Rosalind Plowright is one of the most acclaimed opera singers - but she still likes to hit new notes, writes Arminta Wallace
Rosalind Plowright is tall and slim and imposing - rather like the character she's currently portraying in Opera Ireland's spring production of Janácek's Jenufa. But there, presumably, the resemblance ends. Janácek's anti-heroine, Kostelnicka, is a buttoned-up type, a pillar of the church so obsessed with respectability and reputation that she drowns the illegitimate baby of her stepdaughter, the unfortunate Jenufa. "It's an amazing role. Ideal for a singer of a certain age," says Plowright with a wicked grin, attacking a cappuccino with a spoon in a most un-diva-esque manner.
At 54, the Nottingham-born Plowright has been one of the most consistently successful singers on the international opera scene since she landed the part of Leonora in the highly-acclaimed 1984 Deutsche Grammophon recording of Verdi's Il Trovatore.
Kostelnicka, however, is a relatively new role for her. Did she just look around and say, OK, here's something I'd like to have a go at? "Oh, God, no. I was asked to do it. I didn't know much about it, really. I mean, I'd seen the opera, but I think it's when you really become aware of something that you grow passionate about it."
The invitation came from the Châtelet Opera in Paris, impressed by her portrayal of Amneris in a Scottish Opera production of Aida. But didn't Plowright have reservations about playing a child-killer? She throws back her mop of curls and emits a peal of musical laughter.
"Well, I've done Lady Macbeth and Medea, who are of the same ilk, you know? Actually, I really enjoy doing these nasty sort of people - although I don't think Kostelnica is a nasty person. I think she just kind of loses it. She loves Jenufa so much that she'll do anything to protect her. "Can you imagine? In the very claustrophobic atmosphere in a Czech village at the end of the last century it was unheard-of for a girl to get pregnant if she wasn't married. So she's driven to this murder.
"Nevertheless," she adds, licking the last piece of froth from her spoon with relish, "I like these roles which you can get your teeth into. I've done my 20 years of tragic heroines. After a certain amount of that, you just want to do something with a bit of balls. Oh - did I say that? Surely not. But you know what I mean."
Not surprisingly - since it combines glorious music with a dramatic, and bleakly realistic, plot - Jenufa, which was first performed in Brno in 1904, is one of the most popular operas in the international mainstream. The composer's own daughter died while he was writing it, which doubtless added to his ability to create an extraordinarily expressive atmosphere of loss and grief. "But there are some wonderful choruses as well - and that beautiful duet at the end."
A happy ending, then? "No. I don't think it's a happy ending. Jenufa accepts her fate and wants to get on with things, but it's not hunky-dory happy. You can hear it inflected in the music. The music says it all, actually."
The words, of course, say a good deal as well - Jenufa's was the first prose libretto to be written in the Czech language, and Janácek's highly idiosyncratic way of setting words to music makes singing the piece in Czech something of a sine qua non of performance nowadays.
"Mmmm. It's hard to get your tongue around, Czech." Plowright emits a stream of ferocious-sounding Slavic consonants, then shrugs. "But it's not a problem, really. There are surtitles for the audience, and singers are used to getting their tongue around various languages. Most singers would rather sing in the original, you know, because it flows better. I mean, Italian opera in English - now that is the pits. A few years ago I did Tosca for English National Opera and it was just horrible. The vowel sounds were all wrong and the English language is full of dipthongs and it actually restricts the singing - in my opinion. Nevertheless if you get offered a job at ENO, you're not gonna say no, you're not gonna do it. Nowadays work is work. You take what you can."
An interesting comment from a singer of Plowright's calibre? "Ah, well, but you see, I've moved into a different repertory. I'm doing what they call the in-between roles."
This is a voice thing, not a gender thing: Plowright used to be a dramatic soprano and is now a high mezzo. Unless you're really into opera, don't ask.
"I just take what's thrown at me at the moment, I really do. So everything I'm doing is new. I'm constantly learning. I'm about to go off to Italy and do this very difficult double bill by Luigi Dallapiccola. Which is . . . well. If you think Janácek might be a bit on the modern side, you ought to hear Dallapiccola. I'm telling you. You've never heard anything like it. I've spent months getting my brain into that sort of music because I've never really done any 20th-century music before. But dramatically, it's wonderful."
