The Wagnerian, 25 July 2012

So tell us how and why did you find yourself concentrating on the baroque repertoire? Was it a natural progression, an area that you wanted to concentrate in or were there other factors?

RN: I began my postgraduate study at the Royal College of Music when I was just 22. While many of my fellow students were encouraged to sing later repertoire, they were in the main a little older than me, and my singing teacher was very much of the opinion I should concentrate on Mozart and earlier repertoire alongside more contemporary composers, missing out the Romantic period entirely.

At that time I had a reasonable stylistic awareness of baroque music from my time at York University (although I was studying in the linguistics department, I spent most of my time in the music department and singing in Peter Seymour's wonderful Yorkshire Bach Choir) but my voice was large and quite wayward. I aspired to make the controlled sound that I'd heard from baroque specialists such as Emma Kirkby and Nancy Argenta. I love the complexity of JS Bach and the more expansive, emotional music of Handel and I made it a mission to be able to sing it in a stylistically appropriate way, taking much of the natural vibrato out of my sound and learning to sing more lightly. I soon began to pick up professional singing work using this baroque sound and even when I made my ROH debut in Parsifal, Sir Simon Rattle asked me to sing in a very controlled way without much vibrato, as did Antonio Pappano when I returned there to sing Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos.

I have loved my time in baroque repertoire, but as I get older, it becomes harder to reign in my sound. Many of the conductors are happy for me to let my voice out a little more now - I think the fashion for tiny voices in early music is perhaps waning a little. For many years I've specialised in concert singing and I auditioned for the role of Helmwige in Longborough's 2010 production of Walküre because I wanted to get back into opera. I felt very apprehensive taking the plunge because after holding my voice back deliberately for so many years it was quite an emotional experience letting it flow. No-one ever tells you you're ready to sing Wagner - you have to dare to try for yourself. Now I've had the experience of singing Helmwige and Sieglinde I'm really excited about this change of direction. If just feels so fantastic to sing this music.

TW: Your reply in part, reminded of something Flagstad said in 1950 when she recorded something called “I am not a teacher" (you can find it here) It was designed to provide advice to the many young singers who wrote to her asking how best to start singing Wagner. Her advice was "Don't do it! She went on to say that Wagner is something that should only be attempted at the "end" of a sopranos career (by "end" we find that she was 32!). Her advice was that a singer should begin with lighter roles and that they should develop naturally into Wagner – learning to control their voices first and develop control and their overall technique. This she saw as a natural progression. To emphasis this she said that she had three teachers and that she never had to unlearn anything. 

From what you have said it seems you have followed this path closely , albeit developing with Baroque rather than "light" and dramatic Italian ones

With that in mind, how has what you have learned, while singing Bach and Handel, etc, prepared you for singing Wagner? Have you had to "unlearn" anything?

RN: My own theory is that there is an essential similarity about my two styles of singing.  In order to carry over a Wagnerian orchestra it is essential to sing with a huge amount of blade. This blade is also a huge part of my early music sound, but with most of the warmth, depth and vibrato taken out as I aim for a transparent, ethereal quality. I could bore you technically with how it's done but I won't. Suffice to say that I use all of the control and resonance that I learned for my Bach in my Wagner. The main thing I've had to "unlearn" is that I am used to switching on my vibrato as a colour for early music, whereas it's important to keep it spinning the whole time when I'm singing Wagner.

TW: I see. So in many ways, this is the natural progression as suggested by Flagstad. Still, can I then ask why you have you gone virtually straight from Baroque to Wagner soprano roles? Despite what you have said, which make much sense, did you not consider the other traditional” dramatic soprano roles first - especially those from the romantic period- Aida, Turandot, etc? All demanding roles of course but still perhaps less so than the "beasts" of Isolde or Brunnhilde and traditionally – with a very few exceptions – the accepted route to Wagner? Do you feel you have missed anything by not having sung these roles or will your extensive career in Handel and Bach - for example - bring something that the likes of even Flagstad would not have had? 

