Camille Choteau interviews soprano Lydia Caruana who speaks enthusiastically about her singing career and her concert this coming Wednesday.

I was told before meeting Lydia Caruana that she was a lovely person and I soon discovered this when she greeted me with a wonderful smile. This well-known lyric soprano has been performing on the international stage for five years now but she has been singing for longer than that. She said that when she was a child, her mother used to tell her to stop experimenting with sounds, not to bother the neighbours! Then she realised that she had a voice, and her dream was to sing, even if she thought it would remain only a dream.

She takes singing classes with Antoinette Miggiani who “nurtured my voice and put me on the right track from the beginning”. Antoinette is an international singer herself with a wealth of experience behind her, so she makes the ideal coach.

Lydia acknowledges that becoming a soprano is quite hard and demanding. The requisites are to have a voice, sound technique but also a personality capable of handling tough competition.

How does a soprano work, what is the key of her success? Lydia explained to me that she practises everyday for at least two hours, by vocalising and going through her repertoire. When she has to perform, she has to go through a great many rehearsals, in the morning and in the evening with the musicians – orchestra or pianist. The coaching sessions are intensified but with time she has learnt how to work on her voice without straining it, she knows how to economise on her instrument.

When we met, Lydia ordered a still water “not cold” and she told me she had to be careful as she was going to perform in Rome shortly. She said that precautions were the only drawbacks of her profession, because she can’t socialise too much if a performance is round the corner, she has to rest properly, a very important thing for the voice, and she cannot go for a walk when it is windy or raining for example. She has to protect her “human instrument”, and this is possible only by eating the right food, and drinking a lot of water. In short she has to remain healthy, which suits her perfectly. Lydia loves living life to the full when she isn’t performing.

What does she have to do just before a performance? “I vocalise well in the afternoon and a bit before entering on stage but I do not talk much during the day.”

Lydia Caruana is used to this way of life, and she compensates this hard work and these precautions with the concerts she gives which she really enjoys: “You know when you are on stage, you get high, and it lasts quite long!” Besides, she gets a lot of support from the people around her and from the people who recognise her in the street and who encourage her. “I love Maltese audiences, they are always enthusiastic when they talk to me, and they are interested in what I am doing. I really appreciate audiences abroad too, but it is always a pleasure to come back to Malta.”

Her husband is a great supporter of her career and helps her to achieve what she has set out to do and her children co-operate fully. “They are winners with me!”

Lydia knew she had to start a career on the international level because Malta is too small an island but it is sometimes hard for her to travel and be away from her roots and her family. “If I start missing them, I’ll catch the first plane so I always try to think positive and put myself psychologically in such a frame of mind that I don’t miss them. It is a kind of separation in my mind.”

Lydia also talked about her favourite composers. She loves the Italian masters, who as we know, give great roles to sopranos: Puccini, Verdi and Donizetti. But she also loves performing Mozart, Haydn and Massenet. She could not really say she preferred one composer to another because she said she always learns something every time she practises something new.

Of course, she has a special feeling for Camilleri’s pieces, and since she was told that they “sit particularly well on her throat”: she would like to go on working on this affinity with this Maltese

composer.

Lydia has been really busy since last year and it started with the concert together with the Wiener Klang Ensemble to celebrate Malta’s accession to the EU in May 2004, continuing with a concert in Malta with the Imperial Ensemble of Vienna and a highly applauded concert in Vienna at Palais Ferstel.

In January she returned from a three-week concert tour in Germany with the Philharmonie Orchestra of Belarus, directed by Viachislav Vollich. Sixteen concerts were given and some of them graced important venues like Hamburg’s Musikhalle and Essens’s Philharmoniesaal. Her engagements last month included a concert with the Georgisches Kammer Orchester, under the baton of Markus Poschner in Ingolstadt, Germany.

Lydia was really pleased about this performance, first because the concert was called “Malta” and when she was coming from Munich, she could see big posters advertising the concert, where she could read: “Malta, Camilleri, Lydia Caruana”, which was quite exciting. Then, she told me that she really got along with the conductor and the musicians, and she insisted on the importance of a friendly atmosphere to achieve a concert of quality. Eventually she spoke of the good response she got from the audience at the Festsaal Theatre: “seven curtain calls!” she exclaimed happily.

The smile on her face and the light in her eyes show how much she loves what is happening in her career now: In Donaukurier, a German newspaper carried an article entitled “Mit Esprit und Eleganz” and it gave a very positive write-up to Lydia Caruana and her interpretation of Camilleri’s song cycle Kanti Populari: The article said that: “The five love songs gave the Maltese soprano Lydia Caruana the opportunity to shine with her smooth, versatile and very expressive voice. Moreover, she was absolutely into the dramatic build-up of the Mozart arias.”

Lydia showed me some pictures and you can tell she loves being on stage. In particular she has a sense of drama, she was told, that is why she is more likely to enjoy performing operas, but anyway, everybody agrees that she has both beauty and talent.

This coming Wednesday, 8 June, the “Maltese soprano” will perform at the Manoel Theatre which she so enjoys, together with Benno Schollum, Gabriele Kridl and Stephan Paryla-Raky soloists of the Vienna Chamber orchestra. The American pianist Russel Ryan will also take part. They are certain to please the audience with pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart and of course with Kanti Populari, the song cycle composed by Charles Camilleri, the lyrics of which were written by Joe Friggieri. Bookings at the Manoel are now open.