KEY POINTS:
Few sopranos resident in this country can match the continuing achievements of Patricia Wright since she returned from Britain in 1993, playing a radiant Micaela in an Auckland production of Carmen.
Since then she has fearlessly tackled opera, oratorio and song in their many diverse forms.
Who might have imagined that her poised, tragic Cio-Cio-San in NBR NZ Opera's Madama Butterfly would so enthusiastically rustle her bustle for the company's later rough-and-tumble productions of La Cenerentola and Falstaff?
On the oratorio stage, her pure, clear soprano has illuminated requiems by Verdi and Mozart and, among her many appearances with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, her glowing account of Osvaldo Golijov's Three Songs even challenged the American soprano Dawn Upshaw on her home territory.
Next Monday, Wright is appearing on the recital stage, singing lieder by Schumann, Schubert, Wolf and Strauss, repertoire she counts among her first loves. And, she stresses, it is the APO who should be thanked.
"It's wonderful that they have created this new Twilight series and this is the first time they have been behind a Lieder recital."
The centrepiece on Monday night is Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben, a song cycle problematic to some who question the sexual politics of the poet Chamisso, introducing a woman whose life exists only through that of her husband.
Wright cuts straight to the woman behind the songs. "Each of the eight songs is an opportunity to show another aspect of this woman and yourself. You can relive the excitement of your wedding day and the ultimate song is probably when she has had her marriage night.
"She is crying with her husband's head on her breast and the way the music builds up, it's like that first night of passion."
She looks back to when she sang it 25 years ago in Britain, gaining a second prize in the prestigious Benson and Hedges Gold Award.
She remembers pianist Roger Vignoles' comment: "The way you sang that is extraordinary and yet you are not married and don't have a child. Imagine how you will sing it when you've experienced those further things in life."
Now, as a mother with a 14-year-old daughter, Wright finds Schumann does have a new significance, as do some Strauss and Wolf songs on the programme.
Two Strauss lieder have special resonances. She can certainly relate to Schlechtes Wetter with its picture of a woman returning home with provisions to cook for her child, imagining "my little daughter at home sitting in the La-Z-boy, waiting for her mother to do some baking".
Meinem Kinde is simply a portrait of a mum looking at a cot, Wright confides. "Again I can envisage that soft, gentle, doll-like creature just lying in the bed with her little soft breathing and warm milky breath."
I marvel at how Wright catches the essence of these poems in such unflinchingly personal and concrete terms.
On Monday she will round off the evening with three songs by Hugo Wolf, including Nein, junger Herr from his Italian Songbook.
Wright laughs and says the woman in this song really has something to complain about.
"She's his girlfriend when it comes to holidays," she explains, "but when he wants somebody special to go to a fancy do, she's not good enough. Well, your time is limited, mate!"
She points out Wolf's musical challenge. "And all this has to be done musically in 45 seconds. Lieder are so special, and I am so privileged to be able to do this recital."
Performance
Who: Patricia Wright and Diedre Irons
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Monday 6.30pm
