2.

Let’s start at the very beginning

The long road to success

How many singers dream of having a career in an opera chorus?

Probably not many. I certainly didn’t. In my mind, I was destined for stardom, and anything less just wasn’t an option. I didn’t even know that being a chorister was a legitimate job. But let’s turn the clock back to a shy little girl growing up in Hamilton, New Zealand, who slowly but surely discovered the joy of singing.

In the mid-1960s, my parents – one English, one Irish – decided to embark on the adventure of a lifetime and settle in Wellington, New Zealand, where I was born in 1972. As a baby I dabbled in modelling, with my one and only appearance being in the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, dressed head to toe in adorable pastel creations by Mothercare. A few years later, after Mum and Dad decided to move the family 500 kilometres north to Hamilton, I caught the theatre bug. Aged four, when appearing in the Hillcrest Kindergarten production of The Great Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord, I had my attempts at performing a solo lap of honour around the stage cut short by an impatient teacher. She herded me into the ‘sandwich’ – two pieces of foam bursting with preschoolers sporting homemade bee costumes – and to my horror I remained wedged there for the rest of the performance. If only I’d been allowed to complete that second lap!

Singing the New Zealand national anthem under the teacher’s desk became a regular kindergarten pastime. Why I decided to showcase my early vocal ability on the floor under a desk I’ll never know. Were there decent acoustics? If only I’d had the courage to crawl out and take centrestage in the middle of the mat, my life might have taken a different path.

I grew up to the soundtrack of my parents’ favourite records – everything from Cilla Black to The Dubliners. The importance they placed on experiencing live theatre at every opportunity planted the seeds in my younger sister Lisa and me. We spent endless weekends memorising every word of our favourite musicals, with me performing as many principal roles as possible and Lisa reluctantly complying to my constant theatrical demands. Nor did my friends escape the performance opportunities that awaited them in the backyard, with The Sound of Music and Snow White and Rose Red being regular favourites. No crystal ball could have foreseen that I would spend nine incredible weeks working with Dame Julie Andrews some 40 years later.

I desperately wanted to be a rhythmic gymnast, attaching ribbons to sticks from the garden and prancing around the front lawn, only to quickly realise that I’d never be able to do the splits or perfect a cartwheel. To top it off, based on what they were witnessing through the lounge window, my parents refused to entertain the idea of taking me to gymnastics classes. Did they know the effect that this decision so early on in my career would have on future me becoming a triple threat? How would I ever become the all-dancing, singing and acting star of my dreams?

My theatrical exploits took a back seat while I focused on schoolwork, compulsory recorder and clarinet lessons, and building a firm reputation as a physically incompetent hockey player. Much to my parents’ combined surprise and hilarity, I finally re-emerged triumphant at twelve years of age when selected as one of three finalists in the St Mary’s Cathedral Primary School singing competition. Although I was barely audible, I came second – thanks to the mysterious no-show of competitor number three – and the elation I felt in that winning moment allowed me to conjure up dreams of future success. I was back in the spotlight! Maybe I did possess a voice of some promise! Before then, I’d only sung as part of the massed school choir. As I rode the wave of my achievement, Mum and Dad agreed to sign me up for singing lessons.

That same year, in the choir at my school’s centenary concert, I had my first taste of opera. Our guest soloist was renowned New Zealand soprano Malvina Major (later Dame Malvina), a star not only in her home country but on many of the world’s opera stages. The excitement in the theatre seemed electric that night. I had never heard an opera singer before, but as her voice soared towards the heavens, I became mesmerised by a sound so sublime that when we were instructed by our choir mistress to sing our part, I forgot to stand up.

Dame Malvina’s performance stayed with me long after the final applause. Without realising it, I had found my very first role model.

