Into the twilight world of Strauss

Previewed by WILLIAM DART

Margaret Medlyn's Tosca in Auckland last year gave many a taste of why the soprano has become so popular in Australian opera houses. Taking on roles from Wagner's Kundry to Verdi's Leonora, Strauss' Salome and Berg's Marie, she has managed to win over even the most hard-bitten Australian critics.

Now there's a change of pace for the soprano as she tackles that most autumnal of scores, Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

Medlyn hasn't done Lieder for some years and explains how "it's quite a discipline to stand relatively still and sing although it does concentrate you completely on the text. You cannot dissemble by gesture."

If you're one of those who finds the whole concert situation overly staid and formal, then Medlyn would tend to agree with you. "It's an artificial concept," she suggests. "It creates a barrier and somehow we have to jump over that and reach people. My whole job is about reaching people and making them think."

She wouldn't be the first soprano to complain about the inevitable comparisons with classic CD performances. "Those singers all croon into the microphone, which is impossible into the concert hall," Medlyn tells me. "The nuances are wonderful, but in a concert hall with a 90-piece orchestra behind you, it's a matter of pumping out the decibels."

Not surprisingly, among the classic recordings she's most drawn to that by Lisa Della Casa for being "really honest, just straight-up-and-singing".

Medlyn drily warns me not to broach the subject of vocal technique or she'll never stop talking, but we do venture there. She explores what she describes as the "visceral appeal of the voice", claiming that sopranos and tenors tend to make a more "primal connection" with audiences.

She herself changed from mezzo to fully fledged soprano because she was "basically curious. I was told it was not a huge vocal change but a huge psyche change.

"I was fed up with being a seconda donna," she adds. "I'm like my sister Helen - we're both prima donnas!"

Medlyn doesn't worry about relinquishing repertoire. Most mezzo works are now in the "been-there-done-that-never-want-to-do-it-again" basket, and her only regret might be not having sung Das Lied von der Erde.

What has it been like starting off as Azucena in Trovatore and then returning in a few years' time as Leonora in the same opera? "It's a hard one because Leonora can be such a wishy-washy character compared to Azucena. I'd love to go back and sing Azucena in my 60s just like Astrid Varnay used to do, return to all those wonderful complicated mezzo roles which are really interesting."

But, Medlyn adds, the Leonora she is playing in the Australian Opera production is not the expected "stand-and-take-everything" heroine.

"She's totally obsessive and Elke Neidhardt the director has designed the whole opera around the character." She assures me that the production is well worth a visit when it opens in Sydney on July 30.

However, at the moment, Medlyn is still immersed in the twilight world of Strauss and the evocative poems of Hesse and Eichendorff that the composer has set to music.

"These songs have such wonderful things to say to someone at the end of a rich and productive life."

Lowering her voice, she tells me of an unexpected New Zealand connection. Medlyn had caught Michael King being interviewed on Australian radio at a time when her production of Wozzeck was going through difficulties. "He talked about music and how it affected him and that really helped me. We ended up having a correspondence about it. He died the day before the Wellington performance of the Strauss and, in my mind, I dedicated that performance to him."

Performance

* Who: Margaret Medlyn, soprano, soloist

* What: with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

* Where: Auckland Town Hall

* When: Friday 6.30pm

* Tickets: $77 (A reserve) to $20 (D reserve); $10 children; Concession $69 to $18