RN: I know it is a huge leap from Bach and Handel to Wagner. I have done a large variety of vocal repertoire in between the two, but it has mainly been contemporary opera and concert repertoire. I have found during my time in the profession that it is immensely important to specialise - there are thousands of sopranos. I'm lucky enough to have perfect pitch and I have always enjoyed the challenge of working on demanding new music. In the UK we're good at nurturing our contemporary opera and quite a lot of it gets put on. I've also always enjoyed singing in concerts and my career has naturally led me in that direction up to now. I would say over the last couple of years my focus has been changing from my favourite concert repertoire being Bach and Handel to now being Beethoven 9 and the Verdi Requiem. I'm currently on a tour of Bach concerts with Masaaki Suzuki though and loving every minute of it. 

As a singer it's important to have the biggest range of colours possible in your palette. I used some of my lightest for Sieglinde and have already found places in Götterdämmerung which need the same clarity and where the scoring is so sensitive, the smallest sound will work. I sincerely hope that the dramatic and musical demands of some of the contemporary opera I've done and the attention to detail and study of the music in its purest form from my concert career will inform my singing of Wagner. I'd dearly love to bring something special to these roles. Recently working with Sir John Tomlinson, Susan Bullock and Richard Berkeley-Steele was possibly the most moving performance of my career. I aspire to being able to communicate as clearly the emotion behind the music and the text and inhabit the roles in the same way as these wonderful performers and I hope some aspects of my background will help me on my journey.

TW: That is very refreshing to hear. There can be a tendency in performers new to Wagner (and sometimes alas, not so new) to miss the lyricism, the “lightness” and “delicacy” that is not just so clearly there but is needed. Recognising this in the Wagner seems to have been more common in previous generations of Wagner sopranos but has become less common as time progresses: Florence Easton and Frida Leider are perfect examples of performers who found just that subtlety and lyricism in Wagner (Easton even called herself a "lyric dramatic soprano" after all) 

Having considered what you have said, I wonder why, given the complexities of Baroque performance and the shear variety of ”tonal colour and depth" within that repertoire, more performers with the vocal "heft and staying power" to surmount a Wagnerian orchestra - and with a background such as yourself - have not attempted Wagnerian roles. From what you have said, Baroque would seem a perfect place to develop the prerequisite skills (perhaps more so than Boehme, and perhaps even the dramatic soprano roles in the romantic repertoire?). One assumes - perhaps you could deny or confirm - that in some instances it is simply that most artists simply prefer the Baroque over the romantic? 

RN: I think that is very true - certainly in my own case. But I would also say that my own experience of the profession in the current climate is that it simply isn't possible to have a free choice of the repertoire one will sing unless one is immediately "world class". As a young singer starting out it's important to say yes to all offers of work. Some of these naturally seem to lead to more offers in the same genre. However, that said, my feeling for baroque music has, I am sure, to some extent aided my success in this area. I have found personally that there is more in common between early music singing and the heavier German repertoire than there is between baroque and Italian repertoire of the Romantic period. The range certainly is more similar (I am not a stratospheric soprano who is comfortable at the tessitura of many of the bel canto roles). My favourite Handel roles (Armida in Rinaldo and Medea in Teseo) certainly require both power and stamina. 

Rachel Nicholls: Sei Lob und Preis and the final Alleluia from J. S. Bach's Cantata No. 51 "Jauchzet Gott."

TW: I have had the fortune to listen to  a wide variety of your performances now- from Bach, to Handel, to Wagner - and I am, at the risk of sounding sycophantic, struck by the both the level of your "vocalversatility" and the ease at which you are able to change your "vocal texture" between them.