***

Dad had started up his own printing business not long after we all moved to Hamilton. This allowed him to take time off work and ferry Lisa and me to and from music lessons. I think things would have been very different if he’d been working for someone else, and my sister and I are eternally grateful, as he made sure we never missed a lesson. For one hour every Tuesday evening, I would attend the studio of Mona Ross, a formidable woman in her sixties who literally terrified me. Before every lesson I would make a dash to the bathroom and there I would sit, peeing out my nerves, mesmerised by the giant chandelier glistening above. In the studio I would be forced to stand upright, feet firmly placed in second position, elbows out, and hands cupped in front of my sternum. From this unrelaxed posture, I attempted to sing a variety of songs, mainly about birds, sending my tiny voice out across the fields to the cows who were completely unaware of my weekly struggles and increased confusion.

When Mona decided I was ready to be pushed into the public arena, I found myself competing in singing competitions around Hamilton. I soon became acutely aware of how I measured up among my peers, not only vocally but in my fashion choices, forcing me to rush to the hairdressers for the must-have blow-wave fringe, carefully consider my outfit of the day, and purchase pink lipstick and a palette of pastel eyeshadow. According to my adjudication reports, I had appalling diction (even when singing in my own language, which I just couldn’t understand) and bad posture. Apparently I looked like a chicken stretching my neck towards the audience in an attempt to make my voice louder. As one adjudicator wrote, ‘There’s a voice in there, I just wish I could hear more of it.’ Well, me too, love! But I must have been a glutton for punishment because I kept coming back for more.

Eventually it paid off, and the money started rolling in. Okay, we’re not talking large amounts, but it became a quicker way to earn a buck than pocketing the $3.72 an hour I earned working weekends at the local supermarket. My name was etched into numerous singing trophies, and I enjoyed adorning my bedroom walls with the latest hoard of certificates, permanently Blu Tacking them onto my new wallpaper (much to my parents’ dismay). Mum accompanied me to nearly all my competitions, sitting in the back row, head bowed as soon as I walked out onto the stage, too nervous to watch my entire performance. Dad would occasionally accompany my sister, who, reluctantly, would be subjected to yet another rendition of my vocal entries. On more than one occasion she got the giggles, and Mum eventually banned her from attending future competitions, much to my sister’s delight.

At school I became a one-hit wonder. At every assembly, mass and prize-giving I would treat the students and teachers to yet another performance of the duet ‘Pie Jesu’, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, with a fellow student, this number being a particular hit among the Catholic nuns teaching at the school. I found a photo a few years ago from one of our many vocal ‘outings’, and the half-dead expression on my face confirms that I’d had enough of the piece too, but strangely, we never sang anything else. I became known as ‘the singer’, and even though there was more to me than just my voice, I grew to love the expression.

The years rolled on, until one day my classmates were autographing my school blouse on the last day of high school and I realised I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I considered joining the police force, but given my physical inabilities, coupled with the fact that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to scale a wall or run after anyone, I let that idea dissolve. Not one for sitting around, I joined the workforce – an administrative job with the Probation Service – and started performing with the local operatic society.

It took a few months with the Hamilton Operatic Society before I trod the actual boards. Initially I joined the cast of West Side Story and found myself squashed in the darkness of the orchestra pit, vocally supporting the female dancers on the stage. Finally, being allowed under the lights in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, I felt instantly at home. I can’t explain it, but can only surmise that somehow, on that stage, I felt like I belonged and needed to be there. Many shows followed, and The Merry Widow (starring Dame Malvina Major) and Evita became firm favourites. I didn’t earn a cent performing in these productions, but the experience, discipline and stagecraft I acquired were priceless. As my opening nights approached, I would proudly hang each poster in the Probation Service reception area where I worked. I’m not sure how many visitors sitting in reception turned up to my performances, but I thought it important to advertise my extracurricular activities to as wide an audience as possible.

By then, Mona and I had parted ways due to ‘artistic differences’, and I found a new singing teacher named Audrey Patterson. She encouraged me to widen my competition circuit and try my luck in other towns and cities throughout the North Island. I continued performing with the operatic society, and slowly began to determine my next move. I could have stayed working at Probation, performed in more shows and become a big fish in a little pond, but I had itchy feet. Singing had become a great hobby, and it felt like the best hobby in the world, but I was hungry for more.

