In an examination room at the Royal College of Music, soprano Patricia Rozario joins the applause after her student Oscar Dom Victor Castellino, a small unassuming young Indian with a rich baritone, completes his concert and with it his final-year examination. She is as pleased as she is proud, as his centrepiece — a complex and modernist composition called ‘The Little Big Man’ — has delighted the audience. The piece, with five musical episodes, was composed especially for Castellino by Bertram Wee from the Royal College, and is based on poems in the collection The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore (who also wrote the English translation).
Rozario came to England at the age of 20 with a degree in English and French from Mumbai’s Sophia College and a love of music in her heart. She is today a soprano of repute who sings in venues all over the world, while teaching in two of London’s leading schools of music.
More recently, a good part of Rozario’s energies and time have been invested in her charity Giving Voice to India. This takes her to India thrice a year, where she trains students in singing in Mumbai, Delhi and Goa. Her dream is to organise an annual opera with her students in India; a country she says is bursting with musical talent. Rozario talks about her music as she readies for a visit to India next month.
Tell me about your decision to become a singer and an opera singer.
I came to England from Mumbai when I was 20 for two or three years, and planned to go back and may be teach. But when you are at a conservatoire immersed in music and spending all day every day learning repertoire — in German, French, Italian and English — your voice develops as you go along, [and it is] a wonderful experience. In my second year, I went for a competition in Spain where I got a prize, which gave me the opportunity to go to the Salzburg Mozarteum. There too I won a competition that gave me the money to continue studying. I went back to England to the [National] Opera Studio, and started doing little concerts here and there. I probably would have still gone back to India if in the fourth year of opera training had I not met my husband, Mark Troop, a pianist studying at the Guildhall. We decided to get married, and staying here made me realise that I could make a career in opera.
In addition to performing in opera, you also perform singly.
In 1990 I did a modern opera, and that suddenly put me into another area: singing for living composers who are always looking for singers. I was recommended to John Tavener. I did an opera of his in Aldborough and, after that, he wrote continuously for my voice. The wonderful thing was that he loved India, although he had never visited.
The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote something for me. Gradually, I was doing less opera and more concert work. In opera, you are away for around six weeks at a time. I often arranged for my agent to put one or two concerts in the rehearsal period for me, so that I could go away and a get a breath of fresh air, do another piece and come back.
How difficult it is to make a living as a singer?
If you are good, you can earn very well. It is getting more difficult now. Europe has suffered a financial crisis so the arts are first affected. I have a young Indian tenor I keep in touch with but finding an agent is so hard these days. Nowadays, in these countries they look after their own and we are the outsiders. We don’t have anyone in India to support us and create opportunities, which is something I am very focused on with my teaching in India.
It also depends on who represents you. I used to do well because I had a powerful agent. Of course once you make a good reputation, you don’t need one. I am actually training a young Indian Nikhil Sardana to be an agent, and I now send him my information and tell him to negotiate for me. And he has done three contracts for me so far very nicely.
When did you turn to teaching?
I joined the Royal College of Music seven or eight years ago. I have been singing from 1981-82 and I am still singing, but every singer knows that your voice doesn’t last forever. There comes a point when, as you get older, the muscles get weaker and, because of projecting [your voice] in a big space, you rely entirely on your body strength, using the muscles and the cavities to get the voice to resonate. And that does not last forever. When I go to see my old teacher with my new students, he says you are going to sing till you are 70; but it is just how well you look after your voice.
The thing about opera is that you have got to project [your voice] more and more. These days I think orchestras and conductors are not very sympathetic. Very few of them really bring the orchestra down so that the singers can sing easily and be heard. So singers are blasting away and that puts a lot of pressure [on the voice]. In the main opera houses or in some churches for example, the acoustics of a building are such that they project because of their excellent acoustics.
You are familiar with Indian systems of vocal music. What is it — in terms of technique, training and presentation — that differentiates western singing from Indian?
Two things. One is that Indian music —as it is performed these days — is amplified. I think that is a shame because, in the old days, people performed in smaller rooms. And everyone listened, really listened. Whereas now I find it so disconcerting that, when you perform for an Indian audience, half the people are talking in the back because they know it is amplified. When I perform, I don’t use amplification and I really suffer because Indian audiences still talk. They don’t respect the fact that, as an artist, you are creating a sound entirely within yourself.
Now I have spoken to many Indian artists, mainly singers, and they say that to learn you go to a teacher where you learn the ragas and exercises, and then you learn to improvise. But they don’t really describe what a technique is. What is a technique? Technique comes from suggesting a certain connection to your body because otherwise you sing from the throat. That is not very good because the throat can’t take more than a certain amount of pressure. What I have heard with young Indian singers is that they sing so much that they lose their voices. Then they rest and start again. People are often gifted with a voice, and some singers are better able to develop their voice. For example, I love the voice of Begum Parveen Sultana; she has a ringing pure sound.
