Holiday torns to work

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 22

Holiday torns to work

Ask American soprano Elizabeth Biggs what brought her to New Zealand and her reply is prompt: “The principal trumpeter of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.” That trumpeter is Stanley Friedman, the singer’s husband. He has a permanent contract with the orchestra. "He’s here for a while so I came along, too.” Biggs first visited New Zealand, supposedly for a holiday, when her husband first joined the orchestra last year. But the holiday quickly turned into work when she was called in to replace a soprano who was ill. “I volunteered my services and then almost regretted that I did because I ended up working.” She came back to New Zealand to stay in January. Since then the musical grapevine has worked extremely well in terms of offers of work. “It has been easier being around the N.Z.S.O. and getting to know people involved in music. I was offered the present role in the Canterbury Opera season through William Southgate, who knew me from the orchestra.” Biggs began her onstage singing experience when she was still very young. She appeared in the chorus of operas in her native California when still a child and per-

formed in musical theatre as an adolescent. “I went on to singing in opera in my early twenties.” She is now 26. Before moving to New Zealand she worked as a freelance singer, getting roles in various productions.

“It was more difficult there than in New Zealand contacting people. You had to go through several other people and perhaps then didn’t get to talk to the person you wanted to speak to.

“Here I have found it easier to pick up the

phone and get straight through to the person I want.” Her singing engagements in Los Angeles included university work. She recently completed musical studies at the California State University there. The singer is enthusiastic about her New Zealand career chances. “In the States they don’t do much of the sort of music I sing. They tend to perform heavier operas, not the lighter ones that I sing.” In New Zealand the reverse is true. The singer is also looking to Australia — “only two hours by plane” — for work. Recital and radio work have also been in the offing in New Zealand. She has had recent solo appearances with the N.Z.S.O. in Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9,” Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and a new work by a New Zealand composer, Kenneth Young. She has recorded live concerts for Radio New Zealand’s Concert Programme and will record more after her Christchurh and Dunedin seasons as Adele in “Die Fledermaus.” She will also sing Micaela in the Wellington Regional Opera’s 1988 production of “Carmen.”