Continuing our Wales’ Opera Superstars series, the lure of the screen brings added celluloid shine to the women who made it on more than one world-wide stage.
Patricia Kern, born in 1927 in Swansea, was offered an MGM contract while still a child, but her parents turned it down. She performed across Wales and England as a child star before studying at Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Beginning her operatic career at English National Opera (or Sadler’s Wells Opera Company as it was then), followed by Welsh National Opera, she then became a regular with Dublin Grand Opera, Scottish Opera and Royal Opera House. Her first appearance at WNO was as Martha in Boito’s Mefistofele in 1957. In 1963 as Rosina in WNO’s The Barber of Seville, she returned to her hometown once again to perform on the stage at Swansea Grand, receiving a glorious review in the Daily Express: ‘outstanding… she gave a performance of international calibre both in splendour of singing and sense of character.’
Elizabeth Vaughan was born in Montgomeryshire in 1937 and began her career as a soprano, later becoming a mezzo-soprano. Having studied at the Royal Academy of Music she debuted with WNO as Abigaille in WNO’s 1960 production of Nabucco, a production that toured to Sadler’s Wells the following year. Her debut is marked in Richard Fawkes’s book (Welsh National Opera, 1986) as: ‘The outstanding debutante of the Season…’. Glowing quotes on her London performance included the Daily Mail suggesting she might be ‘A Welsh Callas in the making?’. Her subsequent career took her to the Royal Opera as well as the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1982 she reached her widest audience yet with an appearance in the film Victor/Victoria – as an opera singer, of course. The same year marked her last performance with WNO as Maddalena in Andrea Chénier, having sung many a major role with the company, from Mimì and Butterfly to Tosca.
There may not be a Hollywood connection to our next opera superstar, but she has made her mark on the small screen with her own TV series on Welsh language channel, S4C, and appearances on BBC2’s Diva, Diva, Diva. Cilgerran-born Leah-Marian Jones is also one of only a handful of opera stars who can say they have sung at Glastonbury Festival having performed on the world-famous Pyramid Stage as Rossweisse in Die Walküre – the first opera performance in the festival’s history, with English National Opera in 2004. After studying at the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio, mezzo-soprano Leah-Marian has been a regular on the opera stages of the Royal Opera House, ENO, Opera North, Scottish Opera and of course, Welsh National Opera. Her career has taken her to New York, San Francisco and across Europe, as well as performances in Hong Kong with our Pelléas et Mélisande in 2018. Recent appearances with WNO include War and Peace, The Consul and The Marriage of Figaro.
So, it seems that fantastic Welsh voices can transcend stages as well as countries. Enjoy the voices of Wales as Blaze of Glory! tours this Spring Season, performing in Cardiff, Llandudno, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Birmingham and Southampton.