With Audrey’s help, I auditioned successfully for a place in the Bachelor of Music (Honours) degree, majoring in performance, at the University of Auckland. Assuming the course would allow me to focus on singing and singing alone, I was instantly horrified to realise that 80 per cent of the degree would force me to study harmony, counterpoint, history and – worst of all – theory. I had been studying music theory for years, purely so I could sit singing exams, and hated it.

The struggle was real. I just wanted to sing.

Shortly before I left Hamilton for the bright lights of the big city, a local reporter wrote an article about my move, thinking the headline ‘Katherine Leaves Crime for Music’ would be a great idea. So, with my newfound fame and reputation firmly in the bag, I drove north.

The fringe I had been so proud of all those years ago now found itself firmly pinned back from my face, thanks to an order to all vocal students from our singing teachers, Beatrice Webster and Isabel Cunningham, who insisted that the audience needed to see our whole faces to truly appreciate the depth of our performances. We were instructed to record our singing lessons as a learning tool. This allowed me to sit in a practice room and either cry with frustration at the sounds blaring out of my cassette player or be pleasantly surprised if something sounded half-decent.

Slowly, though, I began to improve … you’d hope so, considering I was now doing this full-time! I successfully auditioned to join the Auckland Opera Chorus (now the New Zealand Opera Chorus), with my first chorus opera being Mozart’s Don Giovanni, under the helm of director Simon Phillips (who I would work with many years later at Opera Australia). Dame Kiri Te Kanawa herself starred in the production – not a bad gig to kickstart my opera career – and before long, I found myself performing regularly at the Aotea Centre theatre with the company, brushing shoulders with some incredible overseas artists. As I delivered my best peasant, prostitute or postulant acting upstage behind them, I would constantly ask myself, ‘Could I become just like them?’ Hell, yes! Needing to earn more money to pay for my studies, I did everything from being an extra on the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, to making cysts out of rubber gloves and toothpaste for medical students. Anything to pay the bills!

Local competitions continued, allowing me to air the repertoire I would be presenting in my yearly recitals as part of my degree. Always trying to fit as much into my day as humanly possible, I often made a habit of warming up in the car, singing along to any song blasting from the stereo in my best operatic voice as I drove towards community halls and local theatre spaces across Auckland. One weekend, not long before my final singing exams of the year, I was suddenly afflicted with nasal congestion, and I deemed it bad enough to prevent me from attending a singing competition in Rotorua … but certainly not so chronic that I couldn’t attend a once-in-a-lifetime Michael Jackson concert with my sister. Definitely a decision I have never regretted, even if I did lose my voice for a few days, obviously as a result of ‘laryngitis’, which was the excuse I gave my teachers. By the time the final exam came around, I performed my recital – as planned – in perfect health.

***

In 1999, after graduating with first-class honours, I became a Young Artist in Residence with New Zealand Opera. With my star now shining a little brighter, I represented the company at corporate events, understudied several operatic roles, and found myself adorning billboards and the backs of buses after being body-painted for a poster promoting Verdi’s Macbeth. I hadn’t given much thought to the advertising campaign until driving home one night along the Auckland motorway and seeing myself, shining like a beacon on a gigantic billboard, just before the turn-off to home. I nearly had an accident. Lying in bed that night, though still slightly mortified, I wondered if the advertising campaign had the potential to thrust me, literally, into the public eye. One could only hope!

One corporate event got people talking and offered me another brief moment of fame. During an afternoon rehearsal for an event, as I landed on a note – not even a very high one for sopranos – there was an audible cracking sound. To my initial horror, and then excessive delight, a large centrepiece vase lay in pieces across the table and floor. It’s not that easy to break glass with your singing voice alone: apparently your voice must match the frequency or pitch of the object, and the glass must have a microscopic defect such as a hairline crack. Later that evening, the compere of the event relayed the story to the guests and asked them to hold onto their wine glasses while I sang, and I received a healthy round of applause at the end. It has never happened since that day – not that I’ve attempted a repeat performance!

