by “A live performance is another leap because it is live performance. It is not manipulated. You cannot return. So it is a wonderful adventure,” says Pretty Yende.
We are behind the scenes in the Royal Opera House. The soprano is located between coaching sessions, relaxed at the piano in Athleisure equipment and explains how every performance is in love. “We meet for the first time and it is a bit uncomfortable, but we like each other. We have these similarities that are music,” she explains. “Then it takes us from our heads and at the end of the evening we connected ourselves.”
And if there is someone who can connect the crowd to the music, then it is yende. Now 40, she is currently playing in the title role of Handels Semele in the Royal Opera House, which is not for the faint of heart of the heart: Oliver Mears’ production is a very dark interpretation of an opera that already contains kidnapping and forced marriage. “It’s a difficult story,” explains Yende. “Although it can seem very easy, the actual story of my character is quite intensive with all the beautiful music that Handel wrote. What is surprising about the production is that you visually get the meaning for it.”
Yende grew up in a small town in South Africa and first learned the choir’s choirs from the choir in which she started. “I had to learn my lines again, which is now the main lady, not in the choir. It was wonderful to bring memories of the time when my trip began.”
It was pretty much the trip. Yende sang in top opera houses, but British spectators are with their leading role in the crowning glory of King Charles III. She sang a new piece, which was written by the British composer Sarah class, Sacred Fire for which the occasion and was a breathtaking Canary with Stéphane Rolland and Oodles of Graff Diamonds.
The costume is not quite as dramatic in this opera. But Semele is often a role that focuses on the vanity of the character -“I myself, I will worship it” is the blockbuster -Aaria -but yende tried to round off their emotional reach.
“It may seem in vain superficial, but we have found even more depth in it because we are complex as humans,” says Yende. “I could refer to what it means to be determined, what it means to believe that you deserve love, and you have to do everything you need. Because we deserve love and what is life without love anyway?
With the intensity of the trip that will continue every night as a semele, it must be difficult to shake off as soon as the curtain has come down. But the soprano assures me that she has a solid routine to return to herself. “I have to be with people who know me with whom I can talk to detoxify the emotions. It is difficult for the brain to know that it was not real because when I am on stage, I cannot specify.”
She will assume the line -up to drink something or call her family, a route back in front of a shower, prayer and bed. The way it describes it sounds like a short but intense way of method and becomes a channel for her role. “I embody people who have no bodies and I agree with them,” says Yende. “I am really 100 percent available to be the ship of the music and the character during this time.”
If Yende does not recover or recover from a performance, he learns new music for her repertoire and works with vocal trainers. She is lucky, she tells me that she is a short degree and can keep many different scores in her brain. It is an exciting time in her life as a soprano – in which her voice has matured and the techniques she trained can really come into play.
“I am right at this time when the voice really approaches the start. The time of my career where everything comes together,” she says. “The past 10 years have really helped me navigate to the full majority of the voice.” I grew as much as a person. I have learned some hard lessons in life and some good lessons. “
Like every top musician, practice and training is the backbone of work. But for singers, she says, it is a whole lifestyle. “The voice is an instrument that requires so much more because it depends more on the person how balanced they are,” she says. “Are you a happy person? Are you surrounded by love, surrounded by love? If you don’t balance yourself in yourself, this affects your inner instrument.
It is so important, she explains because the raw power of the opera comes from singing without the help of a microphone. “The purity of the voice, the power of the voice and the connection from soul to soul is something that is very unique,” she says. “That makes the opera very divine.”
Like all opera lovers, she hopes that a new generation will find its way into the art form and its emotional strength. “It is literally soul food,” she says. “It is a gift for all of humanity. This is our gift and we should all in it in it because it is ours.”
Semele in the Royal Opera House, until July 17th, tickets and information Here
