Classical Singer: What is the origin of the name Plowright?
ROSALIND PLOWRIGHT: My ancestors were farmers in Central England, the County of Nottinghamshire. The name actually appears in the Doomsday book.
Plowrights were makers of ploughs.
What was your father’s profession?
RP: My father was a regional manager for the British Shoe Corporation. His passion was music. He could sit down and jazz up anything on the piano, and he played the double bass in a modern jazz trio. My earliest singing engagements were with his weekend jazz trio. He always wanted me to sound like Ella Fitzgerald. He also liked classical music and introduced me to that. He use to play in amateur orchestras, and took me to The Mikado when I was thirteen, and various musicals. I was very excited by these earlier musicals and thought at that time that musicals was what I wanted to sing but my voice was just too operatic.
Did your mother work as well?
RP: My mother became a teacher. She had her children very young. I am the oldest of five. When she finished having all her children, at the age of about 31, she went to a teacher training college, and she ended up teaching infants. She was a very clever woman.
Was she musical?
RP: No, she wasn’t musical at all. All the music came from my Dad’s side. My mother was an academic and very shy.
Did you study any other instruments?
RP: I was a violinist. I started when I was eight and I played it for about ten years. I was the leader of the school orchestra and played the 1st Violin solo in Bach’s Double Concerto. When I was 18 and went to Music College as a vocal student I was told to give up the violin because I could not sing with my head straight! I had to take up the piano; which was a bit late and I never became any good at it.
When did you discover your voice?
RP: At the age of thirteen, after I had seen The Mikado we were driving back from the performance, and I started to imitate Katisha, and that is when this huge sound came out. My father nearly crashed the car. He said, “Where did that come from?” That was the beginning of my voice, as I know it today.
Why did you want to sing?
From the moment I saw that Mikado, I knew I wanted to sing. Anything would have done. I wanted to get on a stage so that is where my father took me. He took me to see Showboat and all of the musicals. My mother bought me records of Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland and Renata Tebaldi and I remember listening to them and thinking “Oh my God” especially Tebaldi. I remember listening to her singing Mimi, when I was about 15, and having never heard anything like this. I suppose I thought, “I would love to sing like that!” I did not know what it was and I did not know what I had to do to sing like that. I spent hours listening and imitating. When I was 15, my music mistress at school sent me to sing for the Principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music. Frederic Cox gave me a scholarship,when I was 16 and took personal care of me himself for 7 years. I did acting, languages, movement and theory. It was at college that I knew that I wanted to be an opera singer. I just loved singing. At college we also performed plays and I was always in them. I love acting, which is something I do naturally and this has helped me greatly with my career.
Did you do any choral singing?
RP: Well, I joined the Glyndebourne Chorus, but that was after Music College. It is an elite chorus of would be opera soloist usually fresh out of college.
What are the steps to a opera career when you live in England?
RP: You go to high school until you are about eighteen. If you want to study music, you either go to a university or to an academy of music. I went to the Royal Manchester College of Music. I was there for five years, earning my diploma. I just carried on doing singing lessons and drama classes and earning a living as a waitress in Manchester to keep myself going. Then I auditioned for the Glyndebourne Chorus, which was and still is considered a very good training ground for young singers. You have an opportunity to cover in the main festival and in some cases you perform solo roles with the touring opera. I sang Countess and Elvira with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera and made my professional debut in Oxford as Agathe in Der Freischutz.
Did you have a natural voice, or do you credit a particular teacher with developing your voice?
RP: I had a natural voice, but it needed work. My voice did not come into its own until I was probably thirty. My first teacher, whom I met at the Music College, was Frederic Cox. When I was sent to audition for him he wrote a letter to my parents (which I still have) saying that I had a heavy spinto voice which would take many years to develop. In fact he said I would be 30 before I could have a career, At the time I was just 16. It was 1 month after my 30th birthday that I won the 7th International Singing Competition in Sofia, Bulgaria which was to launch my international career. Frederic Cox knew how to develop the voice and keep it fresh and bright and free and open. He never thought much about breathing. I could float very easily. The moment I would want to put a bit more weight at the top, my voice would crack, because the support wasn’t there. My vocal texture had people saying, “you are a mezzo.” Mr Cox though was convinced I was a soprano.”
Did you ever find “the right teacher?”
RP: Yes. I have had three wonderful teachers. The first was Frederic Cox. The second Eric Verthieer and my present teacher Carol Richardson-Smith. Eric taught me breathing and support. I had had many problems as a young singer. Putting together my big voice was not an easy process. During its construction, between the ages of 24 and 30, I sang in choruses and did small parts. Finally at 30, I came into my own after the competition which I mentioned.
Did you live with your parents, or on your own?
RP: Neither. I was married about four years but it didn’t work out. Every year from about the age of 23 to 28, I would go do the Glyndebourne Summer Festival and then the Glyndebourne Tour. So I earned a living with that and some small singing engagements and entered competitions.
What has given you the greatest joy in your profession? What has made you the happiest about your job as an opera singer?
RP:. One of my most memorable moments was in the first round of the competition in Bulgaria. I sang, ‘L’altra notte in fondo al mare’, from Boito’s Mefistofele. It is very dramatic, and I gave it my heart. There is a wonderful feeling when you and your voice are in harmony. The audience began to applaud, and it seemed as they would never stop! I stood on that stage and thought, “This is something I thought would never happen to me.” I suppose therefore it is the recognition from an audience after you have given any performance your all.
