Since entering the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 1971 Isobel Buchanan has become one of the leading sopranos of her generation. In 1975 she auditioned for Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland and was offered a three year contract with the Australian Opera. Her professional debut was in January 1976, singing the role of Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, one she was to repeat many times throughout the world. She made her British debut at Glyndebourne in 1978, again singing Pamina, in the Cox/Hockney production and in 1981 she sang the Countess in Peter Hall's production of The Marriage of Figaro, a role repeated for the 50th Anniversary of the company in 1984 with Bernard Haitink conducting. 1978 saw her as Micaëla at the Vienna State Opera in the legendary production by Franco Zefirelli, with Domingo, Obratsova and Mazurok. Conducted by Carlos Kleiber, the performance was broadcast live throughout Europe and has been released on CD and DVD.  [See photo below.] Isobel's Covent Garden debut was in Parsifal, conducted by Solti. Among other roles, she went on to sing Sophie in Werther, with Alfredo Kraus and Teresa Berganza, later recording the opera with Jose Carreras and Frederica von Stade, Sir Colin Davis conducting. She has appeared in opera houses in Cologne, Paris, Munich, Santa Fe, Brussels, Hamburg, Sydney, Wellington, Chicago (with Pavarotti and Bergonzi), and Monte Carlo (with Raimondi). She has also appeared with all the major British orchestras and has collaborated with many of the world's leading conductors, including Solti, Haitink, Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, Celibidache, Pritchard, Mariner, Kleiber and Menuhin. Isobel has made numerous recordings and in 1981 the BBC made a documentary, La Belle Isobel, of her career up to that time. She has had her own television series and has also appeared on such programmes as Face the Music and The Michael Parkinson Show. After bringing up her two daughters, Isobel has resumed her career singing recitals with Eugene Asti and Malcolm Martineau at St John's, Smith Square, as well as performing Sheherezade with the South Bank Sinfonia and Haydn with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Walton’s Façade with Jason Thornton and the Bath Phil at Longleat.    She also teaches voice privately, is a regular tutor for the Samling Foundation, gives master classes and workshops throughout the UK and teaches at the Guildhall School as a visiting professor. --  Biography from the Guildhall School website  --  Names which are links throughout this webpage refer to my interviews elsewhere on this website.  BD

  So that’s my only ever experience with somebody that I really just couldn’t deal with.  And it was simply a musical thing because he quite a nice man off-stage.

BD:    Now if you get a contract to sing another opera, and you see that man’s conducting, will you not sign the contract?

IB:    Definitely, not.  I promised I would never sing with him again.  It was the worst experience I’ve ever had. 

BD:    What else goes into the decision to accept an engagement or not?

IB:    I don’t like doing one-night stands because a lot of the enjoyment I get out of opera itself is actually the rehearsal period.  And that’s sometimes difficult because a lot of people don’t like to rehearse.  It can be hard because I think that the only way you can get a drama together is to get to know each other and to work through rehearsals.  It’s quite hard and requires a lot of work.  I don’t mean at great length of time.  It’s possible to put together a piece of drama that would work very well in two and a half or three weeks. But that’s quite an average rehearsal period for an opera.

BD:    More places would give you two or three weeks to work on it?

IB:    Depends on who the singers are.  It also depends on whether it’s a new production.  If it’s a new production, some of them want four and half or five weeks, which is quite long, again depending on the opera and depending on the particular role.  Last year I did Zerlina here with four and half solid weeks of rehearsal with Ponnelle.  I don’t know how that man exists.  He works non-stop, and then he has a three-hour lunch break in the middle of it.  I don’t know what he does during that, but he comes back full of fire while you are exhausted!  He works and works and works.  We worked every day until the première.  We were so tired, BUT it got a fantastic result in the end.  I thought the team work in Don Giovanni last year was fantastic.

BD:    It looked very good.

