North opera star Sarah Connolly performs in Mary Stuart

Jun 22 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal

A CLASH between Queens will ensure sparks fly at the Theatre Royal this week. DAVID WHETSTONE talks to Opera North star Sarah Connolly.

“If they had, it’s very likely that things would have turned out as they are described here. Donizetti was very faithful to the Schiller original and it’s clear that, to him, Mary was a bit of an icon, a symbol of Catholicism.”

In playing Mary, Sarah is bringing to life a woman who is told in the night that she is to be executed the next morning.

“There’s a moment of panic. It’s too soon. She doesn’t know how she’s going to find time to put her house in order, to make her confession and ensure her redemption.”

It is, says Sarah, an “interesting” part to play. Opera stars have to act as well as sing and here’s a woman facing up to her impending horrible death but also concerned with the hereafter. It hardly bears thinking about.

As Sarah says: “She is a real person and in that respect she is really, really nice to play.”

Sarah has mixed memories of her time in the North East.

She was seven when her family settled in the village of Middleton St George, near Darlington. Her father was a regional director of one of the ICI divisions on Teesside and he was an opera fan. She sometimes used to accompany him to the theatre.

Her parents divorced when she was 16 and she went to live with her mother in Nottingham.

But the trauma which would live with her into adulthood emanated from the County Durham prep school she attended.

“The headmistress tried to curb and ruin my confidence to such a degree that it’s bothered me all my life and even though I’ve talked about it to a ‘shrink’ it hasn’t completely gone away.

“I had a real flowering of creativity from the age of eight to 12. It was extraordinary because it burst forth, a love of words and music and dance, but it was discouraged at school. You were made to feel ashamed of being extrovert.”

Sarah is now a celebrated operatic performer with a busy engagements diary but still this episode during her formative years bothers her, which just goes to show what a difference a teacher can make. She has very fond memories of two of her early piano teaches in Darlington, Mrs Overend and Mrs Raine.

Understandably, she is keeping a close eye on her seven-year-old daughter Lily’s development.

She is delighted to report that the little girl is also full of creativity. “Her icons are Liza Minelli and Judy Garland,” says her mother, who doesn’t mind too much that she also mischievously parodies her own operatic singing style.

Opera North’s week at Newcastle Theatre Royal begins tonight with the first of two performances of La Bohème. You can see Mary Stuart tomorrow and on Saturday and Rusalka on Friday. Tickets: 08448 112 121 or www.theatreroyal.co.uk