Musical couple come up with clever COVID career plan
Soprano Eleanor Lyons and her conductor husband Vladimir Fanshil are not about to let the pandemic stop them from doing what they love the most - performing.
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Eleanor and Vladimir.
Imagine this. You’re one of two gifted Aussie musicians, a soprano and a conductor.
As a soprano, you’re on a roll. You’re blessed with a big, strong exciting voice and serious glamour. Plus what one critic described as ‘patrician bearing.’ You’re starting to land some plum roles in international concert halls and opera houses.
Your handsome husband is a conductor and pianist who’s worked with some of the bold-face-name 20th century musicians. You’ve ‘carved’ in Russia, Hungary and Germany. That’s carving, as in slicing, being what a conductor does when he stands in front of an orchestra, raises his baton and leads a platoon of musicians though a score.
Of late you’ve been living with your four-year old daughter, in Vienna, a city with music in its Habsburgian DNA. But right now, you’re both ensconced in Rose Bay, Sydney. With the pandemic plague upon us, it’s really more sensible to be staying put at home than banging around a largely locked down Europe where the tally of infections run to six figures whereas here, it’s a mere three.
Meet Eleanor Lyons and Vladimir Fanshil.
Eleanor was invited by Opera Australia to perform one of the most challenging roles in all opera, that of Donna Anna in a revival of David McVicar’s staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
The question of whether this aristocratic lady did or didn’t have it away with the Don still elicits heated debate among armchair opera critics. In any case, her dad interrupts whatever was going on and the satyriasis-stricken Don skewers him with a rapier, leaving the audience to ponder whether her subsequent stalking of the hero is an act a of revenge or sexual frustration.
The clue, according to Lyons lies in the composer’s own description of the opera, Mozart called it as drama giocoso so it’s interesting to explore the lighter side of the character. “Most productions are too dark, too heavy of the story. In her big arias she has to maintain a beautiful vocal line but still sound somewhat crazy.”
A well-known Sydney hostess once said that the way to ensure that a dinner party falls flat as a dud souffle, is to invite two opera nuts to the same table. But in this case, on a glorious sunny Sydney day, lunching at Regatta with gulls on the wing and waves gently lapping the pier underneath, and freed from the end to consider other guests, we three opera nuts are happy prattling on about our mutual obsession, our favourite productions, the singers we admire, the great performances we’ve experienced,.
Vladimir was born in Odessa in the Ukraine. His family came to Australia when he was five. He studied piano here and later in Saint Petersburg. He’s worked in Hamburg with fellow Aussie conductor Simone Young, in Berlin, in Budapest with Ivan Fischer and in his birth city.
“I’d formed a brand new orchestra in Odessa and we were due to give our first concert there in March. Then this stupid bug appeared.”
At the same time his wife’s career also stalled. Her reputation was burgeoning. After those scheduled Sydney performances, she planned to return to Europe for important engagements including a debut at the Salzburg Festival.
It seemed the entire world was locking down live performances. The Bolshoi announced reopening with Don Carlo but shut down again after a few performances. The ballet company of the Mariinsky theatre in Saint Petersburg returned to the boards and almost immediately closed after twenty dancers tested positive. The Metropolitan Opera in New York has shuttered for an entire year. All live venues in London, the theatre capital of the Anglophone world, are in lockdown.
“We hadn’t been back to Australia for thirteen years so with summer approaching, it seemed more appealing to stay here.”
That decision made, the next step was to choose what to do.
“We didn’t want to sit around waiting for something to happen. Everyone seemed to be doing online concerts in their pyjamas so we wanted to do something different,” says Lyons “So we created a business called Live at Yours, offering bespoke recitals in private houses. They can be pre dinner, post dinner or just stand alone events.”
The idea seems to have caught on. “We relied entirely on word of mouth, put the message out through friends and the result has been tremendous,” says Fanshil. “We have done twenty-three concerts in two months.”
“Domestic audiences have ranged from five to twenty people but audiences are bigger when we perform in halls.”
Not all their recitals are Sydney based. “We’ve also performed in Canberra, Bathurst, Orange and Cowra.”
As to repertoire it can be customised.
“I was going through the garage in my parents’ house in Collaroy and found piles of sheet music for wonderful songs by Greig and Gliere and Rachmaninov and we’ve included some of these in our programs.” and by way of an exclusive component they commissioned the prolific local composer Elena Kats-Chernin to create a work especially for them. Called Wandering Hearts it’s something of a crowd-pleaser and we schedule it often.”
Another exclusive is Violetta’s famous Act One aria from La Traviata which Lyons finishes with a stunning high E flat. This is the electrifying note that resonated around the world when Maria Callas nailed it seventy years ago at the finale of the Triumphal Scene in a performance of Aida in Mexico City and sustained it for what sounds like an eternity.
Predictably the audience went bananas.
“They still do,” says Lyons.
In her drawing room version, Lyons sings the aria but opera buffs know that midway in the opera the tenor voice of her lover is heard offstage, signalling a change in mood. Here’s where a multi-tasking husband comes in handy. Hubby on the piano, who self-describes himself as having “a reasonable voice”, interpolates a couple of bars of the unseen hero’s music.
Lyons shares a neat bit of related opera arcana.
“When I was singing this aria for Richard Bonynge, I told him that I was going to try for the E flat at the end and asked him if he’d mind.
“Well darling.” he said. “ it all depends how you sing it.”
“So when it came to the moment. I took a breath, looked him right in the eye and hit it,”
The Mexico City effect still works with a small audience. “They still go bananas,” notes Lyons.
For some recitals they co-opt Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin. There’s a Russian connection here, in that Goodwin has sung to great acclaim at the Bolshoi, most notably as the poet Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin. Although killed in a duel at the end of Act Two, Lensky has what is perhaps one of the loveliest arias in the tenor repertoire. So if a second opportunity to go bananas required, Goodwin can supply it.
So what does a personalised home performance by these fine artists cost? “About $1500,” says Fanshil.
“We don’t do it to make money. We do it to make music, to keep performing.”