Soprano Teresa Cahill's 80th birthday

22nd July 2024

Articles NMC Recordings

Soprano Teresa Cahill celebrates her 80th birthday on 30 July 2024. Cahill features on a number of NMC recordings including her husband Robert Saxton’s The Wandering Jew, and Yardstick to the Stars, along with David Blake's In Praise of Krishna.

Here we share Teresa's reflections on her remarkable career to mark her birthday ...

Biography

Teresa Cahill was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire but brought up in Rotherhithe, South London where her father was a stevedore in the docks and her mother, a factory worker. After studying at the Guildhall, she won a Peter Stuyvesant scholarship to the London Opera Centre.

She then joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and in her first year won the coveted John Christie award. Her solo debut there was as the First Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote and she also sang in La Calisto and Ariadne auf Naxos, returning later as Alice Ford in Falstaff. She went on to become a Principal at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden singing Barbarina in Figaro as her debut role. She also sang at Santa Fe and Philadelphia Operas in the USA, at La Fenice in Venice and with Opera North and other companies. She toured Europe with the London Sinfonietta in Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers with Henze conducting and sang in Albert Herring at Aldeburgh during Britten’s lifetime.

In 2017 Teresa Cahill was presented with two lifetime achievement awards: the Elgar Medal and the Sir Charles Santley Gift. She is currently a Professor in the Vocal Department of Trinity College of Music, London and also teaches at Worcester College, Oxford.

Some words from Teresa

Although there are three examples of my work on the NMC label, I was not particularly known for singing contemporary music but rather for composers such as Mozart, Richard Strauss and Elgar.

In fact I was scared of modern music. My mother, fearing an impecunious future for me, insisted on my taking a piano diploma as well as one in singing BUT I was NOT a good sight reader and for most of my career, I was lucky enough to leave the difficult music to others.

However, in April 1974, the situation changed when the BBC asked me at short notice to learn David Blake’s In Praise of Krishna as their soprano had cancelled. I managed it and the broadcast led to a role in David’s opera Toussaint and his song cycle called From the Mattress Grave which was written for me.

At one of the rehearsals, I met the composer Robert Saxton, my partner and husband of over 45 years and a whole new and exciting world opened up. As we both dislike nepotism, it was some years before I sang his Eloge which was written for another soprano years before.

There seemed also to be a sea change in the performance of new music. Michael Vyner of the London Sinfonietta decided he wanted contemporary music to sound more beautiful. Apart from Dorothy Dorow who had perfect pitch AND a beautiful voice, most of the singers were hired because of their accurate musicianship rather than for the colour of their voices but Michael wanted both. Therefore I was occasionally hauled in to sing great composers such as Luigi Dallapiccola and Hans Werner Henze.

Not knowing how much effort it took me to learn the music, composers such as John Casken, Richard Rodney Bennett and Saxton began to write music for me. I worked with Henze and Michael Tippett - as conductors of their own music and with Harrison Birtwistle as director in his Down by the Greenwood Side. I began a love affair with the works of Schonberg, Berg, Webern and Lutyens and was no longer scared of difficult music.

I have a very good ear but learning these pieces would have been impossible without the superb musician Paul Webster, Boulez’s “go to" pianist in London who was at university with my husband. Not only could Paul sight read music as difficult as Brian Ferneyhough from the full score, but he could also rearrange the harmony into the style of Richard Strauss and analyse exactly how I got from note to note, taking in every consonant and every dissonant interval in the orchestral part. By the time this was done, I was able to stand up and sing the two Webern Cantatas from memory in Vienna in front of his daughters. However, should there be a mistake, a better musician could correct it immediately and not need to listen to the orchestra-as I found out once when one of the musicians, whose notes I always needed, was missing in a performance of the Birtwistle and I had to improvise….Harry didn’t seem to mind!!

Cahill and friends (including Harrison Birtwistle)

Some of the works I have mentioned and many others are still not commercially recorded but the tapes are in the British Library so here’s hoping!

Last, I want to thank Colin Matthews and NMC for their amazing work. Composers, both young and old, need support more than ever in these days of populism and passing fashions. Everyone’s voice should be heard so, as I reach 80 and you reach 35, I wish you all a very Happy Birthday, with many successful years to come.

Teresa Cahill
15.07.2024