Leah Thomas

UNINEWS: THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
9 MAY 2003

Versatility, determination and excellent teaching

Switching between opera and art song recital and back again is no easy task for a singer, but that's just what 24-year-old Conservatorium student Leah Thomas did when she took time out from her Diploma of Opera course to compete in, then win, the prestigious $20,000 Mietta Song Recital Award last month - an open-age competition which had 54 Australian and New Zealand contestants, many of them experienced professionals.

This month Ms Thomas is back preparing for her role as muse of tragedy, Melpomene, in a one-act opera by Gluck to be staged at the Conservatorium on 23 May.

"It's very unusual to be able to suddenly cross over styles and do so well," said Ms Thomas's voice teacher, Maree Ryan, speaking from her 20 years' experience of vocal teaching at the Conservatorium.

"It's like 200-metre sprinter Kathy Freeman running the marathon."

Yet versatility is the name of the game in the Mietta Award, which Ms Ryan calls "a real musician's competition".

"You have to do a half hour recital with piano in one hit, including several different composers and styles and representing 500 years of music in several languages," she said.

In conjunction with her teacher, the lyric soprano had chosen three songs each from Norwegian composer Grieg, Viennese-American Korngold, French Duparc and Argentinian Ginastera.

Ms Thomas was the unanimous choice of the four-member adjudicating panel, chaired by Richard Bonynge, who is reported as having been full of praise for her technique, sense of style and musicality, as well as for her varied program which showed all facets of her talents and included several items he'd never heard.

She also won the Audience's Choice Award.

"Leah is an outstanding musician, which is not always the case with singers, and she has a very fine, beautiful quality instrument," said Ms Ryan who has seen 50 of her students in the finals of national competitions throughout her career. "She's very intelligent and committed and very rewarding to work with."

Music graduate Joanne Goodman, who was also taught by Ms Ryan, won second prize in the Mietta Award, accompanied by Francis Greep, another Conservatorium graduate who is now assistant chorus master with Opera Australia.

The competition in fact constituted a strong representation of talent from the Conservatorium. Amongst the semi-finalists were two other opera diploma students: Caroline Wenbourne, accompanied by masters graduate Kate Golla, and James Payne, accompanied by Michael Black, another graduate and former Conservatorium lecturer in musicology and voice coaching, who is now Opera Australia chorus master.

Ms Thomas's pianist was Bethany Cook whom she'd met when they were both Bachelor of Music students. Ms Cook, who subsequently went on to complete a masters at the Royal Academy of London, studied Performance at the Conservatorium under David Miller AM, who is Chair of Ensemble Studies and, according to Ms Ryan "probably the best recital pianist in Australia".

"The Mietta also looks at how well you work with your accompanist," Ms Thomas said. "Bethany and I thought in the same way with the same imagery about pieces going on in our heads, and the imagery in your head colours the sound you make. She was incredibly supportive and we worked almost as one in portraying our songs which is the way it should be with this repertoire: it's not all about the soloist."

"David Miller worked with Bethany and me solidly getting us ready on how we work as a team."

The standard of the accompanists was so high in the finals, she said, that the judges divided the accompanist's prize amongst the four pianists.

"Maree is very demanding but very enjoyable to work with," Ms Thomas said of her voice teacher. "She's got a great sense of humour and a great work ethic and it's really thanks to her that we force ourselves to look outside the standard repertoire.

"Everyone at the Opera school, run by Sharolyn Kimmorley, really pushes us to be of an international standard.

It was during her bachelor degree working with Ms Ryan that Ms Thomas first studied recital repertoire and it was with that repertoire that she topped her final year in performance, her recital winning out of 48 recitals in various instruments.

"That takes some doing," Ms Ryan said, "as singers only start at 18, while the pianists and flautists and string players have all been at it since about eight."

"I'm always going to do recitals on the side to keep up with that repertoire and technique," said Ms Thomas whose ambition is for an international operatic career.

"It helps your opera because you learn to look for different colours that you may have overlooked in your arias. I've just started singing my arias again and they've leapt ten steps."

"Apart from the technical benefits, it's given me a huge boost of confidence," she said of her Mietta win.

Her prize, given in honour of Melbourne arts patron, the late Mietta O'Donnell, includes various cash donations as well as a month's language study each in Germany and Italy which she plans to undertake at the end of the year.

But right now she's preparing for Il Parnaso Confuso (Mt Parnasos in Turmoil), "a daunting but fabulous over-the-top Italian one-act opera that's lots of fun."