Working with international artists at New Zealand Opera allowed me ample opportunity to discuss further study options overseas, and soon the idea of spreading my wings became my sole focus. I knew that auditioning for music colleges in person would give me a better chance of success, and as my parents were both born in the UK, I had a British passport that would grant me a key to the door. Finally, in October 1999, with Mum along for a holiday, I boarded a one-way flight to the UK, not knowing what would happen when I set foot on British soil.

I hadn’t been able to secure much financial support before leaving New Zealand. Apart from savings and some help from a wonderful fundraising concert organised by my family, featuring all my singing friends from Auckland, I didn’t have much in the bank, so I knew I would need to find work as soon as possible. I auditioned for postgraduate study at several music colleges, receiving mixed responses, with one firmly telling me that at the ripe old age of 27, I was deemed ‘too old’ to commence tertiary study. But the stars aligned the day I auditioned for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (formerly the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) in Glasgow. Before long, I accepted a place in the Master of Music (Advanced Opera) course, due to begin in September 2000.

I’d finally done it! But I had nowhere to live and not a clue as to how I would pay for the extortionately priced overseas fees, let alone my living expenses. Deciding to move to London before commencing my studies, I soon found myself squeezing onto the tube for my daily commute into the city to fulfil several temping assignments, while couch-surfing my way across London thanks to some very generous friends.

Singing took a back seat while I focused on earning as much money as possible, though I still managed to graduate in person from the Trinity College London with my FTCL Fellowship in Voice (after sitting the exam in New Zealand) and perform in the ensemble with British Youth Opera at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. These first few months showered me with opportunities I hadn’t dreamed of before. I didn’t need to spend a lot of money to have a good time. I could attend the opera for as little as £5 or wake at a squirrel’s fart and queue for cheap tickets, allowing me to experience an infinite choice of plays or musical theatre. I even worked out how to extract the opera glasses from the auditorium seats without having to pay the 50 pence!

But before I knew it, I was on the train back to Glasgow, feeling excited yet daunted as I’d only saved enough money for two semesters. I won’t lie – the constant financial strain wore me down from the start. How had I found myself in this situation, and why was it so bloody hard to secure scholarships? It took eating baked beans for nearly a month before I had the courage to call the Bank of Mum and Dad, asking for help while howling down the other end of the phone, embarrassed that it had come to this. I’ll be forever grateful that they were able to help me out. Otherwise I’d have been out the door.

I have only one regret from my time in Glasgow. If I’d known that the second week in May 2001, when the sun shone so brightly it seemed to be splitting the stones, would eventually end up being the entire summer season squashed into one week, then I would have made the most of it! But alas, I let it pass, foolishly thinking that summer would be just around the corner – a harsh Scottish lesson to learn.

At the academy, I landed the perfect singing teacher in Patricia Hay. ‘Right, dear,’ she said at our first meeting, in her rhythmically lilting Scottish accent, ‘I’ll meet you in room three three three, at three thirty’, incorporating at least 30 perfectly rolled R’s. From our first lesson she proceeded to strip my voice right back, commenting on my lack of support and badly pronounced languages. Yes, I agreed they were rubbish, but I had just arrived in a city where I couldn’t understand a single word! And as much as I felt like throwing my scores out into the street, the temperature outside felt bitterly cold, so I bunkered down in practice rooms and obeyed orders.

Of course, Pat was right, because it didn’t take long for me to feel the foundations of my technique finally fit into place. Suddenly my voice seemed larger and easier to navigate, and my range increased. And to my surprise, my French language went from utterly horrendous to only moderately horrendous. Things were looking up!

As part of our vocal assessment, all the singing students in the master’s programme performed scenes from operas in our first year, and then complete roles in fully staged operas the second year. I performed Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Parasha in Stravinsky’s Mavra, and Satirino in Cavalli’s seventeenth-century opera La Calisto (I had never even heard of the latter two). For the character Satirino, who is half-male, half-animal, I found myself adorned with a rather large male appendage and given some rather, shall we say, unsavoury stage directions. Sitting down with the wonderful director, the late Lee Blakeley, for notes and feedback after a rehearsal, he announced: ‘Katherine, can you continue to wank until the play out?’ Not wanting him to elaborate, I quickly noted down the suggestion.

