T’ai chi and Tosca

A prima donna is growing old. Younger rivals are stealing her roles. Her private life is a mess. Her confidence is slipping, so is her health: the two are intertwined. Cancellations and vocal problems are piling up. She longs for the adulation that once was hers. She is lonely.

This is not fiction. It is the experience of many an ageing soprano, not least the late, great Maria Callas. It is also the story of Prima Donna, an opera created by American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright and premiered at last summer’s Manchester International Festival.

But it is not the story of Janis Kelly, who sang the title role for that initial run and returns to it for the London premiere next week at Sadler’s Wells. By the ageist standards of the opera business, Kelly might be considered too old for such a big role. She is 55 – an age when, if they haven’t already retired, sopranos start gravitating, willingly or not, towards opera’s older women, where dramatic presence counts for more than vocal elegance.

What Kelly has proved is that there are exceptions to the rule – that for fit and eager sopranos, 50 may well be the new 40. It was clear in Manchester that, while identifying magnificently with her stage role, Kelly herself was still in her prime. This doughty Scottish soprano gave the performance of her life, sounding in excellent vocal health and bringing her theatrical skills to a role that requires vulnerability as well as largesse.

Why have composers proved so reluctant to write leading roles that showcase a soprano of advancing years? “Film and theatre actors can go on for ever,” says Kelly, “but in opera you are dependent on the voice. Some sopranos adapt – they become mezzos. I’m not a mezzo. I can’t do those meaty old women, the mothers and grandmothers. I am chasing the few soprano parts that are left. That is why I am so happy to have found this role in Rufus Wainwright’s opera.”

Kelly reels off the roles she still wants to sing: Countess Madeleine (Capriccio), Frau Storch (Intermezzo), the title role in Barber’s Vanessa, Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes), Elsa (Lohengrin), Tosca. “What I want to do most is Butterfly,” she says. “I know I’ve got it in me, but I’ve probably missed the boat.”

There is still hope: next year she will make her debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, as Pat Nixon in John Adams’ Nixon in China. She will be 56, the same age that two of her mentors, Elisabeth Grümmer and Felicity Palmer, were when they first sang there.

All this shows how far Kelly has come from the soubrette roles, such as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Despina in Così fan tutte, of her early career. She grew up in the Scottish town of Inverness. With her seven siblings she formed a close-harmony group that gave her early stage experience. She sang her first Mozart role in a school production. As far as a career was concerned, “it was almost like I didn’t have a choice”.

She has now been singing professionally for 30 years – and admits she wants another 10. How has she bucked the trend of ageing sopranos?

Kelly doesn’t hesitate. “Emotional grounding,” she says. Married to Ward Veazey, an American artist she met in Alaska while singing there in Così, she has long been a student of eastern religions and a practitioner of t’ai chi. “When I was younger I used to get very nervous. I’ve had to find a peaceful place inside. I’d have burned myself out if I hadn’t.”

If she is ever tempted to become self-absorbed, her three daughters – triplets, now 15 – bring her back to reality. “They know when I’m feeling tired but it’s my job to make them feel I can juggle everything. I’m quite vain – I hate the fact that I have wrinkles but I work physically [to keep trim]. When I did Leila [in Bizet’s Pearl Fishers] two years ago, I asked my daughters if I looked too old for the part. One of them replied, ‘No, Mum, from a distance you look great.’”

She has not always felt great. Her most testing time came five years ago when she felt the impact of the menopause during a run of Puccini’s La rondine . She started forgetting lines, making mistakes, breaking out in sweats. “I was lucky to have work to sustain me through it. I knew it would pass. I didn’t take HRT [hormone replacement therapy] – I felt that would just have been putting it off.”

Her voice never faltered, and indeed the ageing process has done Kelly’s sound nothing but good. “I started out with a light soubrette – dare I say it, with a very good bottom – but was told that ‘if you don’t grow from Susanna into a Countess [in Figaro], your career will be over’. Having triplets rejuvenated me. My voice became darker, richer, higher, lower, and this is what has opened up so many new roles. The voice really works for me now, and I’m enjoying it more than ever.”

Which helps to explain why Kelly has no hang-ups about admitting her age in a profession that is notoriously reluctant to discuss such matters. Could the tendency of singers to lie about their age be part of the vanity of the opera scene? Kelly offers a more practical explanation. “They’re frightened they won’t get work. Singing is addictive: it’s like giving in to something. When it’s really working there’s something spiritual in it, and that’s why it’s hard to give up. As singers age, it’s your body that’s being rejected as well as your voice. We live in a visual world. My agent tells me straight – ‘They won’t have you because of your age.’”

But when Kelly made her Covent Garden debut earlier this season in Gianni Schicchi, she found herself in a group of singers who were all over 50. “It felt fantastic – these were people of experience, and it showed. When I started out, there were lots of older men and women [in the profession], and I learned from them. I can’t see myself stopping. As long as I’m still singing and being challenged by my parts, I’ll always be 25.”

‘Prima Donna’, Sadler’s Wells, London, April 12-17, tel: 0844 412 4300; www.sadlerswells.com