What would you say was your lowest time?
RP: Probably the 1990’s. I had had a great career and sung with the best of the best. Apart from one or two opera houses and one or two big named conductors, I had appeared with them all in the 1980’s. After the birth of my children, my voice changed and some of the parts for which I was most famous, like Leonora in Il Trovatore began to elude me. It was very frustrating. I don’t think there was a specific low point. More a low period.
How did you handle the turmoil?
RP: I kept going but the work was very thin on the ground. There never was a year that I did not do something. The real problem was that it seemed to be hit and miss whereas in the 80’s I had no problems at all.
How did your voice work having just had a baby?
RP: Not very good to begin with. I got it wrong with my first child Daniel in that I stopped singing early in the pregnancy and started soon after he was born. Can you believe that just 8 weeks after his birth I sang Alceste with Riccardo Muti at La Scala, Milan. Now that I think about that was mad. With Katie however, I had learned from my mistake. I sang Norma at 8 months pregnant and one of the greatest renditions of the final scene from Bellini’s Il Pirata. But after she was born I took 6 months off to recover and get my strength back. I recommend the latter course for opera singers who also want to be mothers.
What happened to your voice?
RP: I think pregnancy must have thickened my vocal chords as I was no longer able to sing the high floated repertory. This particularly affected my Verdi repertory.
Besides problems with the pregnancy, do you know what else contributed to it?
RP: In a way I became a victim of myself. My vocal change affected my confidence and my lack of confidence affected my performances. It was a miserable time. I had contracts to sing Abigaille and Tosca. I got into such a state that I cancelled performances. I had no teacher at that time and went to a few. As a singer you know immediately if they are right for you or not and at that time all of them were wrong.
What did it do to your voice?
RP: Knowing what I know now, I supposed all these so-called teachers made me tighten my voice, to produce a forced and driven and tight sound. It was while I was singing Abigaille in Bregenz that a happy meeting changed all that.
How did you find your way?
RP: I was reunited with a long lost friend and her husband. Carol Richardson Smith, who sung Composer opposite my Ariadne in Bern back in 1981 had become the Professor of Vocal Studies at the Hannover Hochschule in Germany. Her husband Jeff Smith, is a coach at the Hochschule too and also plays as repetiteur for companies all over the world as a guest. She is the teacher who put me back together again. Throughout this period I was not working much, which turned out to be a good thing. I studied with Carol who explained to me exactly how the voice which I had taken for granted worked. When I sang Giorgetta in Il trittico, by Puccini. Richard Armstrong heard me and offered me Amneris. I thought, “Now there is an interesting thing. It is a mezzo role.” I decided to try this new role out with Scottish Opera and all I can say is that I was suddenly receiving the sort of accolades I had received in the early 80’s. The reviews were ecstatic and the Paris Opera who came to one night offered me Kostelnicka in Jenufa.
Did you have to start auditioning all over again for your roles?
RP: What was interesting was that the Amneris indirectly led to my first three major engagements. As I mentioned Paris had come to Glasgow. Before I was offered the Kostelnicka I had to do a working session with Sylvain Cambreling. He and I had worked together once before in 1987 on the recording of Contes d’Hoffmann. New Zealand Opera had read the reviews of Amneris and invited me to go there. It just happened that Sally Billinghurst from the Met was there at the same time and the Met flew me over to sing for them and offered me my debut as Kostelnicka on a cover/sing basis. Peter Katona from Covent Garden also came to that Aida in Glasgow. He asked me to work with Antonio Pappano for a possible Herodias which was subsequently shelved. But in the meantime Antonio Pappano became music director of the Royal Opera and offered me Ficka in his new Ring scheduled for 2004/2005.
You have worked with a lot of great artists. Have there been any that you have had a special magic with?
RP: Antonio Pappano, the conductor who is now taking over Covent Garden. He is probably the reason I am going back to Covent Garden. I did Tosca with him in 1995. I had to go to Tel Aviv to do Tosca with him. We then went to Berlin and did Cavelleria Rusticana and next is the Ring. He is just wonderful to work with.
What is your routine for staying fit and slim? Are you just lucky, or do you work hard?
RP: I go to the Gym at least three times a week. I start off with the cardiovascular, long enough to get me warmed up. Then I do stretches, and then I do weights. In all I am in the gym one and a quarter hours. I will get on the cross trainer for ten minutes, then I go do my weights, which takes about thirty minutes, and then I have a special program on the bike. It is just bringing your heart level up, and taking it down, and bringing it up a bit more. It’s called “Body Design,” and it is something that my husband’s company does along with a specially controlled diet. But these twenty-three minutes are all you need to lose weight. If you do that three times a week I can guarantee you will lose weight and look great on this program.
So finally Rosalind, what are your hopes for the future?
RP: Now that I have my vocal technique back and my confidence, I will stay firmly in the high mezzo territory which is so comfortable for me. I have limited my repertory to two Verdi operas, Amneris and Azucena, and several Wagner operas. I am just itching to try out Ortrud and Fricka. I will sing the Verdi Requiem as a mezzo now and I am looking forward to at least another 15 years of performing at least. I am also teaching a few students and doing master classes as well. I have bookings until 2006 so things are looking very good.
