Singing Aloud

By Muriel Cooper Photos Yanni

The saying, ‘It ain't over till the fat lady sings,’ might not be politically correct today. It refers to Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie in Wagner's Ring Cycle, who, after fifteen gruelling hours of singing over five operas, finally throws herself into Siegfried’s funeral pyre in remorse for having him killed – and also to save the world.

It is true that the role of Brünnhilde demands a great deal of the singer, the dramatic soprano who doesn’t usually come into her own until she’s in her forties. “That’s great,” you might say, “at least there are roles for women in their forties.” But the dramatic soprano’s path is no easy one, as dramatic mezzo soprano and presenter of RPP FM’s Art to Arias, Katrina Waters, knows very well.

Katrina was the recipient of several scholarships in her early career, including one to the Royal College of Music in London. She has sung all over Europe, performed with Opera Australia, is on the principal list of Victorian Opera and is the current president of the Peninsula Chamber Musicians.

Katrina studied law and music concurrently at the Australian National University. This required courage and persistence because, at the time, concurrent degrees were not allowed. Katrina and her pianist mother lobbied the university relentlessly until they finally let her do it.

Now, after a stellar music career, Katrina is doing her PhD in music, entitled ‘Building BrünnhildeAn investigation into the mid-career transitions of female dramatic voices.’ For the project, Katrina interviewed thirteen dramatic sopranos who had sung Brünnhilde from the Metropolitan to Opera Australia. She commissioned a song cycle, ‘Songs for Loud Women,’ based on their stories.

Katrina says, “I really thought I was going to write a manual. The main research question was: How did they build body, voice, and psyche to sing a role like Brünnhilde? Especially given that most of them have had this career break. They don't come into these roles until their forties. And we don't see women on our stages in their forties and fifties very often.”

“You need the maturity, strength and stamina to sing over these incredibly huge orchestras that Wagner created. However, my PhD goes a little further because it’s a creative practice PhD; I wanted to create music where Brünnhilde demands a new character arc. Why, with these incredibly powerful voices of women singing in their forties and fifties, are they still playing an ingénue who, to save the world, jumps into the fire and kills herself? That’s where Songs for Loud Women comes in, to show a way through addressing gender inequity in this profession that I love.”

I sing loud. I'm gonna blow your wig off, I’m not going to be the ingénue, I’m not going to be pretty

“Less than 12% of conductors, directors, producers, and costume designers are women. So we tell stories written by men, mostly directed and conducted by men, through the male gaze. So it's no wonder that the soprano always has to die for her transgressions. My PhD project drew on the stories of these women. They told me stories of the misogyny they’ve encountered, and how they rise above it and take ownership of it, saying, “OK, this is what I've got. I sing loud. I'm gonna blow your wig off, I’m not going to be the ingénue, I’m not going to be pretty.”

Katrina has commissioned five Australian female composers to craft the song cycle. The first song, In the Fire written by Melody Eötvös, is about the young, loud, rambunctious girls with loud voices.

“I have two daughters, and they have loud, expressive voices. We wanted to use Brünnhilde’s famous battle cry and skewer some archetypal male songs, like sea shanties and footy songs. In the original story, Brünnhilde is put into the fire for defying her patriarch. This is the song we imagine her singing after this banishment.”

Katrina continues: “The second song, Silencing Small, is about all the messages women are given to minimise their voice, themselves, and their body. That’s written by an incredible young composer called Roya Safaei, a second-generation Iranian immigrant. One of my interview subjects told the story of being on a young artists' program, a very famous one, and constantly having her agency taken away from her. During this time she was also raped by someone in the Opera House and she put these things together: her inability to say “no” and to speak up for herself, which lead to her not being able to say “no” when she needed to.”

“The middle song is about motherhood, All That We Bear, written by Anne Cawrse, an Adelaide-based composer. Because of my own Mum (who died when Katrina was twenty) and my choice to have children as well as pursue an opera career, that was a song that kept bringing me to tears. Out of the thirteen women I interviewed, only three had had children, and I honestly thought the rest had chosen their career, but that was very far from the truth. In fact, more than half had wanted to have children. It’s a complicated choice, and it’s also not a choice, so it was hard for Anne to get all those perspectives into one song.”

“The fourth song is a send-up that skewers operatic archetypes. It’s almost a cabaret song called What the Fach? Fach is the German word for how we classify voice types. A dramatic soprano is very different from a coloratura soprano or a light soubrette or even a mezzo soprano, and our voices are classified and put into these boxes. The song uses a play on the word 'Fach' to ask the questions: Why do women have to die in opera? Why is it that the critics, who are mostly men, always review the size of the woman before they review their voice, and baritones and tenors’ physiques don't get the same critiques. 'Women are the jewels of the operatic crown,' as the French philosopher Catherine Clément said, but they rarely get to decide how the stories are told. That is thankfully changing, but because the music is so beautiful, we’re sort of seduced into never asking why these women die. It’s composed by Sally Whitwell, who’s also recording the cycle with me. She's an ARIA award-winning pianist.”

“The fifth song is Technicolour and it offers an answer as to ‘Why do we opera singers do this to ourselves?’ Why do these women put themselves into an industry that is so goddamn difficult and really skewed against women? I wanted to know why these women did this, and, of course, the reason why they pursue this art is that they love it. There’s something indescribable about finding mastery and ownership of your large, loud voice in your forties. In their twenties and thirties, they are squeezing themselves into a repertoire that doesn’t fit; they finally put on their big girl pants and say, 'This is what I can do. This is what fits.' And they get the accolades for it. Technicolour is written by Katy Abbott, who was MSO’s composer-in-residence last year.”

These dramatic sopranos are wise women. They were the best mentorships of my life, these people whom I could look up to

“These dramatic sopranos are wise women. They were the best mentorships of my life; these people whom I could look up to. They had beautiful things to say about dramatic voices being late bloomers both in their voice and self-understanding. When you find that, it’s like going from black and white to Technicolour.”

Katrina met her husband, Tom Pugh, when she repatriated from England and started teaching voice at Brighton Grammar. They, along with their two daughters, Sophie and Olivia, worked their way down the peninsula and finally settled in Mount Eliza during the first COVID-19 lockdown. “The space, the bush, and the beaches within 5 kilometres – we had a blissful lockdown. There was no singing work, but we had a ball.”

Listen to Art to Arias on RPP FM 98.7 on Thursdays at 11 am.

Songs for Loud Women is supported by a performing arts development grant from the Mornington Peninsula Shire, the ANU Gender Institute, and an Early Phase Residency from The Street Theatre in Canberra. Whitwell and Waters are currently recording the cycle in preparation for live performances in the ACT, Victoria and South Australia.

IG: @katrina_waters_mezzo