I devoured every opportunity and before I knew it, my two years at the academy were coming to an end. I’d eaten an unhealthy amount of sausage rolls from Greggs bakery, enjoyed too many haggis suppers from the local chippie and travelled to the far isles of Scotland to see hairy cows – not to mention taken a quick boat ride in search of the Loch Ness monster. Pat had transformed me not only into a better singer but an overall better performer. My languages were now at an acceptable level, and I had a few more roles to my name. Hell, I could even understand the locals! Thankfully, the academy had secured an anonymous sponsor to cover my second-year fees, and although I walked out the front door with a reasonably sized debt, I had survived.

Now I would enter an already saturated industry boasting far more singers than jobs. What did I have that made me stand out from the rest? I was a soprano – the most common voice type – and even though none of them sounded quite like me, I would probably be competing against thousands of others. The thought terrified me.

***

After graduating, I went through a ‘pert’ phase, and it all started with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for New Zealand Opera. What a gig! An all-expenses paid trip back to see family and friends and earn a wage. Could it be this easy? Little did I know. The company looked after me for a good few years, offering me some very exciting principal roles like Despina in Così fan tutte, Giannetta in The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore) and Rosina in The Barber of Seville – roles I could really get my teeth into and show off my acting chops. But these roles share a few themes. They are all characters who enjoy being part of the action, they are sometimes the best friend or maid to the leading lady, and more often than not they are out for a good time. It had become evident that no-one employed me to be the lead soprano who spent the evening walking around the stage in a state of depression, sighing about her husband’s betrayal. Hell no! I ended up being the soprano who spent the opera having a good time with the husband, or at least enjoying the chase. That’s when my ‘pert’ phase really took off, according to reviews: ‘pert and sexy with an appealing soprano voice’, ‘pertness and natural comic ability’, and ‘Wiles almost steals the show as the perky maid, Despina’. According to one reviewer, I ‘sang well as the ringleader Giannetta … making a convincing cheap drunk’. Dad always said I could get drunk on a wine gum! What an honour.

The national newspaper in New Zealand even published an article about my career thus far, giving it the title ‘A Bit of a Slapper’, and this made my Irish-Catholic mother so proud that she took the article to church to show her fellow parishioners. Actually, it became a permanent addition to her handbag, ready to be pulled out whenever the opportunity arose. I’d nailed it! These roles marked a brief but significant chapter in my career; it’s been at least a decade since anyone has come close to describing me as ‘pert’.

I’ll never forget a comment from my dad after he saw a performance of Così. Known for keeping his praise towards me and my sister well in check, and often responding to any achievement with the single word ‘good’, the night he saw me play Despina he called it ‘smashing’. It meant the world to me.

These first few professional gigs highlighted some harsh realities. First, just because you’ve had a run of contracts, it does not in any way mean you’re on your way to success. After every role, you will return to the ocean of singers as plankton. Second, for every audition panel that says yes, there are going to be ten or twenty that say no, regardless of what your CV says and how much experience you’ve got. Third, you’re only as good as you are on the day, and you attempt to sing the best you can on that day. The rest is out of your hands. Finally, always ask to wear dance tights under every costume so your legs will look much better onstage than they do in real life. And on the undergarment front, always – and I mean always – travel with skin-coloured lingerie, because you never know when you’re going to need it. But that’s a story for a different chapter.

I learned a brutal but invaluable lesson during those first few years. After repeatedly auditioning for a reputable company in the UK and receiving countless rejections, I heard from a reliable source that they didn’t like the sound of my voice. And do you know what? There was nothing I could do about it because my voice is unique. I can’t just go to a music shop and buy another brand of violin, hoping that because I’ve paid more money it’s going to sound more impressive. Everyone’s voice is an expression of their individual sound, timbre and personal interpretation, and if one panel doesn’t like yours, then you need to find another panel that will.

Pimlico Opera, the touring arm of Grange Park Opera, gifted me the best gig of my UK career, singing the role of Adina in The Elixir of Love. Adina is a juicy lead role and she enjoys a good game of cat and mouse with the leading tenor, so I fell in love with her instantly. I toured throughout the UK, with one performance taking place in a women’s prison just outside of London. At the end of the show, an audience member approached me. ‘Thank you,’ she told me, ‘because for those three hours I felt like a free woman.’