One of the Dallapiccola pieces, Volo di Notte, is based on Saint-Exupéry's 1931 docu-drama novel about a pioneer airmail pilot who is flying over the Andes when he runs into bad weather. "If he's going to die, he thinks, he might as well die among the stars - so he flies straight upwards, saving his life in the process. I play his wife. I come to the airport and say: 'What's going on? Where's my husband?' In the other opera I play the mother of a prisoner who's about to be put to death by the Spanish Inquisition. Weird parts like that. I'm also doing Fricka in the Ring next year at Covent Garden, with possibilities of Azucena the gypsy in Il Trovatore."
Which, given that she began by scoring a major success with the soprano role of Leonora in the same opera, would be especially satisfying. But Plowright has also scored a couple of major successes - playing the part of an opera diva. She made her big-screen début in the film version of Jilly Cooper's novel The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous and, more recently, trod the boards with John Pohlhammer of the Reduced Shakespeare Company in a musical, Two's a Crowd.
This last, she says, "came about when I was a particularly low ebb. I had very little work, and I met this jazz singer who told me about it; he'd already done it with an opera singer." She and Pohlhammer rewrote the script, commissioned some original music, and earned themselves a batch of good reviews. "Unfortunately, unless there's a huge name involved, it's very difficult to get it to the West End. If I was to do it with Frank Sinatra - who's now dead, of course - but somebody of that ilk. Or vice versa. Except that I'm not sure many opera singers would be prepared to sacrifice themselves the way I did, because I was very sent up and everything. I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. I'd absolutely love to get back to it. I mean, it was so great to get away from the formalities of opera. Sometimes it can get far too serious, opera. It needs to loosen up a bit."
Conductors in particular, Plowright says with an eloquent grimace, could do with loosening up a bit. "When I was at music college I used to see great, big posters of Giulini in record shops with this wonderful Italian suit and his coat thrown over his shoulders, walking around looking like a god. And I thought he was incredibly handsome, you know - and then suddenly, there I was. I had to go and sing for him when my career began to take off [in the early 1980s]. And that was a colossal thing. I was thrown from nothing into this - Placido Domingo and Giulini. I don't think I was ready for it emotionally, and it took a lot from me; I mean, I had great results, but . . ." She shrugs. "I don't know if the word got around, but I've always felt rather cowed by conductors and I think they've picked up on that."
There are, of course, always exceptions. "Tony Pappano at Covent Garden is wonderful. He really knows how to relax people and he's young and full of fun. It's so refreshing to have somebody like that, rather than somebody much older. Conductors always seem to beolder."
If the conductors are getting younger these days, so - unfortunately, from Plowright's point of view - are the singers. "There's a whole new generation of wonderful singers. It's terrifying. Hundreds of them, coming out of the woodwork. And they're all very talented; and they have nowhere to go."
Does she think opera is at something of a crossroads, then? "I think it's very dodgy," she says. "Most of my work is abroad; Germany and Italy used to be my main income. And now they're taking in their own people, and not foreigners - and if you do go there, they take away half your fee in tax. It's horrendous. And the Met is for Americans. The only thing for it is to chat up Tony Pappano and hang around Covent Garden for as long as I can, really."
It's hard to imagine a singer of Plowright's track record and charisma being out of work. "Well, with opera singers it's all planned in advance," she says. "Really big stars are booked up five years ahead. Not the case with me, I'm afraid. I think I'm OK up to the end of next year, but one would always like a bit more. I'm starting," she says with a theatrical shudder, "to worry already."
Then she tosses those serious curls. "Let's have another cappuccino, shall we? I'm buying."
• Opera Ireland's production of Janácek's Jenufa opens at the Gaiety Theatre on April 18th. It is directed by Jiri Nekvasil and designed by Daniel Dvorak, with lighting by Paul Keogan. Laurent Wagner conducts the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Opera Ireland Chorus, and Franzita Whelan sings the role of Jenufa