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The following is an interview with Sally Gain, as published in Scenaria magazine (February 1996)
SCENARIA INTERVIEWS SALLY GAIN
Coloratura soprano Sally Gain was the recent recipient of the FNB Vita Opera Award as the Most Promising Newcomer of 1995. She spoke to Scenaria about her career and her future plans.
Although being the recipient of the FNB Vita Award as the Most Promising Newcomer seems to suggest that you are new to the operatic stage, you nevertheless have already managed to get a fair number of roles under your belt.
Yes, I have managed to get a fair number of roles under my belt and which I have performed on stage – roles such as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, that I did for NAPAC [Natal Performing Arts Council] as well as Nanetta in their production of Falstaff. I have sung Frasquita in Carmen for PACT [Performing Arts Council of Transvaal] and at the same time I have learnt the role of Micaela. I have sung the role of Violetta three times – twice in the Cape and once at the State Theatre [in Pretoria], and also Valencienne in The Merry Widow, Musetta in PACT’s La Boheme last year (1995) as well as Oscar in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. In addition I have been concentrating on learning quite a variety of new roles that I hope, one day, to be able to sing on stage, such as Gilda in Rigoletto that I worked on with maestro Carlo Franci, and other roles such as Pamina and the Queen of the Night.
As South Africa’s most promising young coloratura soprano, where do you see your career heading in the future? Where do you hope to see your career in say, five or ten years’ time?
I would like to see myself embarking on an international career in about three years’ time. I am talking here about one day being able to work in the best of the overseas houses. I am concentrating on making myself the best singer that I can become, so I can’t place myself into a future timeframe in terms of the number of years this will take, because one simply does not know, at this stage, how long such a policy will take to implement.
Winning the award as the Most Promising Newcomer has made me realise that there are different levels one must achieve and one must always be aware of the level you are currently at, and accept criticism and work very hard to attain the next level. This is a career in which there is a great deal to learn and one cannot just sit back and think that one is great. You have to pursue knowledge and technique and one must also have a serious approach to one’s work.
You have mentioned quite a wide variety of roles. Do you see yourself as ultimately fitting into a particular fach?
Definitely. I think that I started off as a soubrette, in roles such as Susanna, which is a good way to start and I had good opportunities. But my voice has always had something of a lyric quality, and because I am a coloratura, I see myself staying within the lyric coloratura fach for the time being, and only later go into the full lyric range of roles. I see myself staying within the lyric coloratura fach for at least the next fifteen to twenty years. Because I have quite a meaty voice in the middle register and I can get quite a lot of power from it without overdoing it, this expands my repertoire quite a bit and leaves me fairly content to remain where I am at present, waiting for the voice to develop still further with age and experience. I am in no great hurry.
You also have quite a remarkable lower register for a coloratura soprano, with some richly dark and colourful notes.
Well, when I started training, my register was from C below middle C and it went up to a top C. That was when I was singing a lot of jazz – in fact, I was singing jazz and opera at the same time. That was before I became interested in singing opera seriously. It was only when I started studying with Emma Renzi that we were able to decide where my voice was really at, and slowly my register has settled at G below middle C from where I can go up to B flat above top C. This is, for me, a very comfortable range and I tend to take it for granted. It’s easy for me, yet at the same time I am never really happy with the top notes – although they are supposed to be quite good notes.
Beginning, as you did, by singing jazz, do you think that this helped your voice or…
I think it was the best possible thing, because singing jazz you have a lot of soul and, as a result, you develop a lot of vocal colouring. I did not want to go into a singing career without knowing exactly what I wanted to do, so I began by singing jazz. I sang a lot of South American jazz with a band in Durban called Interitmo and then I sang a lot of show-business stuff with Eve Boswell. She and George Hayden both maintain that I am the only opera singer who can sing jazz with the right style, which I always laugh about. I even did a recording of Irving Berlin’s “There’s no business like show business” for the SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] as a tribute to Irving Berlin when he died some years ago – when I was still twenty-one, and I can’t believe it’s my voice when I hear it today.
The challenge of singing jazz with no vibrato has proven to be very helpful to me in my operatic career. As a student I did a lot of 1920s and 30s songs – that is how I earned a living in those days, singing in a restaurant. I was a rich student, making lots of money!
Then I sang a lot of everything and even had my own pop band for which I wrote a lot of music, and I even managed to get some folk music with guitar accompaniment. So, you could say that I have done everything.
What was it that made you concentrate on becoming an opera singer, swapping relative financial security for the relatively insecure life as an opera singer?