As far as vocal versatility in concerned, I would hope that I am always music-led. If I were playing my violin I wouldn't play Bach in the same way as I would play Bruch. Obviously instrumentalists have a choice over whether to perform on authentic instruments or not. I like to think my voice is a modern instrument which is used in a stylistically appropriate way though. Versatility is something I have always aimed for in my performing. It doesn't always go down well with casting directors and agents (my wonderful agent James is the exception) who prefer to put singers in neat little boxes according to "fach", but it does tend to sit well with conductors and it has meant that I've rarely had to turn down a job. I hope though that in Wagner, if all goes well, I will find a niche for myself which is musically fulfilling and vocally suitable. I have plans to settle here certainly for a while if this proves to be the case. 

TW: I can assure you that I and others that have heard you in Walkure are more than pleased that you have decided to take the “leap” into Wagner. While on the subject of the voice, Wagner, and extending your repertoire; I believe you are studying with Dame Anne Evans - well known to anyone with even a passing interest in Wagner. Could you tell us about this? 

RN: When I was working on the Longborough Walküre last year, I was very much impressed with Alwyn Mellor's singing. It seemed to be hugely sensitive, warm and sensual as well as being incredibly powerful.  I knew she had been studying with Dame Anne Evans. When I was booked to play Sieglinde at St Endellion, I felt I really needed some expert coaching. My agent contacted Dame Anne for me and asked if she would be willing to hear me and give me some advice. I have been very lucky that she has agreed to teach me. She is a wonderful teacher. Very supportive but very exacting. She knows this repertoire so completely that she is able to speak with absolute conviction about every single word and every single bar. I am hugely grateful to her and to the Mastersingers who have given me a grant towards my study with her while I work on Brünnhilde.

TW: Rachel, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us during what is a very busy time (Rachel was performing Bach with Suzuki in Japan during this interview).

The Observer, 7 August 2011

Rachel Nicholls, striking and vulnerable, was his Sieglinde. Her husband, Hunding, was Andrew Slater. Or rather, her husband Andrew Slater was Hunding. In life, too, they are married, as are Bullock and Berkeley-Steele. An entire new prayer book may be required to sort that lot out.

The Guardian, 6 June 2015

Negus took a risk on young singers who would never otherwise have had the chance to perform Wagner. Rachel Nicholls, who made the rapid transition from being a baroque soprano to performing Brünnhilde, says her success is down to the supportive team atmosphere and the teaching of Negus, – “the most selfless and unegotistical conductor I know. He puts his heart and soul into a project and everyone wants to do their best because we love him.”

The Independent, 19 June 2013

Rachel Nicholls’s Brünnhilde is a strong, shining, secure sunbeam of a soprano, and a dramatic joy too, progressing from eager demi-goddess to vulnerable woman, transformed by the vision of human love provided by Siegmund. Lee Bissett proved a complex and unforgettable Sieglinde, devastating in her final utterance of the ‘redemption’ theme. Alison Kettlewell’s poised and vivid-toned Fricka won sympathy, reducing her Wotan to humiliated pulp.

The Independent, 7 June 2015

The shining sonic arc of a soprano voice in full flight cuts through the air in a Tower Hamlets backstreet. The Cotswolds-based Longborough Festival Opera team has come here to rehearse its new production of Tristan und Isolde, which opens on 12 June. Anthony Negus, Longborough’s expert Wagnerian music director, is conducting, ratcheting up the intensity; and in a sunny studio with seated cast and piano accompaniment, the sound is overwhelming as Isolde – Rachel Nicholls – lets rip.

The British dramatic soprano is performing this marathon role for the first time, and it’s fitting that it should be at Longborough, where her rise to fame in Wagnerian spheres began. The country-house opera offered a complete, staged Ring cycle during the composer’s bicentenary year, 2013; Nicholls starred as Brünnhilde. Turning 40 this year, she is blessed with a bright-edged, flexible and voluminous voice that has an uplifting sense of release and freedom, combined with precision and control – a near-ideal mix.

