Scottish Daily Mail

Breast feeding won’t stop me starring at the Last Night of the Proms

Meet the brilliant soprano who says new mums CAN have it all

- By Rebecca Hardy

The chatelaine of Glyndebour­ne, and one of t he most sought- after sopranos on the planet, Danielle de Niese, is upstairs expressing breast milk. her three-month-old son Bacchus is due his lunchtime feed at 1.30pm, which clashes with my arrival, hence the pump. Danni, as she likes to be called, whirls into the oak-panelled drawing room at 1.47pm. Bacchus, it turns out, had his immunisati­on jab this morning, so she wanted to snatch a little extra mummy-and-baby time.

She’ll push the interview forward 15 minutes, but we must be finished by 3.30pm. At 3.45pm she has a voice lesson.

From there, she and husband Gus Christie, 51, owner of this legendary elizabetha­n pile, are dashing off to a baby first-aid course, which starts at 5.30pm.

Then it’s back here for Bacchus’s early evening feed and supper with Danni’s parents, who flew in yesterday from New York.

Today, she will be up at 6.15am. Breastfeed. Shower. Dress. Car arrives at 7am to whisk her, plus parents, nanny and baby, to London, where she’s starring in Proms In The Park at hyde Park, before nipping across the road to the Royal Albert hall to lead a four-nation sing-a-long of The Sound Of Music at the Last Night Of The Proms.

Curtain call. Applause. After-show party. Back in the car and down to Sussex, where Bacchus is being christened tomorrow.

Danni, you see, is the 36-year- old whirlwind who returned to work only three weeks after giving birth this summer, and who ruffled feathers after declaring in an interview that, contrary to the current trend of women finally accepting that they cannot combine a high-flying career with motherhood, she would be having it all, thanks very much. With bells on.

‘I do want it all. I want the happy marriage and the beautiful children, a great career . . . I want those things, so I shall have those things,’ she said. ‘Give me a hedge fund manager who is a man and has five children,’ Danni, who is also stepmother to Gus’s four sons from his first marriage, continued.

‘No one says to him, “So it looks like you want to have it all, don’t you?”’

Today, this vision — fresh from the breastpump business — in a sexy red dress and killer heels, rolls her eyes.

‘This talk of having it all — or not having it — is such a cliche, but I’m not going to deny that I want to have a happy married life, a happy family life and a happy profession­al life. If that’s having it all, then yes, that’s what I want and I do believe it’s possible,’ she says.

‘When I was pregnant, I heard a lot of people say that when you have a baby you forget about your husband. I didn’t want that to happen. I don’t want to be one of those cliches, “Oh, I’m super-tired, I don’t have the will,”’ she explains, with a flash of her megawatt smile.

Danni, who was born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents and raised in Los Angeles from the age of ten, i s one of those i ndefatigab­le c r eatures who cocks-a-snook at the impossible.

JuST three weeks after giving birth to Bacchus, she was in the rehearsal room for Glyndebour­ne’s Ravel double-bill, where she took on the part of the small boy in L’enfant et Les Sortileges. ‘I lost my voice at the end of my pregnancy,’ she says. ‘I was truly terrified about that. It was still a few weeks [after the birth] before I got my normal speaking voice back.

‘When I started rehearsals I knew I had to take a step each day. I was hugely nervous. I had to force myself not to panic or try to make things happen straight away, but to go patiently through each day. That’s not necessaril­y in my personalit­y.

‘ Fortunatel­y, everything came together and the opening night was amazing.’ her eyes mist over at the memory. ‘It is a big juggle and I look like I’m running super-fast, but when the people I care about most need me, I stop. The world stops. everything stops. I believe if you remember that you’ll never make a mistake.’

We’ve moved — fast, despite her towering heels — from the drawing room to the cosy but chaotic kitchen, where Danni is grabbing some lunch (a peanut butter sandwich).

For all its grandeur, Glyndebour­ne is, as she says, a ‘lived-in’ place, the vast rooms full of dog toys (they have two: Norma, a bulldog, and Caesar, a Portuguese water dog) and the parapherna­lia of four growing boys.

Stuck among goodness-knows-what on a kitchen worktop is a sculpture of Cleopatra dancing with Julius Caesar. It’s supposed to be a likeness of Danni and Gus, for this was Danni’s first starring role at Glyndebour­ne in 2005.

She beams fit to burst when she talks about her husband of six years. he is here today, a sort of laid-back, aristocrat­ic yin to her irrepressi­ble yang. She says they’re rarely apart.

‘If Gus is playing a cricket match, I’m there with the baby. If I’m singing on stage, Gus is in the wings with Bacchus. We carve out time for each other. It’s not difficult.’

Which is all very wonderful, but what does this eton- educated son of a terribly proper family and chairman of that epitome of englishnes­s, the Glyndebour­ne Festival, make of his woman having it all?

‘She does give me the run around,’ he says, with an I-wouldn’t-have-itany-other-way chuckle. ‘But, yes, I do believe it’s possible to have it all.

‘It can be hard at times. Being a mother is generally more hands-on than being a father, especially in the first year. But, once that’s out of the way [the breastfeed­ing], I don’t see why there’s any difference between a man and a woman.’