In western singing, you sing with your body. You learn to use the diaphragm. It is the breathing and the flow of air impacting the head and chest cavities that creates a resonance and magnifies the voice. You find a way of combining the two resonances so that your voice is richer and stronger. For example, if you listen to some western singers who do Handel and Vivaldi — the early composers — the music is actually such that you can sing really fast, like the taan in Indian singing. It is free with no pressure on the voice. With early instruments that are much lighter, the voice carries. It worries me when I hear that Indian singers lose their voices because it means they are working in the dark, hammering their voices and putting too much pressure.
In Europe we have reached a stage where Indian vocalists want so much amplification — even in concert halls that have a natural acoustic — that it actually gets uncomfortable for the listener. I have heard in France, in some of the concert halls, they don’t want Indian musicians who demand amplification because its unpleasant for the listener. It is all too loud in a room that can actually project beautifully and where you hear more subtle variation when not amplified. I think they will come round to it eventually. It is just that we have pop music, on the other side, which is heavily amplified, so it makes it very difficult. Everyone wants to hear things loud and overpowering.
What does your charity Giving Voice do in India?
We started in Mumbai and Goa six years ago. My husband and I go thrice a year: we work as a team. He trains them in the music, pronunciation and style and I work with them on technique. We do an intensive course of five or six days. At the end, we come together and I try to see if their technique is coming through when they are singing. We record all the sessions, so that they can work with it. Over six years we have trained some musicians — two are teaching in Mumbai and two in Bangalore, a baritone and a soprano. In Goa too, I have one or two teaching.
These are short and informal courses. Where does it get them?
Eight years ago I brought Joanne D’mello, a young girl from Goa to study at the Royal College. I made a case and convinced them to take her on. She is now in Germany, making her debut in an opera house. I try to help as much as possible to find the money. I feel we Indians have very special quality voices, and we have a love of singing. That is why I am committed to going so regularly to India because, if I see the talent, I will slowly give them opportunities. The baritone Oscar [Oscar Dom Victor Castellino] has worked for four years with me to study the history, learn the languages, and learn a vast repertoire. I feel he still has to study more, and I am sending him to Germany where they have more opportunities to perform and there is a bigger musical market. I think he will succeed. And now I have this new student coming — Toshan from Shillong with a beautiful tenor voice. I am hoping that as these voices develop, we start doing some opera in India.
We did Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. It is a small piece and we took some risks, as some of the singers were not as good as I thought they were. However, people in Delhi, Bombay and Goa came to see it, and I heard comments like “We have not heard singing as good as this in 50 years.” That was enough for me. You know, I could see there were mistakes in the performance but for the listener it was 100 per cent in tune; you could hear the diction. They acted, danced — we had a whole team to teach them to do all this — and it was a success. We spent all the money we had in our little charity and now I am waiting to build up funds and we will do another.
Why do you think it is that a strong tradition of western classical music and music education was something that the British Raj did not develop in India?
India is a big and ancient country and has its own strong traditions of music — a powerful heritage. And obviously they would like to develop that. It used to be only the Christians and the Parsis [who learnt western classical music], but now I find I am getting students from all over the country who are drawn to western classical music. There was a time when nobody would allow their offspring to become full-time musicians unless you came from a family of musicians. But now there are youngsters who tell their parents that they want to be a musician, and the parents are prepared to entertain the idea.
When the British were in India and a bit after, people who were on their way to other parts of the world — to say Australia and Hong Kong — would stop in India and perform in the main cities. Now, for example, China has opened up and the initiative there has come from the government who are investing in Europeans going there to teach. Somehow India has been a little reticent. It could be because the British Raj had such a strong impact. The country needed to release itself. I think we were in awe of the British; we needed to find ourselves and be confident within ourselves. And now it is changing. Our youngsters are deciding okay, now we would like to do western music, and I think that it is better really that way.
Where do you see yourself and your project in five years?
I would like to able to put on regular operas in India. What tends to happen is that my students, for lack of opportunities, go into advertising. So they are singing pop and jazz, and western classical and Indian classical. It is too much of a mixture. You have to commit. I know there is a great love of music in India, a great thirst. I would like to be able to help the very special ones, the talented ones to come here. When you live in Europe, you hear this sort of music all the time, you hear other singers who are grappling and struggling to improve themselves. So you see there is a struggle for everybody, and eventually you conquer the problem. I have great hope for India.