IB:    That for me is very important.  Of course it’s fine to step in and if somebody is sick and help a company out, and we always get by somehow, but I just don’t think that’s the way to do opera.  Even here in Chicago, I was quite dismayed when I first came because there were only two weeks rehearsal.  That quite worried me because it’s my first Adina.  Then I was told that the rest of the cast didn’t come until the following week, so I rehearsed alone for a week, which was very bizarre, and quite unlike Chicago. 

BD:    Do you find yourself talking to lampshades and pillow cases? 

IB:    Yes!  [Both laugh]  It’s just ridiculous.  I was rehearsing with covers, and they were very sweet.  They were very anxious to do it and work hard, and that was great.  But of course then the real people came and said,

if you can sing it well!  He wrote really well for the voice.  The same is true of Bach and Handel, though Bach forgot to leave some breathing spaces.  [Both laugh]  I just did a Bach cantata at the Edinburgh Festival this year.  Oh, God, it was long and very high.  It was the Wedding Cantata, and that was very interesting.

BD:    How you do you decide which cantatas you will learn or which roles you will learn?  Do you wait to be asked to do certain things, or do you learn them and hope you’ll be asked?

IB:    It’s a mixture of both really.  Sometimes my agent will say that we have to think of what my next role is going to be, what’s good for me vocally, what’s coming up next.  Then he goes ahead and tries to book that role for me somewhere.  And sometimes an opera company will if I had considered singing something, or do I already sing a particular role.  That’s how it works really.

BD:    Is there ever a case where they ask for something and no matter what it is you say yes and you run out and buy a score?

IB:    Oh no!!  [Laughs in horror]  I’ve been very careful never to say that because it gets you into hot water.  I did it once with Desdemona, and I don’t think it was altogether my fault.  I was led to believe that this was a fabulous role for me.  Well, it might be in another six years from now, but this was at the age of twenty-four.  I was supposed to do it in Houston with Jon Vickers.  I looked at the score and thought yes, this looks really quite interesting.  So I learned the ‘Ave Maria’ and the ‘Salce’ and of course I could sing those!  But I was forgetting you still have another three acts before that with a lot of heavy singing.  Anyway, about nine months before it was due to happen, I had learned the role and memorized it, and was still all ready to do it, and I thought,

  So I did, and I ended up going back to my first singing teacher in Glasgow.  She is marvelous, and since then I have just gained back some of the confidence that I’d lost.  It is very sad because once you start losing confidence, it’s a very frightening job to do, to get up and not be sure of yourself.  Anyway, I went back to this teacher and she has given me a technique where I know now that I can just pick up a piece of music, and I don’t mean it’s going to be perfect, but I know how to approach it vocally immediately without ringing her up and going to her to ask how would I sing this bit.

BD:    So she teaches you technique, but you go to other people for coaching the roles?

IB:    Sometimes.  It depends.  She was a singer herself.  In fact she sang a lot more lieder than opera, so for operatic roles, yes, I do go and coach with somebody else.  But for lieder and concerts, she is marvelous.  I don’t have to go and coach with anybody else.

BD:    How do you balance your career with opera, lieder, concerts, etc.?

IB:    Very easily.  I do mostly opera!  [Laughs]  I’m a bit nervous at concerts.   I do them, and it’s something that I’m introducing more and more into my repertoire.

BD:    Do you like concerts?

IB:    I love them.  I’ve very scared of them, and recitals are even worse.  I haven’t actually done a full professional recital yet.  I did one when I was a student, and that was enough to kill me.  But I’m slowly gaining confidence in that area, and I’m building it up so that eventually I will try to do a lot more concert and recital work.  There seems to be a lot of demand in Britain for it.  They like their concerts and recitals over there as well as opera, but so far I’ve really stuck mostly to opera.  I have done quite a lot of concerts, but not nearly as much as I should.

BD:    ‘As much as you should’ ...  Is this for the voice or the ego or for the complete artist?

IB:    This is really for my career because I do adore some of the concert pieces, but it’s just such a nerve-wracking business.  I know singers who are the exact opposite, who think that concert work is dead easy and opera is frightening.  For me, I’m somebody else when I’m on the stage so it doesn’t matter.

