Ailish Tynan has picked up prize after prize on herrise to fame but she's no prima donna, writes Michael Dervan
Soprano Ailish Tynan has picked up prize after prize on her starry rise to fame but she's no prima donna. I've never had a vision that's propelled me on. I've just been lucky.' she tells Michael Dervan Talking to Mullingar soprano Ailish Tynan about her rapid rise as a singer, it would be easy to imagine it all happened quite by accident. Hers is not a story of dealing with the pressures of musically ambitious parents. But music was encouraged, in the form of piano lessons "with Miss Mimna across the road". But, "when the time would come [for the lessons], I would never be able to be found". She hated her piano lessons. "I used to hide in the bushes. I could hear my brothers and my mother and my sister calling, 'Ailish, where are you? It's time for your piano lesson.' As a result, my mother can play the piano better than I can, because she used to go to them instead."
The more serious musical study began at Presentation Convent, because "a nun there thought I had a nice voice, and my mother then decided when I was 11 that she would get me some singing lessons".
"There was a Church of Ireland lady who set up a choral society in Mullingar, Mrs Horan, and mam sent me to Mrs Horan for the singing lessons. She wouldn't take me when I was 11, but then I joined the choir, and when I was about 15, I think, I did a feis competition for that age group, and won. That was kinda the start of it.
"When I finished school I had a real hankering to do law. I fancied the idea, and I thought, jeez, I'd make loads of money. My eldest brother is a solicitor, and I definitely thought, yes, this is the way forward, I see myself in 20 years, big house, loads of money, great. But he didn't want me to do the law at all. He thought I should do the singing.
"I decided it was a bit too risky to go straight into singing. There's not many opera singers that I knew of in Mullingar. So I did the BMus Ed in Trinity. When I finished that, I did teaching for about three weeks, and I realised that I just didn't have the discipline for the teaching. I couldn't control the kids. I decided then that I'd do the singing full time. I went back to the Royal Irish Academy of Music and did a masters in music performance with Irene Sandford.
"I suppose the first big thing to happen was the Millennium Singer of the Future. I won that, and on the panel of that was Menno Feenstra, who was casting director at Glyndebourne at the time. I had also auditioned for the Guildhall opera course that same week. He said, look, if you get into Guildhall, look me up, give me a phone call, audition for Glyndebourne, and maybe you'll come down and sing in the chorus. Then I won the West Belfast Classical Bursary, and in the same month won the John McCormack Golden Voice of Athlone. That, I suppose, gave me a bit of confidence.
"I auditioned for Guildhall, got on the opera course, and did six months on the opera course at Guildhall, auditioned for the chorus at Glyndebourne and was accepted for the chorus and a small understudy. Went down there and did six months there. Went back to the opera course, and did the lead role in the college opera and Barbarina on tour with Glyndebourne. Stephen Naylor, who's the music director there, had come and seen me doing a Lieder concert, and had offered me Barbarina.
"I went back to Glyndebourne the next year and did understudy for Miss Wordsworth in Albert Herring, and not as big a chorus workload as I'd done the first year, because I wanted to do some stuff of my own.
"Then I got on to the Vilar Young Artists programme at Covent Garden. Did two years there, which undoubtedly was the makings of me. But about six months into that I won the Lieder Prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, with the BBC Next Generation Prize, and became a BBC Next Generation Artist. So I'm contracted now with the BBC for two years, until September. And it's been great, every bit of it."
She tells it all in a way that carries not the slightest suggestion of effort on her part. There's not a whiff of sweat, no talk of career drive or ambition, and equally not a hint that anything could have arisen that might have deflected her from the clear path she was moving along. It's as if it all somehow just happened to her.
"I know young singers now, people who are working with me, and they're so motivated. I know people who would say, it's my lifelong dream to sing in the Met. I don't even know what city the Met is in. I couldn't care less about that. I've never had a dream or I've never had a vision that's propelled me on. I've just been lucky.
"Now, in the last two years I have been working very hard, and it's showing. But up until then, a lot of it was luck, and the fact that I was fairly casual about it was almost a bonus. Because I never put myself under any pressure. I enjoyed myself. I had a great time. When I was in the chorus at Glyndebourne and at college, god, I was the life and soul of the party. Now that the boot's on the other foot, and I have to quieten down and do a bit of hard work, at least I don't feel like maybe some of these child prodigies, who've been pushed into it. A lot of them missed out on their youth, really. I didn't. I had a great time."
