BY CUTCOMMON
Siobhan Stagg is a traveller. The soprano graduated from the University of Melbourne and has since performed with orchestras and opera companies around the world. She has sung in France, Denmark, and Switzerland — all in the same year — among other countries throughout her illustrious career.
In each place, she picks up a piece of history or inspiration that she may use to infuse her music making, and this will shine in her upcoming chamber recital that features music from many of the countries she has visited.
In this interview, Siobhan tells us about her travels, and how she curated the program for her performance with UK baritone Roderick Williams, which takes place this September in Iwaki Auditorium.
Siobhan will also perform Fauré’s Requiem with musicians of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, having been last year’s Soloist in Residence.
Hi Siobhan! Your recital performance has an enormous program — from Mozart to Vaughan Williams, Boulanger to Verdi. How did you come to curate it and choose all the songs you wanted to perform together with Roderick Williams?
Solo recitals are probably the most demanding of platforms for an artist as the program is centred entirely on you. It’s nice to therefore be sharing the stage with Roderick on this occasion, so we can bounce the energy off one another. It’ll be a fun and intimate morning of music, with some chatting and stories along the way.
Roderick and I performed Papageno and Pamina in The Magic Flute at London’s Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 2017. It was a milestone for us both, as it marked our main stage house debuts and was streamed in over 2000 cinemas worldwide, as well as being released on DVD. As a nod to this shared history, Roderick suggested we start the recital with Bei Männern from The Magic Flute. We then move into some of our signature song repertoire: English and French art song.
We touch on Verdi’s La Traviata, which is what I’d call ‘stretch repertoire’ for us: we’ve both enjoyed playing Violetta and Germont separately in recent years, although it’s not really our staple repertoire. There’ll be some laughs before lunch, too. […] Roderick is a real people person — he wins hearts wherever he goes. As well as having a beautiful voice, he also composes and arranges music; a skill we’ll benefit from in our recital.
Timothy Young was involved in the programming discussions from the outset, and will treat us to a piano solo in the middle. He’s a formidable pianist, and it’ll be a delight to work with him again after our Messiaen recital at the Melbourne Recital Centre in 2023.
Your career is one that involves jet-setting all over the world to perform in those sorts of experiences, and you have travelled to the places where a lot of this music was composed. How have your travels helped to inform the way you approach a program like this?
Interesting question. The English repertoire that I’m singing in this program is by Dutch-American composer Richard Hageman. I’ve sung this music in his birthplace — Leeuwarden in the Netherlands — and wandered past the house where he later lived in Amsterdam.
All the travel and cultural cross-training has a ‘compound interest’ type of effect on my interpretations; the palette from which I draw creative ideas increases exponentially with exposure and diversity of musical environments.
Having worked regularly in France in recent years, my interpretations of French song feel increasingly natural. I don’t need to translate every individual word anymore: the text resonates as though it’s my own language.
What do you find most special about performing on your home stages, having just performed in France, Denmark, and Switzerland? That is, what is important to you about the personal connection you will always share with Australian orchestras and performances?
It’s undoubtedly comfortable to perform in Australia; there’s no friction in terms of language or cultural barriers, or the way a rehearsal runs. But I do enjoy — and indeed thrive on — the slight discomfort of being in a foreign place, learning to cope just outside my comfort zone. That’s where real growth happens, and your whole schema and way of thinking expands.
I prioritise coming back and reconnecting with Australia each year, but for me it’s most interesting to spend my time oscillating between the two musical worlds: the one where I’ve grown up — Australia, and the one I’m still growing into myself — everywhere else.
What do you like to get up to when you come back to Australia before travelling internationally again?
I like to revisit my old stomping grounds, and see familiar places with new eyes. These ‘nostalgia tours’ often bring to light old memories, and make me appreciate things differently. Sometimes it’s the little things which make you smile: the supermarkets and pharmacies are top-notch in Australia, and the hospitality is second to none.
I love it when old friends come to my performances and we can say hello afterwards, and the sound of Australian birdsong in the morning.
So what can audiences expect from this kind of recital of songs you’ll be singing with Roderick? Did you find a theme or mood that unites the works?
We played around with several themes: love and marriage and epic journeys, finally settling on ‘I Want Magic!’, which is the title of one of the arias in the program. It’s a fitting moniker, because magic is exactly what we all hope to discover from any cultural outing: to be transported to another plane, even just for a few moments.
We have played around with breaking up song cycles and their order — the overall arc and emotional impact for the audience should be paramount.
You’re so often performing in large-scale operas and with orchestral accompaniment. What do you most look forward to when it comes to an intimate recital like this in which only three of you will take to the stage?
Singers tend to worry about being audible when singing unamplified over the orchestra. There can be an unspoken pressure to sing forte the whole time. With recitals however, all that goes away. We can channel our purest poet and inner storyteller, spinning quiet pianissimi and using an abundance of colour and character voices.
There’s no hiding in a recital: no elaborate costumes, backdrops or crazy staging. You see the artist’s full personalities on display.
And on the flip side, what are you most looking forward to when it comes to performing in Faure’s Requiem, which you also have happening?
Fauré’s Requiem is not as grand and dramatic as the requiems of Brahms, Verdi, or Mozart, yet it reliably instills a deep sense of calm and emotional rejuvenation, particularly during the final choral movement, In paradisum. This is deeply human music: unfussy, elegant, and enlivening.
The soprano soloists only sings about 4 minutes — Pie Jesu — in the middle of the piece. It’s a solemn prayer for peace after death; understated, sombre, and exposed.
When I was 22, I was asked to sing it on national television at the state funeral for the Black Saturday bushfire victims at St Paul’s Cathedral. The Age commentary at the time said even ‘Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was visibly moved’.
Hear Siobhan Stagg and Roderick Williams in Recital at 11am September 1 in Iwaki Auditorium.
Siobhan and Roderick will also sing in Fauré’s Requiem with musicians of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra this 29-31 August in Hamer Hall.
Image by Simon Pauly.
