This writer heard the great Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli in recital in Edinburgh when he was in his 60s. The voice had nothing like its earlier drawing power, but the artistry was still there. Likewise I heard the great French baritone Gérard Souzay in recital, also in his 60s, and the same pertained to him. You might say they were both in the twilight of their careers.
One-time soprano, currently mezzo soprano, Rosalind Plowright is also in her 60s, but no one would consider her in the twilight of her career. More like the glorious late afternoon. She’s here in Seattle to sing the role of La Zia Principessa in Puccini’s Suor Angelica for Seattle Opera (performances run May 4 to 18, in a double bill with Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine), and she talked about where she is now in her long and illustrious career. At times in the past Plowright has found herself having problems or at least some difficulties with her voice, and it has been her habit to search out a new teacher to deal with it.
Most recently, eight years ago, Plowright says she was attempting to sing Ortrud (in Wagner’s Lohengrin). She wasn’t having a problem exactly but it felt wrong and she ended up withdrawing from the production.
“Because of that, I decided it was time to do something about my technique.” Through a Swedish singer whose technique and singing she loved, Plowright found a British teacher, Anna Sims, who for decades has taught singers how to breathe. “She’s the reason I’m still here. Anna’s a breathing specialist and she’s given me this amazing routine.” Plowright demonstrates a bit of it, standing and bringing one arm from her side in a wide arc over her head, bending sideways as though with the wind and breathing in fast through her nose at the same time. Then she reverses the movement slowly, breathing out equally slowly through pursed lips.
“When things start to go wrong with the voice, you automatically go to working with it, doing lots of vocal exercises, and in many cases they don’t work. Until now, my breathing had never been addressed,” she says. “Anna teaches you to keep everything anchored and low. It has kept my voice in a healthy state for what I sing. She says ‘Do these exercises and sing, don’t vocalize!’ That’s why I’m still here.”
For many years performing soprano roles, in the middle-1990s Plowright felt her voice was changing, and in 1999 she began performing as a mezzo soprano.
As a singer with a reputation as an excellent actress as well, the Principessa is a role which suits her admirably. The Principessa is on stage for under ten minutes, but it’s a pivotal part of the opera, and Plowright has only that short time to put her character across, that of a chilly woman with a great sense of the noble family she represents and little sympathy for the young woman now a nun who brought shame upon that family name.
“Her entrance music says it all. It’s not a long role, but it’s very exposed,” says Plowright. “Puccini has a way of creating amazing atmospheres, and I find characters like that very much me.”
Indeed, she has described her current roles as “witches and bitches, bags and hags.” Among them are the role she last sang here in 2008, Klytemnestra in Richard Strauss’s Electra, (definitely a bitch), the Ortrud she wishes she had been able to sing (“She’s a witch. I would have liked to sing Ortrud—I probably could get away with it at a pinch, but the angst isn’t worth it”), as well as the beggar woman in Sweeney Todd, (“she‘s a bag and a hag as well”). “The real thing I do is mothers. Janacek wrote a lot of mad witch-like characters—evil stepmothers,” clearly roles Plowright enjoys.
In her earlier years, Plowright was known as a Verdi soprano. She had been inspired by Maria Callas and wanted to sing her repertoire. “It’s regrettable, now that I’ve come to Strauss. I could have done so much more when I was younger.”
Coming up for her the rest of this year are Madame de Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites in Paris, Mrs Sedley in Britten’s Peter Grimes in Lyons, a small role in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier at Covent Garden, and Herodias in Strauss’s Salome in Portland.
Mostly nowadays, she sings roles which are not enormously long or taxing but are important to the story. Klytemnestra is only on stage for 20 intense minutes, but is not singing all the time. Madame de Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is in two scenes, “full on when you’re out there but not anything like the length of the roles I used to do.”
She’s discovered she likes this.”It’s befitting my age and I’m healthy. I still feel I can physically go on longer, but the parts I do don’t allow that. It took a while to accept a back seat so to speak. I spent years holding a Verdi opera together. To be honest I enjoy it a lot more now. There was a lot of pressure then and I used to feel very anxious. Now, at the end of the day, you’re on stage, it’s fun, no pressure, same fee—but I don’t do it for the fee. It keeps me young.”
