Maria Stuarda Programme Book 2022

BEING
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU WENT TO?
The first opera I went to was Mozart’s The Marriage
of Figaro, in the Gaiety in the late 1980s. My
outstanding memories are Regina Nathan singing
Susanna. I completely fell for the character and the
costumes and the colours. There was a chequered,
chessboard-type floor, on the diagonal, like you
see in period houses, but with the black there were
neon colours. The scene that I have the picture of
is the trio in Act II, where the Count has come back
into the room and Susanna’s been locked in the
cupboard. I remember every time she had a line,
she’d just lean out the side and sing. That was when
I fell in love with opera. I came out thinking, I really
want to play Susanna one day, having no real idea of
what that meant in terms of anything to do with the
journey. I wasn’t really singing at that point. I was
only six or seven. I’ve got a very strong visual picture
of it, but no memory of the music or the characters.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU SANG IN?
I’m pretty sure that Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas
came first, at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
When I met the director, Derek Chapman, I
said to him, “You played the rat in the panto
when I was a child!”. I also remember standing,
watching Nora King singing Dido’s Lament, but
not much else. I’ve a much stronger memory of
Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea, which I
did when I was a Young Artist with Opera Theatre