Happily, the cathedral’s dean and chapter agreed. Stained glass artist Thomas Denny was approached, and Connolly persuaded a raft of distinguished colleagues to join her in a Gurney minifestival to raise funds. ‘I thought we might be able to create four panels,’ she says, ‘but in the event got eight that magically evoke the country-loving son of Gloucestershire with his owl glasses and short hair, and the First World War soldier suffering at the Front yet finding a sort of liberation in the camaraderie; and I wanted one of the “lights” to reflect on the mental illness that blighted his last years. I was amazed with what Tom came up with. It was everything I could have dreamed of and more.
‘The window was dedicated in 2014 and, as the centenary of the Armistice nears, it’s a constant reminder – and
forever – of just what Gurney and his contemporaries endured. Mind you, it’s no longer in splendid isolation. I love the idea that there’s now another Denny window immediately below remembering the composer Gerald Finzi. It’s as if he’s propping Gurney up – which in real life, of course, he more or less did, saving countless manuscripts when, in a hissyfit of jealousy, Gurney’s brother Ronald proposed burning the lot.’
Gloucestershire and Gurney are inseparable. Indeed what an aching weight of modesty and poignancy underpins the word ‘quite’ in arguably one of his most potent lines: ‘Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows’. Exiled in 1922 to a Kentish asylum where he languished until his death 15 years later, Gurney refused to go outdoors because it was ‘the wrong sort of landscape’. And he’s not the only composer to have drawn inspiration from the surroundings – surroundings that nurture Connolly herself, who now lives up the road. Perhaps there’s something in the air. Elgar certainly thought so. But Connolly treads carefully around any half-thought-through notions of musical ‘Englishness’. ‘In the contours of songs by Gurney, Howells or Vaughan Williams you might be reminded of the rolling hills, the lush damp beauty of the Cotswolds, yet Britten, Tippett and Birtwistle are English composers too and worlds away in their musical landscapes,’ she insists.
English song, as it happens, is very much on her mind at the moment. Connolly’s latest recording project is nothing short of a love letter to her alma mater, charting three generations of composers associated with the Royal College of Music. ‘What an extraordinary lineage of compositional talent on display,’ she enthuses; ‘Charles Villiers Stanford taught Gurney, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Ireland and Bridge among others. I wanted to explore that pedigree and to see how one composer interacted with another – or didn’t! I don’t generally like themes, if I’m being honest, but with 120 years to go at, this is one thread one can be spun as broadly as you like. And it’s a great excuse to bring some forgotten names and unknown repertoire back to life.’
Typically, she’s thrown herself into the fray with all-encompassing gusto. ‘Sadly, I couldn’t find anything suitable by Samuel Coleridge-taylor, so there’s no mixedrace voice there, and I drew a blank with Elizabeth Maconchy; but I have managed to make sure that women are represented with songs by Muriel Herbert – novelist James Joyce was a big fan, would you believe? – and Rebecca Clarke. In fact, Clarke’s slightly jazzier take on Yeats’s The Cloths of Heaven fits in beautifully with a Thomas Dunhill setting I’ve included. I’m sure she must have known it.’
There’s also something of a coup: the first recording of two songs that didn’t make the final cut when Britten signed off his 1947 cycle A Charm of Lullabies.
‘I happened to be at The Red House (Britten’s erstwhile home) and asked if it was possible to see the manuscript of the Charm. Laid out next to it on the table were two songs that didn’t get included despite looking pretty complete. They’ve never even been performed. So, never one to let the grass grow under my feet, I sat in the car park, emailed Colin Matthews, chairman of the Britten Estate, and got permission to record them and to give their first live performance at this year’s Proms.’
Why does she think that Britten culled them? ‘Well, they’re quite long, so maybe he thought they’d have unbalanced the cycle as a whole, and the range is certainly challenging; but “A Sweet Lullaby” in particular is on a scale that makes for a real stand-alone song. To respect Britten’s final thoughts, I won’t be incorporating them into the actual cycle when I sing
them at Cadogan Hall in August, but I’m very excited that they’ll be published as an appendix the next time A Charm of Lullabies comes up for a re-print.’
Eye-catching as the Britten is, the disc has another ace up its sleeve. Connolly wanted to ensure that the Royal College timeline comes bang up to date and turned to Mark-anthony Turnage for a new song. They go back a long way. She created the role of Susie when English National Opera premiered his opera The Silver Tassie nearly two decades ago. ‘He knows my voice well,’ she explains, ‘so he was the obvious choice. I wondered if he might have a spare afternoon to write something and kept badgering away until he finally gave in. He’s set Stevie Smith’s poem Farewell and I’m thrilled. It sits high in the register, with a fantastic sensitivity to words, and there’s a sparseness too that sometimes reminds you of Tippett or Holst – both represented on the disc.’
