Voicing her personality

By WILLIAM DART

Rushing from the town hall on Friday night, with the NZSO's Prokofiev still ringing in my ears, I manage to catch the last items of Angela Brown's concert in the Auckland Art Gallery. The rewards include a thrilling performance of La Mia Letizia Infondere from Verdi's I Lombardi, with a high B flat to die for.

The American soprano headlines the Auckland Philharmonia's Puccini concert tonight, with the kind of voice we don't hear much in this country. Her coach, New Zealander Frances Wilson, has trouble finding superlatives to describe her pupil's talents.

When I meet Brown, the personality is as big as the voice and I learn that it was the legendary Virginia Zeani who fired her operatic ambitions.

She studied under the veteran soprano in Indiana and it's Zeani's philosophies that have maintained her lustrous voice. "It's very pointed but soft," Brown explains. "It's like a butter knife rather than a steak knife where you have this hard point you could stab somebody. It has to have a softness at the top but still the ability to cut."

It was women like Jessye Norman who "trailblazed the way before me and have given me so much history to be proud of. It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, you can make it in the operatic world if you're blessed with the pipes."

And pipes she certainly has. Earlier this year, while she was covering Ariadne at the Met, she got the chance to play Strauss' heroine for one performance in Philadelphia when soprano Jane Casselman was indisposed.

"I had coached the hell out of it so I knew I was ready," remembers Brown, with the growl of a Memphis blues singer, "and I had less than 24 hours to get ready for it."

And what was the highlight? "Having costumes built for your body on the spot," is the chuckled reply.

For Brown, these characters are flesh and blood. Next year she makes her Met debut as Aida, and she admits, "I love that woman. I like to work on the crazy, quirky things about the characters. Why doesn't Aida just leave? If it was me, I'd say, 'I can find another lover, Ahm goin' home'."

But, she adds, it's just this that gives Aida her strength and "you have to find that strength in every role". When it comes to Puccini, the ultimate challenge is the role of Tosca.

"My own personality can be very passionate and when I sing Tosca, because she's so much that way herself, I can't afford to put too much of me in it. I've done it twice and I'm learning to pace myself."

Pacing is paramount. "When you're performing an opera, you don't want to blow your wad as soon as you step out on the stage," she laughs. "It has to be a nice, slow build; you have to know to get into the phrasing, get into the character without hurting yourself. There's always a lot of big stuff and I can't be big the whole night."

Next year may well be Brown's big breakthrough, debuting as Elisabeth in Philadelphia's Don Carlos and playing Carnegie Hall in yet another concert opera. "I like concert operas because you can look great, stand up there in your beautiful gown and just sing," adds the practical Brown. "And you've got the music ... maybe!"

She returns home to workshop a new opera, Margaret Garner, co-written by Toni Morrison and Richard Danielpour for soprano Denyce Graves. It is based on the story of the 19th-century slave who sacrificed her own children rather than see them taken back into slavery and "it's gorgeous music", enthuses Brown. "It's very palatable to the ear and lies easily for the voice."

Brown has dreams beyond opera. In the early days she "did a lot of musical theatre before I thought about anything classical. Oh, my goodness I wanted so bad to be Effie in Dreamgirls."

And now she's eyeing up cross-over: "I call it pop opera. It's really big business and there's this young gentlemen, Miguel. He's Greek and he is fabulous. So, one of these days when I've had the operatic career I want to, I'd like to do a similar CD to his, where you can mix all the different styles, with a Latin beat behind you."

But, in the meantime, many feel there's a reputation to be made as a world-class Verdi and Strauss singer; and tonight, there's Puccini with the Auckland Philharmonia.

Performance

* Who: Angela Brown

* What: Auckland Philharmonia, Opera in Concert: Puccini

* Where: Auckland Town Hall

* When: Tonight 7.30pm