‘You know those amazing feats that people talk about?” says Sarah Castle, half-way through explaining how she almost killed a child. It was during the mezzo-soprano’s run in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. “I was The Fox, and all of the little foxes had to come through a trap door. At one of the rehearsals, somebody wasn’t quite where they were supposed to be, and I turned around and a child was in the way with their head just above ground. With my trajectory I was going to land on the trapdoor, which would have slammed shut on the child’s head. Somehow, I managed to jump over; I jumped so high.
“I still really love working with children.”
Castle, a Kiwi who lives in Manchester, will be back here working with kids (“I promise not to injure any”) for NZ Opera’s production of The Monster in the Maze. The opera, which adapts the ancient Greek story of Theseus and the Minotaur, was composed by Jonathan Dove, whose Mansfield Park played here last year. It’s a bold decision for NZ Opera to make Monster in the Maze one of its headline productions. This is community opera, and mixes a small number of professional singers with amateur children’s, youth and adult choirs (go here for more).
Castle hasn’t done community opera before but has been involved in plenty of outreach work as part of the UK’s Live Music Now programme, where high-level performers are sent forth to promote health and wellbeing through the arts. One such trip saw her mingling with royalty.
“King Charles, when he was still Prince Charles, came to open a new elderly residential care place,” Castle recalls. “So I have had the joy of getting Prince Charles to join in on Oom-Pah-Pah [from the musical Oliver!].”
Monster in the Maze may be classed as community opera – the king is not expected to attend – but it is the offspring of musical gentry. It was a co-commission by the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, with the Festival d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence. The premiere was conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The Aotearoa performances will have a Pacific spin, and be directed by Tinā star Anapela Polata’ivao.
For Castle, who returns here often to perform but whose career has been based largely in the Northern Hemisphere, connections to the Pacific remain important.
“One side of my living room is total Kiwiana,” she says over the Zoom call, dangling her weka earrings and pointing over her shoulder at a painting of Oriental Bay in Wellington. “It’s quite hard to explain how, being a New Zealander, Māori and Pacific culture is still incredibly important and really gets inside you, so it’s joyous to be coming back for this.”
NZ Opera, Monster in the Maze: Christchurch, September 5-6, Wellington, September 12-13, Auckland, September 19-20.
