Malvina Major - art balanced with life

Arts editor GILBERT WONG talks to Dame Malvina Major - star in Die Fledermaus - about the hard-won balance she has now achieved between private happiness and career.

Dame Malvina Major has always made decisions based on what is right for her, rather than what might be good for her career.

The opera star's choice to base herself in Christchurch for the past three years was made largely to be with her partner, Brian Law.

Law is a conductor who came here from England. He is music director of the Christchurch City choir and also works with the city's orchestra and Canterbury Opera.

"It's been great for me to find somebody who understands the business," says Dame Malvina. "We live very separate lives because this is a career that takes you away so much. It's important that you have somebody who understands you and understands the business."

They have known each other well for eight years, and the decision to live together means a lot to the singer, whose life has not been without its share of tragedy.

She prefers not to discuss the relationship, but it is impossible not to wish her happiness after the grief she endured at the death of her first husband, Winston Fleming, from cancer in 1990.

Her decision to return to life as the wife of a Taranaki farmer in 1969 cut short what promised to be a stellar career on the world's operatic stage.

She has never made a habit of dwelling on the past, but says of coming home: "I think it was inevitable that things would have been different. My career was assured in the international scene. I had work in Dallas and Russia, which I turned down.

"I don't think I would have been the person I am today. I would have been more wealthy but I probably would have been on my own and wouldn't have my two daughters. I would have separated and had to go my own way. It would have been a much lonelier life.

"In doing what I've done, I've tried to balance aspects of my life. I have had a family."

Her son Andrew, a former representative rugby player, now owns and runs the family farm in Opunake. Her elder daughter, Alethea, is an accountant and housewife, and younger daughter Lorraine works in a bank.

Major comes to Auckland this week to play Rosalinde in the NBR New Zealand Opera production of Die Fledermaus. It's a role she knows well and it comes with a sense of synchronicity. It was the role she went to Covent Garden to sing after her husband's death, taking over from Dame Joan Sutherland.

It was meant to be a signature role, marking her return to the world's opera houses after raising her family. That her husband was not there to share it coloured the return with sadness.

Now those burdens are lifted and Dame Malvina can become reacquainted with a character who has become an old friend.

"Rosalinde is different each time. In English, the translations are always different, which is quite tricky, because you have to clear your mind and learn it afresh. Old lines keep coming back if you're hassled."

Major sees Rosalinde, cheated by her husband and determined to catch him out, as a modern heroine. She regards the latest production of the opera as the funniest she has been in.

As befits a singer who has sung many of opera's greatest roles, Dame Malvina is proficient in Russian, French and Italian.

And this brings her is one of the few regrets she has about this country.

"The tragedy for New Zealanders is that we live too far away. We speak different languages but there's nobody to practise it with."

The tyranny of distance still applies. Since resuming her career, Major has been told by companies that she would receive more work if not for her decision to live here. A typical response from an American opera company in California was: "But New Zealand's a holiday place."

Major's response was feisty: "'Well,' I said, 'You bring Donald McIntyre from London and that's the same distance.' But they have a mindset that New Zealand is an island in the South Seas."

So despite advances in transport and technology, the psychological distance persists. For young New Zealand singers, this distance can seem all too real.

Major recounts a story about one such singer, Andrea Creighton. While studying in Paris, she was asked to audition in Vienna. She had to turn down the offer, fearful that the expense would leave her with no rent money.

"I thought that was tragic. It could have meant a job, and at the very least she would have been heard in Vienna."

Stories like Creighton's are why she set up the Dame Malvina Foundation in 1992 to support young New Zealand performers. This year will be significant as the foundation's activities gain traction with offices staffed by volunteers in The Hague, Los Angeles and London. A private American benefactor has already promised $US1 million.

Major knows only too well the pressures and privations novice performers face in the sometimes harsh world of international music.

When she first arrived in London to further her career, it was with a baby, Andrew, and husband.

"It was very tough. A lot of apartment buildings wouldn't let us have a baby; they'd let us have a dog, but not a child. We could barely afford the rent and groceries."

A phone call to her mentor and former singing teacher, Dame Sister Mary Leo, was out of the question, and, though she received letters full of support and advice, circumstances had moved on before they arrived.

It's that kind of situation the foundation will try to rectify with the benefit of Dame Malvina's experience and the concert fees that provide young performers much-needed cash.

As a performer, Major had to rely on her own intuitive sense of what was right for her. When celebrated Israeli conductor Claudio Abbado offered her work as a mezzo-soprano at La Scala, a less determined singer might have leaped at the chance.

"If I had gone down that path I wouldn't have been singing today. The voice would have been forced down to where it wasn't happy."

The Germans have a word - fach - for when a singer fits the roles nature made her for. Major is sure that without advice from her singing teachers and her own determination, she would not have realised her fach.

So, even at this stage of her career, Dame Malvina's decision to live here still hampers her career.

But she laughs. "You must not have regrets. I can't possibly have any regrets about the decisions I have made."

"I got to sing at Covent Garden, though I guess in my youth I would have loved to have been a member of that company."

For now her diary is full. When there are spaces she returns to her haven in Christchurch, a house amid 3 1/2 acres of garden that she is landscaping.

And there has always been more than performance in her life. She wants time to work on her golf handicap, which was once down to a 13.

"Now, if I could ever get it back to that, wouldn't that be something?"

*Dame Malvina Major sings in the NBR New Zealand Opera production of Die Fledermaus at the Aotea Centre from October 7.