Randolph Magri-Overend

JESSICA PRATT : HER COLOURFUL LIFE AND BRILLIANT CAREER

 

Leading Australian opera singer Jessica Pratt

Jessica Louise Pratt had asked her mother to send a vacuum cleaner up to her room while she was quarantined in Brisbane.  The room they’d put her in wasn’t very big and for a person used to living in a substantial homestead in Florence (even after having survived lockdown  there for five months) it was a bit of a disappointment.  Of course, she’d miss her olive trees, her garden and especially her dogs.

She’d left hubby Riccardo back in Italy (someone had to look after the dogs!).  But there were so many things to look forward to now she was in Australia – her parents, recently moved to Brisbane, whom she hadn’t seen for some time, and of course the reason she’s here – the triumphant return to the Sydney Opera House in early August performing all the four contrasting soprano roles in Offenbach’s sole opera ‘Tales of Hoffman’….. Covid-permitting.

Jessica has been lauded far and wide as the new Dame Joan, especially in Europe and the US.    If the performance of ‘Hoffman’ goes through, her appearance in Sydney will be only her second in the city. Which is odd for a girl who has called Sydney home since she and her family emigrated from Bristol, England. She was then 12. Her father had been a tenor with the Welsh Opera and retired not so long ago as the head of music at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill, NSW.  

In 2002 she won the Australian Singing Competition, in 2007 the Vienna State Opera Award and the Rome Opera Award. In 2013 she was awarded the prestigious Siolo d’Oro, a prize bestowed every two years for outstanding coloratura sopranos.  Jessica’s big break came when she caught the eyes (and ears) of Gianluigi Gelmetti, then Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He was adjudicating a singing competition which, oddly enough, Jessica didn’t win. According to Jessica’s father, Gelmetti disagreed with the judges’ choice of winner and invited Jessica to join him at the Rome opera.  Money was a problem.  Fortunately, a couple who belonged to a choir that she was singing with offered to fund her studies with a contribution of $40,000!

“I lived out of a suitcase for 5 years,” she says. “I had no home. And sometimes I couldn’t find a place to sleep, so I ended up in camps outside of Rome and friends’ couches, or I’d be driving around looking for a room to rent for the night.” For a while Jessica sought sanctuary at Casa Verdi, the legendary ‘asylum’ that Giuseppe Verdi founded for singers who had fallen on bad times, and which also served as a retirement home for ex-singers. “It’s a wonderful legacy Verdi left us.” 

Jessica’s ambition is to go back to Florence – she sees her future in Italy where she’s determined to open “an opera school for Australian (and Italian) singers to come and stay.  I think one of the things I found exceedingly difficult going to Italy was not having a place to live for the first few years, and I was constantly just going between jobs. …..  I’ve always had students online – I hadn’t increased them, but then I started to say, well I have the time right now, so I took on a few more students and it just keeps growing.  I enjoy teaching. I think you learn a lot about singing and I think that the young singers that are starting out have had a really hard time of it because they’ve lost their opportunities and those opportunities are much harder to find than the ones I had.”

One subject Jessica may not teach (or perhaps she will, depending on her whim) is how to discourage amorous leading singers on stage.  I had a persistent one, she says.  He eventually desisted when she started eating tuna sandwiches just prior to going on.  Her bad breath made him see the light.

She is just as frank when she recounts how she met her husband, Riccardo, who by the way is an internet technician. She laughs as she admits they met online. “I blocked one after the other,” she says. “But Riccardo and I chatted on the phone every day.”  She kept her name a secret but eventually advised Riccardo that she was an opera singer and that her name was Jessica.  “Then another guy, whom I had originally blocked because he said he didn’t like travelling…I’d already told them they had to be able to travel and work because I didn’t want to be separated all the time…it didn’t matter what their job was… I wanted them to have their dignity.”  When that fellow found out her identity, she decided to delete the app…without even advising Riccardo.

Six months later, Riccardo, having moved to Florence, met an orchestra conductor (as happens every day).  He showed him Jessica’s photo and mentioned she was an opera singer. The conductor recognised her.  Riccardo wrote her a letter and (by coincidence) she was singing in Florence that night.  “He came to see the show.  We met and we basically have been together ever since.”

I remark that you couldn’t script anything like that. To which Jessica replies: “Can’t blame a girl for thinking it’s fate or something!”

Covid-permitting, Jessica Pratt will be performing all the four soprano roles in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman at the Sydney Opera House between August 2 and 14.

Featured image : Australian opera singer Jessica Louise Pratt 

 

Published by Randolph Magri-Overend

One of the questions Randolph hates to answer is “Where do you come from?” Why? Because the answer can be so time-consuming and, in a way, also gives away how old he is!! Plus the questioner has to wrestle with the wish he hadn’t asked the question!! He was born in Cairo, Egypt, many moons ago of British parents although he can trace Maltese and Croatian ancestry in his lineage. Educated in a Jesuit college in London his wander lust for things unorthodox drove him to embark on a seafaring career with both Canadian Pacific Steamships and Shaw Savill. That in itself dates him because both lines have been redundant for many a year. One of his boasts is that he was the Purser on the “Gothic” which ten years previously had been Queen Elizabeth II’s Royal Yacht soon after her coronation in 1953. One of the objects imported on the ship by HM and left behind was a tape player which Randolph utilised on many a memorable Sunday evening with a classical concert for his passengers. Thus began a journey that not only awakened Randolph’s love for good music but also eventually led to his extensive knowledge of music in all forms. That he loves the era of Sinatra, Crosby, Armstrong, Dorsey (both) and many many more exponents of the post-war music scene is also part and parcel of his appreciation of the music of many an era. These days Randolph is retired but still reviews CDs and DVDs and has written articles on such diverse personalities as Yvonne Kenny, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Alexander Briger, the late Sir John Tavener, Sir James Galway, Dawn Upshaw and countless probes into the music of Gustav Mahler, Elizabeth Shwarzkopf and her husband Walter Legge, Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein and many many more he regrets to admit he has lost track of! Before emigrating to Australia, Randolph spent a number of years as a Flight Dispatcher in Canada. Since arriving in Australia, Randolph has written for The Weekend Australian (especially in their travel pages), The Sydney Morning Herald, Opera Opera and Fine Music magazine as well as some jazz magazines. If you require an extensive coverage of your music to a public that, at last count, reaches the best part of 818,000 please contact David Kary on editor.sydneyartsguide@gmail.com or email me directly on ibmar@bigpond.com. This also includes advertising any forthcoming shows by promoting featured artists. Cheers and thank you.