Connolly might be one of the most preeminent mezzos of her generation but the trajectory of her career was by no means a foregone conclusion when first she set foot in the College as joint-studies singer and pianist. ‘In fact, as far as singing goes I was really quite unsure of myself,’ she remembers. ‘I flirted initially with the idea of being an accompanist and worked hard at the piano to be the very best I could be. I sensed I didn’t want to be a soloist, but was always on call whenever an accompanist was needed – which was a fantastic way of getting to know repertoire I might not otherwise have come across. And, of course, it means that where a song is concerned I can come at it from all angles!’
The game-changer was David Willcocks, the college’s then director. ‘He told me that I was going to be a singer – he somehow knew – and encouraged me, putting solos my way whenever he could. There was Holst’s Savitri, Bernstein’s West Side Story and music by Peter Maxwell Davies that interested me. Handel, too, and Lieder. But Mozart terrified me. You can’t sing Così fan tutte’s Dorabella with a wonky top G!’
‘Later I joined the BBC Singers, and what a baptism of fire that turned out to be.
With contemporary music by the likes of Boulez and Ligeti popping up at the drop of a hat, it was a rigorous training ground for sight-reading and learning things quickly. Real sink or swim stuff. Mind you, looking back it has proved incredibly useful for tackling new works such as the Sally Beamish settings of Laurie Lee I’m premiering next week, or getting to grips with an unfamiliar operatic role.’
Certainly, no one could accuse Connolly of playing it safe either in the opera house or on the concert stage. And her student enthusiasm for Handel looks almost prescient when you consider how, in 1998, Nicholas Hytner’s ENO production of Serse pretty much placed her front and centre on the operatic map – to be followed by a rapturously received Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne (revived this summer with William Christie returning to conduct), and a recent Vienna State Opera debut in Ariodante. But Handel sits serenely in a wide-ranging operatic portfolio that has straddled Rameau to Brett Dean via Wagner and Richard Strauss. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, her song repertoire is just as adventurous and adroitly considered. But does flitting between
genres and across art forms necessitate adjustments? Tonight, for instance, she heads over to Glyndebourne to begin work on Giulio Cesare, then it’s back to Gloucestershire for the Beamish songs.
‘If you’re a recitalist you have to use small brushstrokes to bring a text to life,’ she explains. ‘You’ve got to be forensic to be able to inhabit every nook and cranny of a song, yet at the same time there has to be an element of panache and dramatic sweep. And while some of that holds just as true for opera, on the lyric stage there tend to be more difficult emotional situations lurking, and you’ve got to be open to ideas from directors who maybe take you down paths you might not have considered.
‘I think the one helps the other. You simply amplify or pare down according to the circumstances – in the concert hall I always know how “small” I can take a song to draw people in without it disappearing altogether. I’d probably concede that song comes highest in my estimation, but I could never just do recitals. I did exactly that one year and, boy, was it a huge relief to get back on the operatic stage again.’
There’s another dynamic too. In the opera house there are always compromises to be negotiated – with a conductor over tempos, perhaps, or a director pushing an unwelcome concept. In the recital room everything comes down to two people who, with a bit of luck, have forged a mutually responsive rapport over several years. ‘Well, there’s certainly plenty of give and take with Joe (Joseph Middleton), my pianist on the disc. We’ve worked together a lot – I trust him and respect his judgment. His enthusiasm and spirit are so uplifting, and his love of poetry and attention to detail make him a joy to work with. Plus he loves my voice. That helps! He’s interested in the whole package of a recital, what makes it tick, and how, with a bit of a tweak, a good idea becomes a great one.’
Connolly, too, has a penchant for the practical and likes to get her sleeves rolled up. Deciding that she had something distinctive to say about Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas after productions in Paris and London, and keen to get the opera down on disc, she set about raising the money to make it happen. Friends such as baritone Gerald Finley and fellow mezzo Patricia Bardon headed up the cast, alongside a conductor-less Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. ‘There wouldn’t have been a conductor in Purcell’s time,’ insists Connolly, ‘so the music was directed from within the band by Steven Devine on the harpsichord and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny.’
As well as her BBC Proms recital – ‘I hope people won’t nod off: it’s all about sleep!’ – Connolly also has Wagner’s Ring at both the Royal Opera and the New York Met. And her beloved Mahler surfaces in September when she performs Das Lied von der Erde with tenor Stuart Skelton and the LPO. Variety is evidently the spice of Connolly’s musical life. So might she find room for another CD foray into English song? ‘I’ve no plans at the moment, but I tell you what… Never say never!’
Connolly’s disc of English songs, ‘Come to me in my dreams’, is out now on Chandos