Lauris Elms: singer from her babyhood

Press, 27 April 1989, Page 15

Lauris Elms: singer from her babyhood

By

PENNY CHAMBERS

The rich contralto tones waft through the open windows, across the garden lush with tropical plants, and into the dazzling sun of a North Sydney suburb. Lauris Elms is practising. She sits at the piano in the music room: tall, elegant, controlled. Her face, even in fierce concentration, bears a serenity which is the mark of this woman recognised and loved by audiences all over Australia and New Zealand.

The lid descends with a gentle thump. “That’s it for today — let’s get some fresh air... what about a sail?” She jumps up with impetuous enthusiasm,, rushes around tife house gathering leftovers for? lunch, swoops them into abasket and leads the way to the cdr. 1 . • ’

A couple of hours later we have anchored the. seven-metre Space Sailor in a cove and Lauris sits below, sandwich in one hand, glass of wirie in the other. “Next to singing- sailing is my greatest love. My husband, Graeme, and I sail just, about every week-end throughout the year — concerts permitting of course.” . Lauris Elms can’t remember a time when she hasn’t sung. She sang as soon as she learned to talk, and has never stopped. Bom and brought up in the Depression years near Melbourne, she had musical parents and a string of musical relatives.

“Every Sunday without fail, we would visit my grandmother, and with a huge variety of aunts and uncles, often over a dozen, we would gather round the piano and sing hymns and songs by Brahms and Schubert — we were always singing.” Although always in the school choir, it was the violin which she studied seriously until she was 17. “My fingers just couldn’t keep up with the fast bits. But also I had a bit of a crush on our minister’s son who sang in the local . Gilbert and Sullivan operatic group, so I thought I had better learn to sing properly.

“I started taking lessons from Madame Weilart, a stern, impos-

ing, demanding Christian Scientist who wanted to know all about my social life. ’Never get involved my dear,’ she would say, ‘Marriage will be the death of you as a singer’.” During the next two years she sang in and won several singing contests, and took part in public performances; her first professional engagement was for £4 a week with A.B.C. Radio. In 1954 came the turning point in her life when she won a scholarship to train in Paris under Dominique Modesti. With great trepidation but characteristic sense of purpose and determination the 22-year-old quiet . and sheltered Lauris Elms packed her bags and travelled by ship across to the other side of the world.

Lauris gets up to check the weather outside. She comes back with a giggle. “It looks as though there’s a storm coming up/Perhaps we’ll have to stay the night here — wouldn’t that be exciting?” She sits down again, a delightful mixture of simplicity and sophistication. For two years Lauris lived in a modest pension in Paris, and Dominique Modesti harangued and coerced her into the extraordinary contralto that she is today. Then in early 1957, a friend telephoned her telling her to come immediately to England to audition for “Ulrica” in Verdi’s “Masked Ball” with the Covent Garden Opera Company; the current “Ulrica" had had to cancel due to ill health. She left for London straight away and was engaged by Covent Garden to tour England. “I was so nervous I felt ill; I had virtually no stage experience, but the role of ‘Ulrica’ was ideal because she spends most of her time sitting over a cauldron, singing this weird little song about conjuring out the Devil. Yes, I was rather thrown in the deep end, but I think the best way to learn to act opera is on the job — on the stage itself.”

Covent Garden offered her a permanent place with the company and for the next two years Lauris toured England singing in scores of other roles and performances. “In 1958, we recorded Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’ with Peter Pears in the title role, and the composer conducting. It was the first stereo recording ever made. “The stage was marked out in semi-circles, and we had to creep as quiet as mice from, one side to the other, so our voices would come and go as though we were in a production on stage.” She smiles rather wistfully. “Now they just press a button on a recording machine.” ? f ’ She also toured Israel that year, but. 1958 also proved to be the biggest year of her life for another reason. While she had been studying in Paris, Lauris? was writing to Graeme de Graaff, a childhood friend in Melbourne. Graeme had won a. scholarship to Oxford University and the two were reunited.

“Every week-end for two. years he commuted to London at weekends by motor-scooter, and every week-end it seemed to rain or snow. He certainly had staying power. Then on Australia Day in January, 1958, Graeme and I were looking out of the window at the snow, when he told me he was going to Spain next year. I said, ‘Oh, can I come, too?’ ‘You’ll have to marry me to do that,’ he said — and so I did.” They were married at the end of the summer season at Covent Garden and honeymooned for nearly 6000 kilometres around Spain on the old motor-scooter. But the halcyon days were ending. Lauris had already made the tough decision to give up her career with Covent Garden and return to Australia with Graeme who had resolved to work in his own country. A friend, Richard Bonynge, who by this time had married Joan Sutherland (with whom

Lauris had sung many times), secured a promise of a place for Lauris in the Elizabethan Opera Company in Australia. However, their return the next year to Australia and the ecstatic welcome received was marred by the fact that the director had left the company, and there was no longer a place for her. Lauris admits she was devastated. But with typical resilience she resolved that "this was the time to have a little Debbie.” For four years Graeme, Lauris and their daughter lived on the campus of Queens College, Melbourne University, > where Graeme was teaching philosophy and was vice-master - “That’ made me vice-mistress,” giggles Lauris. • They were happy ’ yeajs but although she sang in sey.eral concerts for the A.8.C., song recitals, marjy choral works , :( and.did her first ‘tour of New Zealand ; — there was Tittle dr node of> her beloved opera. ■ In 1964 they moved to Sydney) and Richard Bonynge |nd Joan Sutherland came out to Australia and started up. The. SutherlandWilliamson Opera Company apd immediately X offered 3. Lauris seven* roles touring Australia. ' ’ “It was the most marvellous thing to happen to me in years,” says Lauris. “We had enormous fun and it was wonderful to be singing great opera again.” The 1970 s again brought a host of roles and performances including tours of Canada and Korea, the Royal opening of the Sydney Opera House, and the opening of the Adelaide Festival Theatre, and a year later she received the 0.8. E. During this time she also sang many choral works, and she developed a great love for that medium. “I have been asked how, being an agnostic, I can sing religious works. But my religion is music and beauty; I love reading the Bible because the language is so beautiful. Looking and listening to beauty is my creed and I try to create beauty in my music; that makes my life worth while.” In 1977 Lauris received the

’Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Medal and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1983. A few months ago, she was made honorary doctor of music of Sydney University. “It was a huge honour and I am very grateful,” says Lauris. “It made all the tough times worth while, even the decision to leave my beloved Covent Garden to come back to my own country. I am very aware how much people have responded to my art which makes me humble. I have thoroughly enjoyed it but I have also worked very hard — I have always insisted on a very high standard.” Lauris has sung many times in New Zealand, the last occasion being in November, 1988, in a hugely popular performance of the “Verdi Requiem” with the Royal Christchurch Musical Society, celebrating the fortieth year of the conductor, Robert

Field-Dodgson — "A real good mate of mine.” And what of the future? “Oh, it’s very exciting. For the last few years, I have been doing fewer operatic roles and more concert performances, but now my daughter, Debbie, and I have started to do recitals together.” Debbie, a bubbling, fun-loving reflection of her mother is fast becoming a leading clarinetist in Australia. “I’ve now reached a stage where I can decide what I want to sing, which for the present, is more chamber music and concerts with Debbie,” says Lauris. She gets up to take another look outside. “That’s a shame; the weather’s clearing so I suppose we had better make a move.” We set sail; she stands at the tiller, the wind streaming through her curly hair, and in no time at all, she is singing. She cannot resist it.