But Isolde, as Nicholls points out, is a huge challenge, with more music to sing than Brünnhilde has in all of her Ring operas put together. Isolde – the Irish princess who comes to Cornwall to marry King Marke, only to fall in love en route with his emissary, Tristan – experiences deep inner conflicts, which are often expressed intimately. “While bits of the role are as muscular as Brünnhilde, there’s more quiet singing, more passages of light and shade, which makes it more interesting to sing,” Nicholls says. “Probably there’s nothing in it that’s quite so much fun as theRing, charging about with a spear – as Brünnhilde I got very good at swords, spears and battles. But Isolde’s language is subtler; it is all about feelings, rather than action.”

Nicholls, a down-to-earth personality with ready sense of humour, cropped hair and sensible shoes, hails originally from Bedford. She attended a local comprehensive school whose excellent music department, together with the county’s free music provision, offered her ample opportunities to test her wings. “My school happened to be fabulous for music,” she says. “Quite a few of us have made fantastic careers in the music world thanks to our teacher there.”

On Saturdays she attended London’s Trinity College of Music’s junior department, learning the piano and the violin: “The county paid for me to go there and paid for my travel too.” Bedfordshire offered not only a county youth choir, in which she sang, but also a youth opera group for the 15 to 25s: “Every year it would put on a fully staged opera with orchestra. I joined it when I was 15 – and I knew straight away that that’s what I wanted to do.”

But after taking a degree in languages, plus postgraduate study at the Royal College of Music, it was in baroque music that she began her singing career. Changing from its light, somewhat constrained purity of tone to the full-blooded dramatic soprano repertoire did follow the needs of her voice, she says, but it also required immense determination.

It all began at Longborough. She first arrived there to sing Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. “I loved it,” she says, “but at that point Wagner wasn’t really on my radar.” Longborough was planning its Ring cycle at the time, and Nicholls’s agent persuaded her to audition for a small role in Die Walküre.

“I was seduced by the music,” says Nicholls. “My friend Lee Bisset was singing Sieglinde. I listened to her and thought: I want to be able to sing like that. And I listened to the role of Brünnhilde and realised that that was what I wanted to sing. I knew I had the necessary weight in the middle range of my voice, and that the soprano Alwyn Mellor wasn’t available for the role at that time, so I volunteered to do Götterdämmerung.” It was a huge leap – both of repertoire and of faith – but she would not be dissuaded.

“I did wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew,” she admits, “but I prepared it thoroughly – and I had the chance to study with Anne Evans. That’s the thing that’s made the biggest difference to my life.” Evans was one of the preeminent sopranos of her day, especially celebrated for Wagner: “She can take me through every note and word and suggest different ways to think about it and the emotion behind it.”

She and her husband, the baritone Andrew Slater, who sings Tristan’s friend Kurwenal at Longborough, live in the Peak District and, she says, help one another maintain a healthy perspective. “As a baritone, Andrew usually has to play a king, a murderer, or somebody’s dad – often mine!” she remarks.

“Singing’s very important to us both, but it’s not the whole story. If you put all of yourself into whether or not people like you and your singing on stage – which is entirely subjective – it’s a recipe for disaster. Sometimes you’ll get horrible reviews, or maybe someone’s going to decide you look fat in your costume and they’ll say something mean. And if everything about you is poured into that little public space, you could end up a very unhappy person. 

The Arts Desk, 18 July 2012

…the astonishing warmth and richness of Rachel Nicholls’ Brünnhilde… Nicholls’ Brünnhilde is in every way an extraordinary creation. Well-known as a baroque and classical soprano with extensions (she was a Valkyrie here two years ago and a Flower Maiden at Covent Garden), she emerges now as a dramatic soprano of real brilliance and intense expressive power. The voice is clean, bright, but with dark colourings, strong in the low register, firm and secure on top, and with a fluency of line that even the greatest Wagner sopranos sometimes miss. She can also act. She knows how to act with her voice, her body and her face; quite simply she has presence. In the immolation she commands the stage (and to his credit Privett lets her do so). At other times she is the wronged heroine, vulnerable and bewildered. She reminds us that Wagner, among other minor talents, was a penetrating psychologist. It’s one of the most affecting performances I can remember.