Lesley Garrett: A Remarkable Voice

A new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel began a provincial tour on September 29th 2008 preparatory to taking up residence at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End at the end of November.When on October 4th the curtain came down on the final performance at the Churchill Theatre Bromley some 8000 people had heard a live performance by the soprano Lesley Garrett many of them for the first time. I wonder how many realised that they had heard one of the most remarkable voices of all time.

Trained at the Royal Academy of Music and the Opera Studio for 7 years on a basic diet of Bach,Handel,Mozart and Grand Opera she is able to sing anything from Monteverdi to the rock star Sting,as to the genre born, without ever sounding like an opera singer who has gone astray.
That includes appearing as Nettie Fowler in Carousel as earlier she had appeared as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music and earlier still had taken the lead in the Merry Widow.

In her recorded output you will find Cole Porter,Richard Rodgers,Michel Legrand,Beatle songs arranged for her by George Martin,Ivor Novello,Lloyd Webber,Karl Jenkins,an Ave Maria written for her by the composer ,her arranger, Tolga Kashif as well as an elemental ballad called 'Fields of Gold' written by Sting.

She takes the view that all these people use the same notation as the classical composers. It is all music and merit may be found in some unusual places.Anything she deems to have merit she will sing.The purists close their tiny minds and complain about crossover but she disregards them.

Lesley (everybody calls her Lesley ) does not consider herself to be the finished article. Engagements permitting she still trains for several hours each week with the teacher who has been her mentor and friend since she was 19.

It was in 2001 at a reception in the Royal Academy that her teacher, now Professor Joy Mammen,told me that Lesley's singing lessons,as she calls them,are not a matter of care and maintenance but of continual development.She said that at that time they were working on extending her vocal range downwards.

In November 2008 the first deployment of that extended range was heard in a new disc called'Amazing Grace'. It is a collection of classical pieces described by Lesley as 'spiritual'. In it were heard for the first time some firm ,rich,resonant sounds not usual in a high soprano.

There are many good sopranos. There are many more who are easy on the ear.Great sopranos are rare. They all have one physical characteristic in common. All sound is vibration. The human voice creates sound by vibrating vocal chords. In great singers those vibrations are so rapid that the ear is deceived into believing that it hears not a sequence of pulses but a solid stream of sound.

Maria Callas had such a voice. Lesley Garrett has such a voice but in her case she also has an extraordinary large lung capacity which enables her to cope, in one breath, with the long sequences of notes written by Handel or Mozart for the castrati of their time.It also gives her tremendous power in a tiny frame as well as the most delicate breath control .

For a mere mortal like me the only way to assess voice quality is by comparison with a standard. I mentioned Maria Callas whom I will take as my standard because there is a consensus view that she was a great singer if not the greatest.As it happens it is not necessary to take my word for what follows.Anybody can check. It is open to anybody to listen to the recorded voices of Maria Callas and Lesley Garrett back to back singing the same aria.Anything will do. However for variety and accessibility I would suggest 'One fine day' from Madam Butterfly by Puccini, 'O mio babbino caro' by Rossini and the Waltz song by Gounod.You can extend that list as far as you like.Having undertaken this exercise you will hardly avoid the conclusion that if Maria Callas was great so is Lesley Garrett.

Maria Callas did not sing difficult Handel or Mozart though she did sing Wagner which is heavy duty.Well within her capacity Lesley Garrett sings both of the composers most difficult to sing well.

There is a motet written by the young Mozart as a thank you for a phenomenal castrato Rauzzini. That piece has defied sopranos down the ages to sing it as written. A few coloratura sopranos in the past have got away wiith substituting their own cadenza for the passage they could not sing. Exultate Jubilate has frightened off the best.

The BBC has a recording, made at the Sage Gateshead,of Lesley Garret singing Exultate Jubilate with the Northern Sinfonia. An expectant audience of some 1700 watched as she was led onto the platform wearing a gold dress and carrying the score.She was of course to sing without amplification.Dozens of people not knowing what to expect had the score on their lap intending to check every note.

In the event she sang from the score note for note complete as written to a rapturous reception.
The point of extreme difficulty is at the end of a short cadenza between the 2nd and 3rd movements. It ends in a half tone trill which Mozart knew that Rauzzini could sing.This is what has defeated his lady successors.The fact that Lesley Garrett, uniquely, is able to achieve this stamps her as out of the ordinary if nothing else would.

This unique recording is not commercially available.Every serious musician would want it and certainly every teacher of singing quite apart from a vast public.The BBC should be required to explain why it is hidden.