Germany-based singer home for performance

By Ann Packer

The first time Bianca Andrew professionally sang the role of Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, she had to dive into a swimming pool.

She has many happy memories of that Opera in a Days Bay Garden production in 2010, when she was still a student. But the Frankfurt-resident mezzo soprano, who has since sung the role many times, including with Oper Frankfurt – voted Europe’s best opera house for the last five years – is hoping she won’t have to repeat the dip when she tours New Zealand with New Zealand Opera’s production this June.

Back home for the national tour, Andrew is unsure, when we talk before she heads to Auckland for rehearsals, what kind of production her debut with the company will involve. Unlike that 2010 performance, it will be sung in Italian rather than English. And there certainly won’t be the arduous restrictions that governed the singer’s first performances out of lockdown in Frankfurt last year – 100 people in a 2000-seat auditorium that normally sells out even for the most obscure operas, physical distancing onstage, separation between singers and the pit orchestra, a masked chorus, no touching props, singing in a Perspex box… The production was reduced from three to two hours, with a smaller orchestra.

“We made it work and our audience loved it, of course,” she says, “but case numbers in Frankfurt increased that week, so we were closed down again.”

After that lockdown, all was going well with a revived production of Hansel and Gretel until the dress rehearsal, when a last-minute level change meant the opera couldn’t open to the public.

As for this long-awaited production of Figaro , postponed from 2020, Andrew wasn’t even sure she’d be allowed to come –she needed permission as a member of the permanent soloist ensemble of Oper Frankfurt to leave Germany. As it happens, restrictions mean live performances there have been prohibited since December and show no sign of lifting.

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“I’m very grateful that my theatre allowed me to come to New Zealand for such a long time to sing in this production,” she says.

“It means the world to me to be performing again.”

Still young enough at 31 to play a teenage boy, Andrew is one of four Kiwi singers in the New Zealand Opera cast who have travelled from overseas. Barely out of MIQ, she had just a couple of days to catch up with her mum in Queenstown, and dad and siblings in Lowry Bay, before heading to Auckland for rehearsals.

She is disappointed her German partner of a year was not able to gain a visa to accompany her (“it was a very difficult and painful process”), but is still happy to pay the price to return to a Covid-safe and socially cohesive nation.

“We know this is a dangerous illness – both physically and socially,” she says.

While the first lockdown in Germany was similar to the one here, she thinks that country is now losing its initial sense of social cohesion, with fewer people willing to wear masks and observe social distancing.

“When life has been restricted for so long, people struggle to maintain their sense of community and social responsibility. They stop thinking about other people. New Zealanders should not take their safety and freedom here for granted – it’s a team effort and it’s priceless.”

Andrew is booked to return to Germany at the end of July – her contract with Oper Frankfurt finishes July 2022.

“It’s a precarious time for all performing artists now. Mercifully, I have one more year of employment ahead.”

The Wellington season of New Zealand Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro runs 23- 27 June at The Opera House.