Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Acclaimed British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote's résumé may not be long -- she is young -- but it is astonishingly deep and encompassing. Slim and attractive, she has made a specialty of what are called pants roles in opera, that is women, dressed as men, singing parts designed for female voices.
Octavian is one of the most famous. The 17-year-old Viennese nobleman is a central character in Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier," a Seattle Opera production that opens Saturday night at McCaw Hall. He begins the opera in bed with another Viennese aristocrat, known as the Marschallin, nearly twice his age and ends the opera practically engaged to the pert Sophie, a woman his own age.
Coote's appearance in "Rosenkavalier" is her Seattle Opera debut. This is not the first time she has made an important debut in a trousers role. She did it at San Francisco Opera and the Edinburgh Festival (Ruggiero in Handel's "Alcina"); Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera (Cherubino in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro"); Lyric Opera of Chicago (Hansel in Humperdinck's "Hansel und Gretel"), and Frankfurt Opera (Sesto in Mozart's "La clemenza di Tito").
"I love to throw off the mantle of the female, of being weak. It is very liberating, although casting off my real-life characteristics is physically challenging. However, I have always loved acting, whether the gesture is small or large.
"Octavian is the biggest role for me in this repertory," she said. "The challenge, as it often is in Handel, is to balance all the different parts of the role. Being heartfelt is most important to me, but there is the parody of a woman playing a man playing a woman (to escape exposure as the Marschallin's lover in her bedroom, Octavian becomes a chambermaid). There is high comedy and some dark, black moments. Dramatically, the role is a challenge: someone who believes himself to be in love (with the Marschallin), then falls in love with someone else (Sophie) so quickly. Vocally, it is very grateful -- taking flight, for instance, with Sophie at the very end. The music with the Marschallin is also highly romantic, absolutely glorious."
The one aspect of the role that comes naturally is Octavian's exuberance. Coote has always had an ebullient side to her nature. At age 4, she would pretend the seatbelt in her parents' car was a microphone, and she would "sing" for hours. She used to pretend she was Rudolf Nureyev, doing one leap after another, or Fred Astaire and dance around her bedroom with an imaginary partner.
Her first real connection to singing came when her father drove five hours to London to hear a performance of Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" with tenor Jon Vickers and soprano Jessye Norman. Simon Rattle was the conductor. "I was so moved, I cried all the way home."
Coote studied voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, but the country girl in her had trouble coping with the frenetic life of the city. And she left school before graduation and returned home to work in shops and offices to make a living. However, she continued to study privately and eventually participated in a master class given by noted German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbander, who immediately recognized Coote's potential. From that point on, the English singer knew she had "a chance" at a career. On her way back to London to resume her studies, bad luck intervened when a truck hit her car, filled with "all my possessions," and nearly killed her.
"I had my life flash before me, and I realized that all my life energy had to go to music. That is what I loved and believed in. And so it did. I worked quite hard."
Her big break came in Stuttgart, Germany, during the tenure of American Pamela Rosenberg, who left the company to run San Francisco Opera, returning to Germany a few years later to become the administrative head of the Berlin Philharmonic.
"I had the tiny role of the Page in (Strauss') 'Salome.' Everyone liked me so much, I ended up on stage for the whole performance. "I was tingling all over to be on stage, to be a part of that music. Pamela liked what I did and gave me Ruggiero, which I have sung many times, at San Francisco and the Edinburgh Festival." That was only at the beginning of the new century.
Her career has skyrocketed, in Europe and the United States. The list of major opera houses where she has sung has grown steadily, as well as major orchestras and conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bernard Haitink, William Christie, Pierre Boulez and Valery Gergiev. She does a lot of Handel -- "He is not technically easy but his music fits my voice and feels at home, emotionally and physically" -- and Bach, Mahler, Debussy, Britten, Walton, Monteverdi and Wagner (Flower Maiden in "Parsifal") as well.
Coote loves pants roles, which have served her very well. "I have tremendous fun doing them." But she is now looking beyond those horizons to such quintessential women's roles, although very different in personality and character, as Charlotte in Massenet's "Werther" and the title roles in Bizet's "Carmen" and Rossini's "La Cenerentola" ("Cinderella").
To see more of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for online features, or to subscribe, go to http://seattlep-I.com.
© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All Rights Reserved.
