What: The Creation, with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Friday at 8pm
On disc: Rene Jacobs' The Creation in its German version is a winner. First-rate soloists including Norwegian baritone Johannes Weisser and the Freiburger Barockorchester bring out all the sheen in Haydn's score. You'll be won over, early, when the RIAS Kammerchor sing, "And there was light", and remain spellbound until the final chorus. Haydn, Die Schopfung (Harmonia Mundi, through Ode Records).
Sara Macliver is in town, heading a trio of Australian soloists in Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's The Creation next Friday.
The soprano is well-known to New Zealand music-lovers through an extensive catalogue of recordings, mostly through ABC Classics, CDs that have proved useful calling cards.
"When I first met Richard Hickox, he told me he'd already heard my recordings," she says. "And if a conductor is impressed with what they hear, then they're prepared to work with you."
However, these albums, which include two popular collections of Baroque duets with mezzo Sally-Anne Russell, mean more to the singer than simply career promotion.
"They're enormously rewarding to me on a personal level," she stresses.
"It's knowing that my children can play these recordings to their children and grandchildren and so on.
"I'm a part of forever."
Macliver started her career in Perth with studies at the University of Western Australia and it was a small role in Lully's Armide, starring English soprano Jane Manning, that turned her from piano studies to voice.
Within just a few years she had crossed to the east coast, to sing in operas by Monteverdi and Purcell with Sydney's Pinchgut Opera. Now she has appeared with most of the leading Australian orchestras and opera companies.
Along the way she has worked with a cavalcade of conductors.
She credits Antony Walker with alerting her to new possibilities in Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate ("It was so exciting finding something new to a work I had sung for 20 odd years"), while the late Richard Hickox "said he just wanted to pop me in his suitcase and take me all round the world".
Friday will see her first collaboration with the APO's principal guest conductor, Roy Goodman, and she is looking forward to sharing the stage with a specialist in Baroque and Classical repertoire.
"I always go into rehearsals with a very open mind," she says. "I may have my own ideas, but, at the end of the day, the conductor has the final say. You're there to create music and if you develop real angst in the relationship it doesn't augur well for a happy and organic performance."
She has sung in The Creation on several occasions before and has a real affection for the role of Eve. "She's naive, warm, obviously, and the eternal optimist, much more so than Adam, but there's such warmth and love between the two."
The vocal challenge is "avoiding a big weighty sound. The music needs warmth and vibrato, but with lightness to it. And there are wonderful opportunities at various points to put in these beautiful little cadenzas, to catch the sheer joy of Eve."
She is pragmatic on the issue of ornamentation and, "although it can be time-consuming to work out what's right stylistically and what will best show your voice off, it can be very liberating.
"Still," she reminds me, pointing to a career that ranges from Richard Mills' recent opera Love of the Nightingale to her 2006 recording of Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne, "you've got to be careful not to pigeonhole yourself into one style.
"You might make a living by doing so in England but you couldn't in Australia. There isn't enough work and I'm lucky I've always had a lot of work."
Macliver is proud she has managed to combine her career with a family.
"I have a wonderful team around me and a supportive husband who think it's great I'm doing something I love.
"I'd like to think I'm a good role model for my daughters who can see that you can have it all if you choose to."
