The number of Figaro productions soprano Louise Alder has clocked up as Susanna is in double figures, yet last summer at Glyndebourne she stepped into the Countess Almaviva’s shoes for the first time. “I realised I already knew most of the role,” she explains. “I knew the Countess' words, but I didn't know them from her mouth. I hadn't made any decisions about what I felt about her as a character.” Having just switched back to Susanna for a revival of Sir David Mcvicar’s classic Royal Opera staging, we caught up at Covent Garden to compare roles and talk Mozart.
Alder initially found swapping from Susanna to the Countess a challenge. “Over a decade of singing Susanna, she was inside me,” Alder begins. “I feel scenes from her point of view. I feel the energy, the pace of the scenes from her perspective. So I really had to do a 180° flip, being the answer to the questions that I normally pose and vice versa. Now, it's easier than I thought, swapping back into Susanna mentally, because I've sung her so much.”
Susanna, Figaro’s bride-to-be and maid to the Countess, is the linchpin of Mozart’s opera. Years ago, I remember Alder on social media tallying up the notes in the score and concluding Susanna to be the longest female role in the standard operatic repertoire. She first sang it at the Royal College of Music in 2012. “Susanna was the first role that I really learned properly. I prepared her for a year with Maria Cleva and multiple coaches and did this very beautiful, quite traditional production directed by Jean-Claude Auvray. I think that when you learn something that slowly, it stays with you, like Sophie in Rosenkavalier. Those two roles will never leave me. If someone rang me tomorrow and said, ‘Can you do it?’, of course I could. No problem. But it’s hilarious to me that young artists get given Susanna because it is so hard.”
One of the great Figaro stagings Alder undertook was Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s in Vienna. “It was unbelievable,” she recalls. “It was also peak Covid, so a very strange experience. It was to be a Residenzvertrag that I got at the Staatsoper just after I left the ensemble at Oper Frankfurt. I should have done six roles there. We'd just gone into the second lockdown and it ended up being a single streamed performance. We rehearsed for far longer than you normally get at the Staatsoper and it was a cast of Mozartian dreams.
“And to put on those gowns and see who else has worn them! It’s like doing the Otto Schenk Rosenkavalier there, where it had Lucia Popp’s name in my Sophie corset. I think it was Mirella Freni’s name sewn into my Susanna costume. Really unbelievable.”
Alder explains that the challenge of performing Susanna is stamina, both mentally and physically. “It's not hugely demanding vocally, unlike Fiordiligi or Contessa or Donna Anna. But stamina-wise, it requires you to pace yourself because she's singing all night and there's quite a lot of emotional singing, which if you're not careful vocally, you can tire yourself out. If you really go for gold in the Act 2 finale, Acts 3 and 4 are hard.
“With regards to the Contessa, I remember the first few shows that I did at Glyndebourne realising that I have a whole act where I don't sing and I'm a third lower than Susanna in everything else. So vocally, apart from the two arias, you're much more rested by the end of the show. But the psychological pressure is much greater because people have far more concrete opinions on what they like in a Contessa. Of course, people love certain things in a Susanna too, but I maintain that if you do a good Susanna, it just makes the piece work. People don't necessarily notice. Whereas the Contessa and Cherubino get these glory arias, yet they don't do as much legwork!
“Susanna is, though, the most amazing role to learn from. It serves any person who wants to do any Italian recitative, from Handel through to Verdi. She is an amazing vehicle for that.”
Stepping into the Countess’ shoes, I wonder whether Alder drew on any sopranos who sang the role opposite her Susanna. “Every Countess. All of them. So many who I've been inspired by and many – and this is absolutely no shade on anyone – where you could spot the difficulties, places where you have to be careful.”
We try to think of modern-day Susannas who went on to sing the Countess and come up with Diana Damrau, “a dream to be on stage with” and Miah Persson, who’s now moved into the bigger Strauss roles. “Golda Schultz, another one of my Contessas, sang Susanna at La Scala and she hated it! ‘Girl, how do you do that?’” We decide that we could never imagine Kiri te Kanawa or the late Felicity Lott, great Countesses both, ever singing Susanna.
Moving on to Glyndebourne, Alder explains that “I think that my Countess is more feisty than some. I disagree wholeheartedly with a solely lamenting Countess. A droopy Contessa? I’m not the one. If you have no fight in you, then what's the second part of ‘Dove sono’ about?
“What I loved about Mariame Clément’s production was ‘Porgi amor’ where, firstly, she has the Contessa’s daughter on stage. As a mother to two daughters now, that made it even more poignant, depicting the difficulty of the relationship between the Count and Countess. The stakes were so high. But what Mariame challenged us with was a conversation between Susanna and the Countess as we walked on during the introduction, with Susanna telling me about what the Count had done. So there was a very raw, immediate reaction to that news and that fed into ‘Porgi amor’ which was quite difficult, having this very visceral reaction and then singing those long lines. But actually it gave both strength and a feeling that things had suddenly changed for her.”
