Soprano broadens her range

By WILLIAM DART

Many Aucklanders know Patricia Wright for the many roles she's created in NBR New Zealand Opera productions - most recently, a poised Cio-Cio San in 2000's Madama Butterfly and a deft, unflappable Alice Ford in Falstaff a year later.

Little wonder that Carmel Carroll, directing her as Nedda in the company's I Pagliacci, confided that Wright "could eat the role for breakfast". On stage, it turned out a triumph, with the soprano looking like Rita Hayworth and singing like a diva.

Tonight, Patricia Wright is in front of the Auckland Philharmonia in Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

She last performed the cycle with the orchestra in 1999 and is looking forward to revisiting them. "I can now relax more because I feel that musically I know them better," she says.

"I feel more comfortable. They're just so beautiful, and so rich harmonically. They're wonderfully written for the orchestra and the voice just soars above them."

As effortless as the work can seem, these songs are not necessarily built for comfort. Strauss' huge arching phrases are the supreme challenge.

"I'm going to breathe when I need to," Wright asserts. "I've been listening to many different recordings and have heard other singers breathe in places where I would be terrified to. After all, there's the story of Strauss himself being asked about this and replying that the singer can breathe wherever she wants.

"For me, the main thing is catching the serenity of the music."

These four elegiac settings were Strauss' farewell to the world, but Wright is emphatic they are "not tragic".

" There's more of a sense of resignation to them. In the last song Strauss wanted to set the Eichendorff poem because that's how he looked back at his life with his wife. There's the quietness of slowing down, thinking 'I'm fulfilled, I've enjoyed all of this. I want to go quietly to sleep'."

The words are what make the first impact with this singer, and Wright is eager to talk about the Walt Whitman poems Vaughan Williams uses in his Sea Symphony, which she will perform on Saturday with the Auckland Choral Society. "There's a lot that's very naval and heroic there, about sailing ships and so on, but there's also some very sensuous poetry. When I have the words 'Bathe me, O God, in thee', it's almost ecstatic.

"At times it reminds me of the Verdi Requiem, with those pianissimo top notes. It's very much for a lyric soprano."

Wright's 1998 Verdi Requiem was yet another triumph for the singer, and she tells me to watch out for a recording of a Hummel Mass she has just made with the NZSO.

In the meantime, her most recent engagement was down Taranaki way, singing Bach's "fantastically difficult" Cantata 51 with the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra. That was part of the opening celebrations for New Plymouth's innovative Puke Ariki, the city's much-lauded combination of library, museum and information centre. Harry Brown, the perceptive Daily News critic, praised Wright's "splendid melismas soaring above the splendid continuo from bass and cello".

What is left for this versatile singer to tackle? "If I was willing to wreck my voice slightly, I think I'd do quite well at jazz," she playfully suggests - but I'm not at all prepared for a flamboyant vocal approximation of a Jimi Hendrix riff followed by her saying, "It's the most awful sound ... but it's so addict-ive."

Needless to say, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin sit alongside Jessye Norman and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in her CD collection. A Hendrix tribute is not planned for the near future, but Wright is working on a Lieder recital concept with pianist Rosemary Barnes and there's a special Puccini concert with the Auckland Philharmonia in July. For now, it's Strauss tonight and Vaughan Williams on Saturday.