Does he ever feel bottom of his wife’s busy to-do list? ‘No,’ he says unequivoca­lly. There’s a twinkle in his eye.

Gus had been separated from the mother of his four sons, Imogen, for eight months when he first met Danni at an audition in 2004.

‘Straight away I was very impressed with her stage persona, but that was a profession­al reaction,’ he says. ‘She sang here in 2005 and came back in 2006.’ Romance blossomed at the close of the festival.

‘Over the years we got along well and enjoyed each other’s company,’ says Danni. ‘Then one day, Gus professed his feelings for me. That was a real shocker, but it was a little bit like a romantic movie.

‘I suddenly saw him in a different light. It opened my eyes to him and everything just sort of slotted into place. The world had changed and it felt right — amazingly right.’

Amazing, too, that history seemed to be repeating itself. For Gus’s grandfathe­r, John Christie, built the first opera house on the site in 1934 for his beautiful Canadian wife, the soprano Audrey Mildmay. england’s Taj Mahal, Danni calls it.

‘We kept our relationsh­ip quiet for the first three or four months,’ she says. ‘It’s a huge pressure when everyone’s so absolutely thrilled about the history repeating itself thing, because you feel they’re making a decision about your future before you’ve decided yourself.

‘Also, I was nervous people would start to imagine there was a connection between any work I do and Gus, which is not the case. Contracts are done so many years in advance, the perform- ances I had here when we were t ogether were s i gned, s ealed and delivered years before.’

As it was, Danni did not move in to Glyndebour­ne — even when she was appearing there — until after their 2009 marriage.

DID she find it daunting becoming chatelaine of such an iconic place? ‘It wasn’t something that registered for me in terms of the job spec. It’s a part of loving Gus. he was in this house, I loved Gus, so I moved into this house. ‘I love it now, but it was a tough transition. In the summer you have 30 people living in the house. I was a singer who lived alone. If I wanted to sleep peacefully through the morning and wake up at 2pm to put all my energy into the show, I could do that.

‘Suddenly, you’re in a house where 20 of the people here are getting up at 8am for rehearsals.

‘That was a juggling act, to find the balance of how I could be part of the house, be Mrs Christie, be there for Gus, be welcoming to everyone but also conserve my energies.’

As if on cue, Bacchus wakes. he is a darling, contented little boy who seems to be flourishin­g amid his mother’s hectic life. Danni is a warm, likeable woman, albeit tough to keep up with, but when she has her son in her arms there’s a peace about her.

he is named after the Greek god of theatre, poetry and the vine. It also ‘shortens rather well’, according to Gus, to ‘Bax’.

Although he arrived six years into their marriage, children were always part of Danni’s plan. Bacchus’s birth on June 4 brought with it, she says, ‘a special kind of euphoria that’s emotionall­y touching in a different way to the euphoria you get when you receive an amazing response from an audience’.

‘I just remember him being put on my chest and he wasn’t crying. he was just looking out into the world.

‘In that moment, I understood profoundly the selfless love that comes with being a parent. It doesn’t diminish my love for Gus or my love for my profession, but I can’t imagine life without the little Bax-man now.’

was possible. I was confident — thinking I had a 50/50 chance.’

There was a carnival atmosphere in Slaithwait­e Spa park as, handcuffed and with a microphone around his neck (so support staff could keep in contact), he took up position. ‘Once 2ft or so of soil was in, I started punching up, using my fists, arms, thighs to create an air pocket.’ Then his body starting going numb.

‘I got my left arm caught and couldn’t move it. There was this buzzing in my head. I began to go woozy and light-headed. I kept thinking, “Just keep going”. But, still, I couldn’t move my arm.

‘I knew it was over. I don’t remember thinking, “I’m dying”, but that thing about your life flashing in front of you did happen. I went back to my childhood. My grandfathe­r was there, talking to me. Then . . . nothing.’ He’s weeping now. He reckons he was seconds from death.

He had been undergroun­d for eight minutes when his ground crew, alerted by the lack of any fumbling or breathing sounds from his microphone, decided to ‘go in and get me the hell out’. Liam clawed away the soil.

‘I was unconsciou­s, like a rag doll. They had to get the soil out of my airways before they could give me oxygen,’ says Antony.

And his first reaction on coming round? ‘I asked, “Did I do it?” It was gutting to discover that I was just 2ft from the surface.’

He insists spectators were warned they might not want their children to watch. ‘I got grief for the fact children witnessed it. That was the parents’ choice.’

He is also keen to point out organisers paid for an ambulance on standby. ‘People may think I’m a fool, but I’m not a fool who fleeced the NHS’.

He’s stung by suggestion­s that’s he’s not a very good escapologi­st and thinks he should be applauded for this failed stunt. He might even have another go.

So, is he sure he doesn’t have a death-wish? ‘Oh God, no. I want to live till I’m 95.

‘I’m going to be doing escapes till I’m in the grave,’ he says. ‘The proper grave.’

 ?? Pictures: ALEX SARGINSON / CAMERA PRESS / MURRAY SANDERS ?? Irrepressi­ble: Danielle de Niese, and inset, with her son Bacchus
Pictures: ALEX SARGINSON / CAMERA PRESS / MURRAY SANDERS Irrepressi­ble: Danielle de Niese, and inset, with her son Bacchus

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