Singers surviving in a pandemic with London whānau

Soprano Madeleine Pierard is one of the organisers of Whānau London Voices. She and baritone Julien Van Mellaerts are leading a large group of free-lance New Zealand opera singers in the UK who have recently recorded a recital from the Royal Albert Hall for broadcast and livestream this month. We talked on the eve of that recording about Pierard’s London-based career and dealing with the impact of the pandemic and UK lockdowns.

Soprano Madeleine Pierard: “…if I lost my voice forever the next day I could hold on to that moment…

Photo credit: Victoria Cadisch

In December last year New Zealand soprano Madeleine Pierard had what she describes as “a pinnacle moment” at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In the Conductor’s Room she sang Chrysothemis, a major role in Richard Strauss’s Elektra, for Sir Antonio Pappano, the English-Italian Music Director of the Royal Opera. “Tony is,” she tells me, “as famous as he is for a reason. He is musically extraordinary but also in person he’s incredibly charismatic and gets the absolute best out of singers.”

She sang the whole “massive” role alone with piano accompaniment while Pappano conducted. “Chrysothemis is a much larger, more dramatic role than I’ve been singing historically, but this is where my voice is going. That was the most magical experience – it felt like the easiest thing in the world. I felt that if I lost my voice forever the next day I could hold on to that moment for many years.” 

As a result Pierard was booked to cover the role for the scheduled Royal Opera production of Elektra this year while singing Aufseherin, another soprano role in the work. 2020 was shaping up as a busy year for this former Lexus Song Quest winner who has performed in numerous Royal Opera House productions and held a role as Jette Parker Young Artist there earlier in her career. As well as UK engagements her plans included singing in Beethoven’s 9th in New Zealand and a “Messiah” tour of Australia with conductor Nicholas McGegan.

Then COVID-19 arrived. The UK locked down, the Opera House closed its doors and almost every engagement in Pierard’s diary was cancelled. Like many other singers in London and performing artists around the world, she was devastated. “For the first three months I couldn’t sing a note, couldn’t look at a score – it was too painful.” 

However, another of her skills opened the door to a return to singing. Pierard, whose many talents include professional cake-decorating – she started a food blog during lockdown – is also a capable website designer and has helped many artists and small organisations with this work. While working on the website for a pandemic-inspired project, Bitesize Proms, which streamed short videos daily to raise money for the charity HELP Musicians UK, she was offered a place in the line-up.    

“The offer came on a Monday for a vacant slot accompanied by top repetiteur Malcolm Martineau on the Wednesday and I said ‘there’s no way I can be ready!’” Mezzo Jennifer Johnston, organiser of the Bitesize project, was firm. “’Just do it’, she said. Pierard made a dangerous choice, Come Sing and Dance by Herbert Howells, an old carol setting she finds very emotional. “Every time I sing it I get a bit teary – but somehow it worked.”

It also led to more work. Susan Bullock, a British Wagnerian soprano well-known at the New York Met, was working with Grange Park Opera on a televised version of Benjamin Britten’s opera Owen Wingrave, being filmed in large houses around London. She heard Pierard’s recording session and offered her the role of Mrs Julian in the production. “After that I could sing a bit,” says Pierard. “It was like breaking a bad spell.”  

Having found her own way back to singing Pierard is now working with baritone Julien van Mellaerts and a group of New Zealand free-lance opera singers in London on a project called Whānau London Voices. Their aim was clear – to get the singers, some “out of work and struggling”, some in “desperate” circumstances, on stage again for a one-off recital recorded for broadcast and filmed for streaming.  

Whānau London Voices at Royal Albert Hall

Photo credit: Claire Egan

“What started,” van Mellaerts wrote recently, “as a simple idea of performing again has grown into something that is bringing dozens of performers together to share and celebrate our country, culture and what unites us. We’re doing this to raise our spirits – and much-needed funds.”

The second national UK lockdown almost scuttled their plans but fortuitously the venue had shifted the recording date back a day “so we just scraped in”, says Pierard. Some of this country’s most exciting ex-patriate operatic talent gathered, socially distanced, in the Royal Albert Hall on November 4 to record a recital of New Zealand music for voice, including Maori waiata and Pasifika song alongside music by New Zealand composers including Douglas Lilburn, Jenny McLeod, Ross Harris, Gareth Farr, Anthony Ritchie and David Hamilton. The emotional occasion began with a pōwhiri led by Ngati Rānana London Maori Club.

Many of the singers are well-known to New Zealand audiences from success in our Lexus Song Quest, other competitions and roles in NZ Opera productions. Tenor Filipe Manu, who will sing a traditional Tongan song, was finalist in the 2018 Lexus Song Quest and is Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House. Baritone Benson Wilson, Lexus winner in 2016 and Young Artist at English National Opera, will sing a Maori lullaby arranged by Robert Wiremu. Other Lexus Song Quest finalists and winners in the group who have been building successful careers in London include Isabella Moore, Phillip Rhodes and Madison Nonoa. More than a dozen other New Zealand singers including post-graduate students, “some,” says Pierard, “feeling despair about their futures”, have been comforted by singing in the Whānau project with their compatriots.

Julien van Mellaerts recording the song Kiwi by Gareth Farr and Bill Manhire

Photo credit: Claire Egan

Touring last year in New Zealand van Mellaerts premiered Ornithological Anecdotes by Gareth Farr, settings of witty native bird poems by Bill Manhire, and he included “Kiwi” in the London recital. He describes it as “a brilliant little song” which was added to the set and premiered at Wigmore Hall earlier this year. The recital repertoire has a New Zealand focus because, Pierard says, that music connects the singers to their homeland at a time when most are yearning for the safe shores of far-away Aotearoa.

Whānau London Voices recital from Royal Albert Hall is broadcast on RNZ Concert on 23 November and available on film and YouTube from that date. Watch here.

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