How do you mostly listen to music?
I’ll listen to music anywhere I can, although these days it’s mostly online via Spotify or iTunes. Quite often I’ll be practising along to a CD in the car as I drive up and down the motorway, I do get some strange looks though! I have a very eclectic mix on my iPhone too. But sometimes this job means your ears are always busy, so often I just like to have silence. I live on the edge of Richmond Park and in the evening, I can hear the deer lowing (is the that name for it?) It’s relaxing to just listen to the birds and the wildlife once in a while.
What was the first ever record or cd you bought?
Showaddywaddy’s Greatest Hits – I know, shameful but I was only five!
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
I love the sound of a brass band. I played B flat cornet in one at school, and for a while planned to go on and study trumpet. There is nothing quite like that heartwarming sound, especially at Christmas or at summer fairs.
If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?
It would have to be a drum kit but I’d be absolutely rubbish! When kit players really let loose it must be very therapeutic. I love the idea of playing some really cool rock. Or the bagpipes. No quiet instruments in my house!
Is applauding between movements acceptable?
It depends on both the situation and the audience. If it’s a very quiet intimate setting and you don’t want the flow of the piece interrupted, then I think it’s perfectly acceptable to ask the audience to wait until the end to applaud. However, if an audience feels really moved to show their appreciation halfway through a performance and it’s genuine and spontaneous, then I take that as a huge compliment.
What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?
I would make them more accessible to people with special needs. Music is such a universal language and often people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder or learning difficulties really respond and express themselves through music. An increasing number of theatres offer performances for people with special needs and sensory difficulties – I think we should work harder as classical performers to include everyone. We are pilloried as an elitist art form, but opera really has the power to move, so why not challenge that misconception by being wholly inclusive? So what if people call out and make noises during my performance. Have I reached them, engaged them, made them feel something they can’t express in another way? Then great, bring it on!
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
I was lucky enough to watch many of my friends and colleagues in Grimes on the Beach in Aldeburgh. It was the singularly most extraordinary opera performance I have ever heard and a massive inspiration to companies wanting to move the goal posts as far as bringing opera to new audiences is concerned. I was also very fortunate to hear Pavarotti live many years ago when I was a student at the then RSAMD. He was nearing the end of his career, but oh that voice!
We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?
I would have to meet Handel and Bach. I love Baroque music, to sing and to listen to.
Do you enjoy musicals? Do you have a favourite?
I’m a massive fan. I grew up watching and listening to all the classics on TV on a Sunday afternoon. All the Rodgers and Hammersteins, West Side Story, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Show Boat etc. As a little girl I was totally in love with Howard Keel! At school I was lucky enough to have a music teacher who was big in the local Amateur Dramatic society who did a school production of a musical each year. We did Bye Bye Birdie, Godspell, The Pyjama Game and Kiss Me Kate. I cut my musical teeth on those shows and they were the reason I decided to train as a singer – I only came to opera a bit later. As for favourites, I went to see Imelda Staunton in Gypsy recently, that’s hard to beat, and of course I’m beyond delighted to be able to go full circle and be singing the role of Lilli Vanessi all these years after I first encountered her!
Which conductor or performer of yester-year do you most wish you could have worked with?
I would love to have been in on one of Leonard Bernstein’s classes or just to have watched him work. He was such an incredible educator and his music is so vibrant and quirky. He was an amazing personality, a real force of nature and to have had a chance to soak that up - wow!
What’s the most overrated classical work - is there a warhorse whose appeal you really don’t relate to?
Poor Pachelbel – please stop…
Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?
It would be someone like Kate Bush or David Sylvian: people who just keep pushing the boundaries.
Imagine you’re a festival director here in London with unlimited resources. What would you programme - or commission - for your opening event?
I loved the flotilla of boats for the Queens Diamond Jubilee. I think I’d have to commission a massive piece on the Thames celebrating London’s musical and maritime heritage, that would be fantastic. A kind of cross between Handel’s Water Music and the Doge’s procession. We could have influences from all types of music, the Bands of the Royal Navy, jazz, classical, opera, folk , rock, reggae, pop - you name it.
What do you sing in the shower?
Whatever is on the radio in the morning – pretty much anything and quite probably pretty badly too, so my children tell me!
It’s late, you’ve had a few beers, you’re in a Karaoke bar. What do you choose to sing?
It’s got to be Disney’s Let it Go (from Frozen), mostly because you can channel a lot of frustrations into that song - it’s wonderfully liberating. Either that or Dancing Queen – it’s practically obligatory when doing Karaoke.
Jeni Bern is appearing as Lilli Vanessi/Katharine in Opera North’s production of Kiss Me, Kate at the Lowry Salford Quays on 13, 14 November, and Theatre Royal Nottingham on 20 & 21 November. (Read our 5-star review). She will be singing the role of Woglinde in Opera North’s 2016 Ring Cycle.