I suppose you could say that I am something of a martyr! What happened was that, when I was still at school I had been a member of the Natal Youth Choir, in which I had sung all the solos, without ever thinking of becoming a professional singer – I mean this was something one just did because one was at school. As a student I later joined the choir at the Natal Technikon and Hein de Villiers, who had run the Natal Youth Choir, brought me to the attention of his wife, Sandra de Villiers, the head of the Natal Technikon Opera School, and who now runs Opera Africa. She immediately decided that I should come and study with her and I decided to try it out, and it was she who encouraged me to seriously consider an operatic career. I had never considered a musical career at all. I wanted to do a BA in Psychology, and it was Sandra who persisted in nagging me to change my mind – we fought and we fought and I admire her persistence because, in the end, it paid off and I became convinced.
When I started the music course, I couldn’t even read music, so I had to start at a Grade 5 level, and the course was very involved – we had to write 48 bar fugues in the final year. It was a real battle for me, so after two years I left and started to study jazz with Eve Boswell for a year, and I did a whole jazz course with George Hayden at the Technikon. Simultaneously I did opera master classes with David Tidboald and that is when I started to take opera seriously – when I saw his enthusiasm and eagerness to help me and coach me. Then I saw that I did have a talent and that maybe I should take it seriously.
Then, in 1990, I was offered the role of Lauretta, but right up until the time of being offered the role of Susanna, I still was not 100% committed to the idea of singing opera full time. Working with Francois Swart, who produced Figaro, became the turning point for me. He brought so much life to the production and he really boosted my confidence to such an extent, telling me that I possessed a multi-faceted talent – not only a good voice, but dramatic talent as well. That is when I realised that maybe I have more to give and that my true forte lay in opera.
Up until that time, did you not perhaps feel that singing jazz and alternating with opera, you ran a risk of damaging your voice?
At that stage one does not think about such things. Now I am perfectly content to restrict myself entirely to singing opera. In the past I used to sing a lot of jazz with Surrendran Reddy and we recently got together to try out a few numbers, just to see how my voice lay, and I must admit that it did not really click for me. I am completely committed to opera now.
What operatic roles would you like to see yourself singing in the future?
I would like to do I Puritani and I Capuleti e i Montecchi and, obviously, I would like to sing Lucia one day. La Sonnambula is another, and then I would like to do some French opera, especially Hamlet that I don’t think has ever been done in this country. Then I would like to do some of the German repertoire. Unfortunately I don’t see myself ever being able to sing Wagner, but Strauss, certainly. I would like to do Fiordiligi although I don’t seriously see myself as a Mozart singer – but Fiordiligi is definitely one role that would suit my voice. And I would love to do Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos – a perfect coloratura role! And I would dearly love to sing some of the Handel operas, but we never seem to do them here.
At present I am busy exploring new roles because this repertoire is so vast and there are many exciting possibilities out there.
How do you cope with learning new roles in a country where we have such dire shortage of good vocal coaches, and limited opportunities for understudying roles?
That is a very good point you raise because, on the one hand you have the young opera singer who should be self motivated and professional in their approach, therefore, they should be researching and becoming more knowledgeable about their profession, but nobody seems to be doing that. Invariably you find young singers sitting back and waiting for work to come their way, and when it does they are unprepared. This is something that has concerned me a great deal and I have always thought that I must have higher ideals, and this is why I spend so much time on research and listening and trying to build a repertoire for myself even before the opportunity arises to sing certain roles.
I count myself as being extremely fortunate in my career so far. If you count the number of roles I have already done, including La Traviata three times, I have not done badly at all. In fact, I have sung more roles than any other local singer in my age group. But this does not mean that I can sit back and be complacent and believe that I am great. The lack of good vocal coaches is a problem, so, in building repertoire, one needs to be on the ball and seize any and every opportunity that comes along.
You certainly come across as a very self-motivated person.
Well, I have to be in order to only sing or study opera. Many other singers have to work at other unrelated jobs in order to keep body and soul together. In fact, since I began singing, I have never worked in any other field. I might not have always been in the operatic field, but I have always been a singer. I have made it my choice that this is going to work for me, and I have fought hard to get there. When I first sang Susanna, I thought that I had ‘arrived’, and then I realised just what this art form is all about – the sheer dedication and the discipline it requires. I realised that it would be a sin if I did not give 100% to it, and now I think that I am a far more serious singer than when I first arrived on the operatic scene. Winning the FNB Vita Award has shown that the seriousness with which I approach my career has been recognised. It does not mean that now everything is going to fall into my lap and that I can now look forward to a major international career. It means to me that now I am starting to be recognised as a serious opera singer.
As a young singer, are you optimistic about the future of opera in South Africa?
I have had to be optimistic all my life, especially since I started in opera, because I have had to make it work for myself. So, I’m optimistic. I don’t have a choice.