She doesn't feel that her relaxed development has in any way left her lagging behind. "I think I'm just having to learn the stuff I'd have to learn at this stage, anyways."
She is, she says, actually one of the hardest working of the performers on the BBC Next Generation scheme, a scheme which has brought her the invaluable experience of frequent broadcast recitals and concert appearances with BBC orchestras. "You basically get to work with all the orchestras in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. I may be doing a recording once a month with one of those orchestras." She makes the experience with the BBC sound like being the child in the proverbial toy shop. The repertoire is an open book - "carte blanche, you can do what you like".
The world of opera, on the other hand, is not so straightforward. She approaches new roles firstly through the language - finding the best translation, writing in all the phonetics, studying with a language coach ("the text alone, no music"), then to a music coach ("from working at the Royal Opera House, and at Glyndebourne, I've a huge bank of super coaches that I know"). And she's a quick learner. She estimates three solid weeks to get the musical challenges of Pamina from Mozart's Magic Flute under her belt.
"I'm not a great sight-reader, but I've a great ear, and I can nearly pick things up. I can learn two or three songs a day, no problem, if I have the groundwork done with the language."
More recent music takes more time. "I'm doing Flora in Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden, with Sir Andrew Davis in The Barbican. That's a different story. It's very complicated. I've spent the last two weeks working on it and I'm on about page 15 at half tempo. It's a different story, but very rewarding. I always imagine it's the equivalent of somebody doing a crossword puzzle. You know when you get your first couple of clues on the cryptic, you're on a roll, you're delighted with yourself, you get great satisfaction from that."
Unlike a lot of young singers, she's as happy on the recital platform as on the opera stage.
"Definitely the song-singing is very special. It's a different interaction. Because when you're on stage doing an opera role, it's all about you, and it's all about the people on stage with you. You can't see the faces of the people in the audience. Whereas when you do a recital, you see the face of every single person - sometimes it's not a good thing - but you can really communicate with people. And also, in opera, there's an awful lot of time spent telling the story, there's very little time spent actually looking into the person. Whereas a song, oftentimes, it's just about the feeling. In that sense you get a very distilled moment."
In opera, "you've got some conductor telling you to do maybe 10 things differently to what you've been practising. You've got another fellow saying, look, I want you to run across the stage and sing it, and then jump up there, and then kneel down".
The singing has to be perfect, she says, before you start in order to survive the potential battering of rehearsals. Yet she's no interest in prima donna behaviour.
"I try never to fight with anybody. I find you get a lot more of your own way if you're very nice to people and very reasonable, insofar as it is possible. I would never be the type to throw a fit. Even if I didn't agree with a conductor or a director, I would at least pretend I agreed for a day, so that when I go back they would think that I had thought about it overnight and then really just couldn't live with it. It's very political."
She goes into great detail to describe her negotiations with conductor David Brophy over the aria, Ach, ich fühl's, in The Magic Flute, when Pamina discovers that her beloved Tamino won't speak to her. She took on some of Brophy's ideas, but resisted anything that would interfere with observing the rests Mozart has written in.
"For me, the rest was the most important part of the whole thing. You know the way, if something awful happens to you, if you've been in love, the person turns around to you and says, well, actually, this is over. Your heart just goes . . ." - she makes a sharp intake of breath. "It's the most awful feeling in the pit of your stomach, and for me the rests are that, I've been winded. I couldn't live with losing those rests."
Even now, with the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh Festival behind her, and important debuts ahead at Welsh National Opera and Seattle Opera, Ailish Tynan still describes herself as happy just to let things happen.
"I'd love to record a CD. I'd like to go back to the Royal Opera House and do a really big role. I've all these dreams and things on that level that I'd love to do. But as long as I can pay my mortgage, and have a nice life, and buy an occasional pair of shoes that I like the look of, and, you know, go out for a nice dinner in a nice restaurant, I'm happy.
"I suppose I've more dreams about getting married and having a family than I would have about having an amazing career. Of course, in order to do that you have to have a little bit of money. Having a nice career would be an added bonus."
• Ailish Tynan appears as Pamina in Opera Ireland's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from tonight (01-8721122); Tynan sings Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne for the BBC with the Ulster Orchestra at 2pm on Tues Apr 1 (adm free 0044870-3331918), and gives recitals in Derry (Thurs, Apr 14, 048-71375550) and Sligo (Fri, Apr 15, 071-9141405)