Margaret Medlyn - Scaling the heights

By HEATH LEES

You can hear the note of astonishment in Margaret Medlyn's voice when she says she has never yet sung in a staged opera in her home town of Auckland.

"Sometimes they didn't ask me, and sometimes when they asked me I was already doing something else. It just never seemed to click."

That's surprising, since Medlyn is a household word in Australian opera circles. Last year, in Adelaide's production of Verdi's Il Trovatore, her performance as Leonora attracted all the public attention, while the critics fell over their metaphors in admiration, one of them describing her voice as "made from silk, riding on the waves of the violins and cellos."

Medlyn has sung all the major mezzo-soprano roles around Australia, starting with Carmen and including the most flamboyant of Verdi's mezzos, such as the ill-starred Amneris in Aida and the dark, show-stealing gypsy, Azucena, in Il Trovatore.

For the past year or so she has been alternating her performances with language courses in Dresden to sharpen up her German, and of course continue the eternal study of new roles.

"I'm not a fast learner," she complains, "but I am thorough. I need time to really get inside the roles."

Understudying is another way of "getting inside" roles, and Medlyn has also been covering for singers in London's Covent Garden and with the English National Opera.

Speaking on the phone from Queensland, where she has been repeating her Trovatore success, Medlyn admits that her voice has now steered her towards the star roles, since it has gradually been moving upwards of its own accord, till recently her teachers agreed she was no longer a mezzo-soprano but a soprano.

In the world of opera, that's like being told that the wedding line-up has changed and you will be the bride for the rest of your career.

"I'm glad my voice didn't gear upwards too soon," she says.

"Too many mezzos go for the soprano roles early in their careers and lose all the colour, warmth and shade that they started out with, just to get the big, high sound."

One of the roles that Medlyn's change has brought is an astonishing one, usually reserved for singers at the very peak of their careers. It's the difficult and dangerous role of Wagner's deranged woman-spirit Kundry, in Parsifal, to be mounted in Adelaide in September next year. Kundry, the only female role in Parsifal, is difficult to sing because it needs always to be pushed out over the top of a huge orchestral sound, and it forces the singer into heart-stopping leaps from top to bottom of the register; it is so wide that it embraces both soprano and mezzo range.

It is dangerous because Wagner calls for the utmost intensity in the voice throughout, and demands a number of piercing, inhuman shrieks that can do permanent damage to the voice.

Medlyn has no worries about this challenge though, since conductor Jeffrey Tate has already assured her that one of his major tasks will be to look after his Kundry, and see that this newly elevated voice comes to no harm.

Maestro Tate is one of Medlyn's idols. Two years ago in Adelaide he was the main musical architect of the city's enormous success with Wagner's four-opera Ring of the Niebelungen. It was hearing Medlyn as one of the Rhinemaidens that drew Tate to the sound and potential of her voice, so he asked her to audition for the part of Kundry. She swotted it up, sang the whole part virtually straight through for him in London last year, and instantly landed the role.

Medlyn says that the move onto the diva platform with the sopranos means a "bigger psyche" as well. She laughs. "I have to admit I've got a prima donna character. Frankly, I prefer being the leading lady."

It's as the leading lady that New Zealand is about to hear her since she's back now, to play the title role in NBR New Zealand Opera's Aida, which opens in Wellington on Saturday and three weeks later moves to Auckland. At last Medlyn will sing on the opera stage of her home city.

After Wagner, does she still like Verdi and the popular thrust of Aida?

"Oh yes. Aida is a great opera," she says without hesitation.

"I loved it when I sang the part of Amneris as a mezzo. It's beautiful, intimate music - a chamber opera really but one that happens to have a huge triumphal procession slap-bang in the middle."

And she has no qualms about at last singing in her home town.

"I'm very excited about doing the role of Aida, and I love singing in New Zealand. The fact that it's my 'debut' in Auckland after so long is a bonus."