It was a bit more expensive when I heard her sing in a second cycle by ENO, this
time back in Liverpool in 1980.
I quite regularly note the passing of people towards whatever region we all go. I rarely do full obituaries. However, I am today so moved.
Colin has just rung to tell me that Radio 3 has passed on the news that Rita Hunter has died.
It's probable that you've never heard of her but she was a renowned operatic singer and I heard her at the height of her powers.
I remember listening to a Radio 3 broadcast of the famous Sadler's Wells Opera (then on the cusp of becoming English National Opera) performances of their new Siegfried in February/March 1973. I was newly entering the world of work as Clerical Assistant for Merseyside Arts Association. Later that year I listened, on a crackling transistor radio, to one of the first full cycles of that production of Wagner's Ring conducted by Reginald Goodall.
Earlier that summer, SWO visited the Liverpool Empire and I heard her in the
flesh as the Trovatore Leonora. January 1976 and, a student in London,
I attended a full ring cycle with Denise and
Ronnie and Graham. As it was a special occasion,
we moved forwards from our usual seats in the rear Upper Balcony to the front
despite the fact that Ring performance seats were slightly more expensive than
normal. Thus we paid 90p per ticket. That's £3.60 for the whole cycle of
four operas.
It was a bit more expensive when I heard her sing in a second cycle by ENO, this
time back in Liverpool in 1980.
I think that the only other times I heard her in live performance was as Electra in Mozart's Idomeneo, again in 1976 whilst I was a student, and as Turandot in a performance by Welsh National Opera in Llandudno in 1979.
Not a very big catalogue of live performances but the range from Mozart to Verdi to Wagner to Puccini gives you some idea of the quality of the voice. It was beautiful, big and still flexible. And something to do with the fact that she came from humble beginnings in Merseyside endeared her to me. She was my first diva. She showed that Merseyside wasn't only about football, comedians and rock groups. She showed me that you could make it in the big outside world.
I met her once in the mid 80s. I was editing Arts Alive, Merseyside's monthly arts listings magazine and I interviewed her in a (modest) London hotel. I have the interview on tape. She signed a copy of her autobiography Wait Until The Sun Shines, Nelly for me.
She didn't really have the career she ought to have had with the voice that she did. There were probably a number of reasons for that.
Now, you can probably get away with one or maybe two of those. But not all three. Not with the way the English establishment operates. Jane Eaglen, my current diva and my most recent Turandot, endures similar treatment. Add to them a tendency to speak your mind and an occasional laziness over preparation for new roles and you probably have the truth of it.
I last heard her in recital at the Floral Hall, New Brighton (where Colin and I went to see Candide last week) and at a fabulously doomed gala in Liverpool in 1992 entitled Fanfare for a New World. That latter occasion was also the last time that I heard Montserrat Caballé and Alfredo Kraus sing. Hidden among the cast was one Mario Frangoulis who I was next to hear in Les Misérables - a birthday treat for Ross in that first year that I knew him.
So, you can see how Rita's sort of been in and out of my life for some 28 years now. And, as a further wrinkle, I discovered that Rod sang on stage with her as a chorus member in Seattle Opera's production of Götterdämmerung in the 80s.
At the end of Wagner's Die Walküre, Wotan sings the following to his daughter, Brünnhilde (given here in the original German and Andrew Porter's translation)
Leb wohl, du kühnes, herrliches Kind! Farewell, my valiant, glorious child! Du meines Herzens heiligster Stolz! You were the holiest pride of my heart! Leb wohl! Leb wohl! Leb wohl! Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!