International opera singer and actress REBECCA CAINE is currently on tour across the UK with her show Dividing Day, ‘a journey of self-discovery with help from writers including Bernstein, Bucchino, Guettel, La Chiusa, Sondheim, Weill and Yeston’
Rebecca, who recently received rave reviews for her performances in The Light in the Piazza in the USA and Conor Mitchell’s Abomination at the Southbank Centre, can be seen next at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff on 8 November 2023. Accompanied by Nathan Martin on the piano, the actress and singer then visits Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester On Thames (11 November); The Great Hall, Reading (15 November); Centenary Theatre, Berkhamsted (16 November); Queen Victoria Hall, Oundle (19 November); Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham (25 November); Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Canterbury (15 December); Mount Without, Bristol (17 December); and Cooper Hall, Frome (20 December).
Rebecca created the role of Cosette in Les Misérables for the RSC and was a celebrated Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera opposite Michael Crawford in the West End and her native country, Canada. Other recent stage work includes Lady Raeburn in Tete a Tete’s Salad Days at the Riverside Studios, Elsa in The Sound of Music at Kilworth House Theatre, Lady Vale in Darling of The Day at the Union Theatre, Lady Dant/Madame Colbert in the world premiere of Flowers For Mrs Harris at the Sheffield Crucible, The Mother Abbess in the UK tour of The Sound of Music and Helen Chasen in Harold and Maude at the Charing Cross Theatre.
Her operatic credits include the roles of Lulu, Vixen, Marguerite, Violetta and Susanna for companies such as English National Opera, Glyndebourne, Nice, Glimmerglass and Scottish Opera.
Here Rebecca continues Musical Theatre Review’s interview series: Five Questions With…
You are in demand as a singer and actress across the world in large-scale productions, what led you to plan this intimate, solo tour?
It wasn’t my idea but my friend and collaborator, Nathan Martin’s. I’d had amazing reviews for Conor Mitchell’s opera Abomination at the Southbank and it inspired him to put together a really interesting, beautiful and above all, powerful set of songs together (LaChuisa, Guettel, Tesori, Sondheim and more) weaving it around my background, living in different countries, never quite being from anywhere, geographically or vocally.
Your list of musical theatre, opera and concert credits is incredibly impressive, not least your relationship with Les Mis and The Phantom of the Opera. Has it been difficult to pick the material you are performing on the tour?
Nathan had a huge hand in it, the main thing was to find a rep that suited my old-school legit soprano sound. There is some terrific stuff out there. I really wanted it to reflect a long and lived life, good and bad, mistakes and regrets, life is never really black or white.
I imagine you will be reflecting on your successful career, beginning with the role of Laurey in Oklahoma! at the Palace Theatre in 1981. During that time, you have embraced the classics and new work, is that something you have always felt strongly about?
I’ve felt strongly about working! One of my regrets is that in order to be taken seriously as an opera singer and cross over from musical theatre, I felt I had to wipe any trace of it from my resumé for years. In a perfect world I should have kept both careers running simultaneously but is was not a possibility then. After I aged out of my opera roles I had to very much start again in MT. I now have reached a place where I feel an anomaly. I don’t vocally fit the stereotype of an older woman. My voice is still a pretty fresh soprano sound and I exist as that person. I’m not going to change my sound – attempt to belt or do anything to endanger my vocal health – so unless people write for me there are not many roles for me, but I have been lucky to have people compose for me. I’m no longer interested in trying to be a square peg in a round hole. I’ve earned that after over four decades and I’m very proud of my strange eclectic career.
You have performed all over the world in musical theatre and opera, is life on the road something you continue to embrace?
I’ve loved having worked in so many places. I was raised mainly in the USA, so I’ve always been fascinated by the difference in how Americans behave in the room for the different genres, musicals, opera and plays. In Canada where I was born, I opened Phantom and then sang with the Canadian Opera Company for ten years, I have a whole family there in the industry I feel lucky to know. The greatest gift from Canada has been the touring I have done, every province and territory except the Yukon and Nunavut. I’ve seen the Northern Lights and sung to First Nations in fishing churches in the Arctic Circle. I’ve stayed awake in the car driving to the hotel after concerts to be on moose watch. I hope to continue to do it as long as I can. It’s been a privilege.
You have an association with a whole host of hugely popular and ground-breaking musicals, is there a particular highlight/memory you would like to share with our readers?
When we made Les Misérables in a stuffy basement in the bowels of the Barbican in 1985, we had no idea it would become what it became. There had never been a phenomena like it, how was anyone to know? That whole experience was extraordinary in retrospect. The original cast’s very DNA are in the very bones of that musical and will be forever. To see it go on, means so much to so many, to hear it sung when real barricades are erected, it is a gift. I’m so grateful to have been rather reluctantly plucked out of the Glyndebourne chorus by Trevor Nunn and packed off to the RSC on that hot, sunny, distant day in the summer of 1985. You never know what awaits you in this extraordinary business.
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.