Oratorios are large sacred works written for soloists, choir and orchestra, and they soon became my bread and butter. I had engagements with choral societies throughout the UK, which worked well alongside my temping commitments because they were predominantly rehearsed and performed over a weekend. The choral society committees always went above and beyond, too, making sure my time with them was always memorable – and the impressive array of home-baked goods at tea time was the icing on the cake!

***

You often hear of people talking about that one ‘big break’, the golden opportunity destined to change the course of their career forever. But, despite all my contracts, I was still waiting for mine.

Did I want to keep chasing something I knew in my heart of hearts would be fruitless? Maybe I had to slowly and painfully adjust to the possibility that my path would be different. It wouldn’t be an easy pill to swallow, but despite it all, I never once decided to throw it all away. I had no idea what to do next but I felt more determined than ever to continue singing.

During 2005 I decided to travel back to the homeland, spend a well-deserved Christmas with my family, and give Australia a crack because I certainly wasn’t getting the gigs in the UK. I managed to secure two auditions in Australia – for Opera Australia, and State Opera South Australia in Adelaide – and to my great surprise Mum came along for the trip. It’s the first time I’d auditioned outside of the UK for many years, and I hoped desperately for a miracle. Both companies showed interest, which gave me a wonderful boost of confidence, and it became very clear that if I wanted to work in Australia, I would need to live in Australia.

With this newfound knowledge, and after celebrating the new year back home, I returned to the UK – not because I had a job to go to, but because at that point I just didn’t know what else to do.

What unfolded on the morning of Thursday, 23 March 2006 presented me with the chance of a lifetime, and in that moment, I knew exactly where I needed to be. While sitting at my temping desk, I opened an email from the general director of State Opera South Australia, offering me the role of Adina in The Elixir of Love for their 2007 season. His words touched me deeply. In short, based on my UK performances of the same role, and the success of my audition, he said it would be an honour to offer me my Australian main-stage debut! I had to read it over and over before the words finally started to sink in. But there was one condition in the contract: I needed to be based in Australia. I instantly accepted the offer, deciding to work out the details later. How hard could it be? I’d already moved once to the other side of the world; of course I could do it again.

In a moment of brilliance for me (but not so much for my UK agent), I cancelled a few small contracts I’d managed to secure, purely because I wanted to enjoy my first full summer based in London before moving to Australia. The New Zealand gigs had always come up during this season, so essentially I had existed for years without a decent amount of sun – or a decent tan. Probably not my proudest career move but, to be honest, I had had enough. I was over doing small gigs for little pay, and the thought of soaking up the city one last time before I left for good felt more important. I continued my singing lessons with Pat up in Glasgow, a train journey I had taken so many times since leaving the academy that I’d lost count. Pat had become my one constant through all of this, and the sole person I entrusted with my voice and the degree of preparation required for every role I had been fortunate enough to perform.

I sucked the marrow out of London during those last summer months and filled every weekend with adventures, constantly ticking things off a ridiculously long bucket list. I enjoyed the long summer nights, seeing as many shows as possible and surrounding myself with some awesome people who had all, individually, made my years in the UK far richer than I could ever have imagined. Ultimately, I realised that my level of success didn’t need to be defined by the few roles I had secured, or my failure determined by the contracts I’d never had the opportunity to sign. I finally felt proud of what I had achieved. I would be leaving England as a very different person to the one who arrived seven years before; now I had become someone who embraced the good times and had survived the shit times.

Did this contract have the potential to launch my solo career in Australia, or would I find myself facing the same battles? I had no idea, but at least I had a job to go to, and maybe, just maybe, more work would come my way. Finally I’d be living much closer to my family, and trips back to New Zealand were certainly a lot cheaper. So, at the end of October 2006, I left the tarmac in London with no regrets, and as I flew towards my new life down under, I hung onto my dream of becoming a star – even though I didn’t know what that would look like anymore.