Soprano Anna Leese (left), composer and conductor Kenneth Young, and librettist Georgia Jamieson Emms.

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Read the review by Tony Ryan here

The Strangest of Angels has a very personal connection for soprano Anna Leese.

Leese was studying towards her Doctorate in Musical Arts focusing on the collaboration between singers and composers when she came up with the idea of creating an opera where the performers, writer and composer all have input on the creative process. “Opera started off with the performers being a part of the initial process and then it became an artform where the performers were not part of it at all.

“I decided to create something where I was involved in making some of the big decisions about how the project would go and how it’s going to happen.”

She contacted conductor and composer Kenneth Young and librettist Georgia Jamieson Emms, who were both good friends of hers, to be her fellow collaborators.

Being from Dunedin, Leese wanted to tell a story that was about the area, and she has had a fascination for Janet Frame ever since she was a little girl. “I came from the same poor rural background as well and had a slightly odd family, so I related to her story,” she explains.

With those two criteria in mind, it became easy for libretto writer Georgia Jamieson Emms to zero in on an aspect of Janet Frame’s life when the writer spent some time in Seacliff Mental Hospital, just north of Dunedin.

Both Leese and Jamieson Emms were determined not to give the impression of telling the story of the “real” Janet Frame – which is not what the opera is. To that end, Jamieson Emms created the fictional character of psychiatric nurse Katherine Baillie, who is played by Leese.

“It was a very early decision of mine to make our character of Janet a supporting character in the opera. I never met the real Janet Frame, and the last thing I wanted to do was to assume what she may or may not have said – or sung!” said Jamieson Emms.

By using the fictional Katherine as the central character, the creators could make the opera about the situation around the 1950s mental healthcare system.

“Katherine is the same age as Janet and they went to school together [in the opera],” says Leese. “[Katherine] also suffered trauma but she didn’t process it, so she ended up a twisted human with a lot of resentment. That comes out through the position she’s chosen, working with very vulnerable patients.”

She based her portrayal of Katherine on experiences she’s had with public health institutions.

Young, who made the decision to move to Dunedin in 2019 and was awarded the Mozart Fellowship from the University of Otago shortly after, always had in mind a contrast between Katherine’s more “strident and aggressive” role, and Janet’s more “gentle and considered” character.

The Strangest of Angels is a true collaborative work, with Leese composing an aria for Katherine in the third scene. “I have a very personal connection to it because it comes from my personal experience ... over the last three or four years,” she explains. “I always try to put my own experience into each of my roles, but this is way above and beyond. It’s unlike any other opera I’ve performed.”

It was also the first time that Jamieson Emms was able to write a full libretto without needing to fit previously composed music, and she was delighted to receive, several months after she’d sent it off, the full piano score in her inbox. “I sat down and played the whole opera and was astounded that Ken hadn’t changed a word of my libretto. I love that Ken took my words, spoke them aloud, noted where the syllables fell and then wrote around it,” she says.

Jayne Tankersley, who plays the character of Janet, says it was a lovely experience for everyone to rehearse a new opera together. “It creates a real sense of family that we are all doing it for the first time, and everybody is there because they want to be,” she says. “Hopefully that will come across in the performance.”

The Strangest of Angels will be performed over two nights in Christchurch, 27-28 May, at The Piano.