Clément’s depiction of the relationship between the Count and Countess contained more than a suggestion of domestic violence. He’s not just a philanderer, I suggest, but he's nasty with it. “We had so many comments about that,” Alder reflects. “Firstly, you see all of this in film and on TV all the time. For me, the stage is the centre of the arts, it's where TV and film came from. I suppose it's more shocking because you're seeing it live. Hopefully Huw (Montague Rendall) and I did it well so it looked quite shocking. In the aristocracy, it was very real. Women were not treated well, are not treated well. So it’s a reality of life.”
One of the things I liked about Clément's Figaro was at the very end, when the Count delivers the line “Contessa, perdono”. In the UK, most audiences laugh at that line and Clément, by not having any translation on the surtitles at that moment, ensured there was no laughter. I recount how, in McVicar’s production, I have seen audiences guffaw at the line before the Count has even delivered it because it appeared prematurely on the screen. “It's an awful feeling,” Alder agrees, “because if you're playing it seriously – which it should be – you feel like everything's gone for nothing if the audience then finds it hilarious.”
Switching back to Susanna again at Covent Garden held no terrors – “so much muscle memory, so it was sort of easy to go back to Susie” – but Alder reveals that she now definitely feels more at home with the Countess. “I sang ‘Porgi amor’ the other night for the first time since last year (in a concert at Opera Holland Park) and I thought, yes, this is definitely more me now. As Susanna, ‘Deh vieni’ is always going to be the most glorious aria to sing, but ‘Porgi amor’ has got so much soul.” Alder reveals that she would love to return to the role of the Countess and will indeed do so.
Is Mozart the hardest composer to sing well? “I don't know that I can claim that, but you're naked. You're vocally naked, you're musically naked. What aurally potentially sounds harder, things like Janáček or Britten or some contemporary things, can actually be easier because people have different expectations.”
Among Alder’s other Mozart roles, she claims Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte to be her favourite. “I feel vocally so at home in her arias. I grew up singing jazz and musical theatre, so my chest voice has always been something that's been very easy to access. I've always maintained that Susanna and Fiordiligi are actually very similar in what Mozart asks for range-wise. It goes really pretty low, but then in ensembles, she sits right at the top and it's relentless. If you've never sung any of the lighter Mozart stuff, those floaty things in Fiordiligi are almost impossible. And the runs! There’s a treacherous section in ‘Come scoglio’ with all those triplets. You really have to be able to move!” Alder revisits the role at Covent Garden next season in a new production by Netia Jones.
In Don Giovanni, Alder has moved from Zerlina – “such a fun gal” – to Donna Anna (I saw her role debut in Vienna in Barrie Kosky’s production). What was that jump like? “Anna is a huge challenge vocally and I find her less interesting dramatically. I did Barrie’s production twice and I'll sing her again in a concert performance in Edinburgh this summer.”
I ask how she negotiated Kosky’s set, a kind of volcanic rock. “I cannot put into words how terrifying that set is!” she exclaims. “Anna’s first entrance is running from the top to the bottom. And that pit in Vienna is high but so open, I honestly thought if I go too fast, I'm just going to land up on the double basses!
“Of the arias, I prefer singing ‘Or sai chi l’onore’, which I thought would be the one that would scare me. It's not. The aria that's terrifying is ‘Non mi dir’ which comes after the sextet, where you're right at the top of the ensemble, which is tiring. The energy drops and highs in Anna are crazy because you're backstage quite a lot of the time and then you suddenly have to sing this extremely difficult music, all quite depressingly, with a lot of angst. And it costs, so you do have to be clever with how to manage things.” Would she ever want to sing Donna Elvira? Alder nods. “I think as a character, I'm more Elvira. But so few sopranos want to sing Anna that I’m always asked to do her instead.”
Among other Mozart roles, Alder hasn’t tackled Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). “I have sung ‘Martern aller Arten’, but I don't know about her. I would love to sing Vitella (La clemenza di Tito) at some point. I find her massively interesting and I love her arias. I've been offered Elettra (Idomeneo) recently but I also don't know about her. I want to safeguard my voice for as long as possible and sing as much lyrical work as I can.”
Mozart sopranos often sing a lot of Strauss. Alder made her Met debut last autumn – “terrifying and glorious, all at once!” – singing Zdenka (Arabella) and would love a shot at the Marschallin. “I've got lots of Daphnes coming,” she reveals, “so I'm really excited for that. I will be singing it in concert next year with Vladimir Jurowski in Berlin.
“I'm very much looking forward to singing other things in the coming seasons. A Violetta (Glyndebourne next summer), Adina and a Mimì, things that are going towards opening my voice, because it is naturally happening, I think, with age and having two children. I always want to sound fresh though, and will continue to sing Mozart and Handel, of course, absolutely. Without a doubt, Mozart will always be my love.”
