Monday 9 December 2013

...then I met Rae

It all started in October 2004, when I was 14. I was at my piano teacher’s house, and I was terrified. She had decided I ought to have singing lessons, although I kept insisting that I didn’t want them. I liked singing to myself, it wasn’t something I was serious about. But she had asked an old friend of hers to come and hear me sing. This friend had been a famous opera singer. Even worse. I hated opera, I couldn’t stand it. If my mum wanted to annoy me, she would tell me I should be an opera singer because I had such a loud voice. I just hated the sounds they made. And I had sat through whole operas, this was an opinion based on experience.

I hardly remember a thing anyone said that day. I don’t think I was brave enough to say much myself. This was not what I wanted, and Rae had already said she didn’t teach students so young, but Elizabeth was so happy about the arrangement, so I imagined myself far away, and I took a deep breath. I tried not to look at Rae while I sang ‘I attempt from love’s sickness to fly’ by Henry Purcell. I don’t remember the response to my performance, but somewhere in the blur of words that followed, Rae said, “I will teach her.”

She was always so gracious, so generous, and so encouraging. She allowed me to sing what I wanted, but not exactly how I wanted. I had to learn to sing her way, because, she said, it was the only right way. And to my surprise, she didn’t sound like the modern opera singers at all. I didn’t enjoy lessons, I was still terrified of her, even more so when I heard recordings of her singing the Queen of the Night, and I still hated opera. But gradually, with patience and kindness and encouragement, all of that was reversed.


9 years later, Rae Woodland, one of the greatest sopranos of her generation, lies in a hospital bed, in a deep coma, at the age of 91. I can’t allow myself to cry, or I won’t be able to sing, and what she needs now is music, because music has been her entire life, and it may be all she has left. She might have died quietly on Thursday night when she collapsed, but the diva must have her curtain call, she must have an audience, and take an encore.

In just a few days in hospital, she has found new fans in the patients and the nurses. I have been singing everything I can think of that she taught me, including, of course, ‘I attempt from Love’s sickness’. The nurse who says, “I don’t usually like opera,” has written down Rae’s name on post it notes for everyone who wants to look her up when they get home. But why should they not hear her now? I have a set of portable speakers, and through it I play one of her favourite songs, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’. She wakes a little when she hears her own voice, she might even be trying to sing along, but then a nurse comes in, “We’re moving her to another ward,” he says. “Oh no, not yet!” cries the lady in the next bed, but I leave the speakers playing while they unplug everything and start to wheel the bed away. Rae glides out to the final notes of Handel, and I can imagine the curtains falling behind her.



I have been able to smile all day, but at the first sound of her voice, my tears begin to fall. It was her dream to restore the art of Bel Canto, that has been forgotten in this century, but she never saw her dream come true. It is my mission to pass on what she taught me, and to find new audiences for this way of singing from all those people who ‘don’t usually like opera’, or even those who hate opera as I did; to change their perceptions of opera; to destroy the conventions that surround it; to make a living and exciting art form out of the preserved corpse that it is now. And while I do, I will regularly document my progress right here, so come back next week for more revelations, subscribe, and join the revolution!