BD:    You completely immerse yourself then in the role and become Pamina or Adina or somebody else?

IB:    I do.  At least I try to.

BD:    Do you sing any characters you don’t like?  For instance, the vocal line might be good for your voice but the character might be something you are not pleased with?

IB:    [Thinks a moment]  I am trying to think if there are characters I’ve done already like that...  Yes, there are some sweetie-sweetie characters give me the pip a bit.  I did quite a lot of things like Zerline in Fra Diavolo in Australia, and it was one of those pieces we were all dreading.  My character was the innkeeper’s daughter, a lead part, and it was all so very smiley sort of cheery soul.  O God, it used to drive me nuts always trying to be so cheery.  That just drives me crazy. 

BD:    Do you ever wish you were doing a 9-to-5 job where you could come home every night to your husband and just relax in front of the TV?

IB:    Sometimes I think it would be heavenly to finish at 5 o’clock on a Friday and have all weekend free... but no I don’t think I do!  [Both laugh] 

BD:    Do you like the travel?

IB:    I like it mostly if my husband, Jonathan, can come [both shown in photo at right], and when people are around that I know.  Otherwise it’s quite lonely.

BD:    Do you schedule a certain few weeks that you stay home, and then travel for a while, and then stay home again?

IB:    I try very hard to do that because we have been separated quite often for about three months at a time, and then you come back and you’re living with a stranger.  It is just terrible.  So what I try to do is make my maximum stay away from home six weeks.  It’s basically one production, or eight weeks if it is a new production.  Then I must have about the same amount of time at home, and it works out quite well.  It’s amazing because I can do my learning period at home, and some concerts and also some productions.  Then I come away and do some other work.

BD:    It’s nice that you’re far long enough in your career that you can do this kind of planning.

IB:    I needed to make some decisions because at first I wasn’t able to do that.  I just had to keep taking the work that came along, not really just financially but also because if you want to establish a career you just cannot always say no.  So it meant that poor Jonathan and I suffered a fair bit.  But it’s getting better.

BD:    That’s good, that’s good.  I often wonder about ... the big careers of families and then how you’re going to have children if you want them ... so it’s going to be very difficult?

IB:    It’s very hard with two careers going on.  It’s not like Jonathan has a sort of

s just got a little more savvy.  She is very flattered by the attentions of Don Giovanni, and then gets a bit carried away with herself, especially when he invites her to his house.  She sort of plays him along a bit when he says, “Yes, I want to marry you!” and she says, “You?!!”  Then she realizes she’s getting into hot water.  The interesting thing is that she doesn’t actually address Don Giovanni in the duet until she says, “Andiam!”  She’s saying all this stuff like, “I’d really like to, but I better not, better not.  What about Masetto!  Oh, think about him.  I would really like to ...”  Then suddenly she says, “Let’s go!” and that’s the first time she actually turned round and says it to Giovanni.

BD:    That’s an interesting way of playing it.

IB:    If she’s trying to rationalize it to him, it just doesn’t work.  At least for me it doesn’t, just personally.  But she just gets into hot water when she gets carried away and then realizes that he’s not going to marry her at all.  He wants his evil way after all!

BD:    Have you sung Constanza?

IB:    No.  It’s a bit high for me.  I was asked to do it

BD:    Are you going to be doing more Donizetti now?

IB:    I don’t know!  There’s nothing in the near future for Donizetti.  I find it quite enjoyable music, very enjoyable music to sing.  It’s quite tough music to sing really.

BD:    Why?  What makes it tough?

IB:    Maybe it’s my kind of voice because at the moment it is getting a little bit heavier, and maybe it’s because I have to really make a special effort to keep it in the right focus.  Somebody with a much more coloratura-type voice could do it a lot easier.  I just find it a little bit extra work than I do, for example, in Mozart or even Strauss, which I’m just beginning to sing.  I would love to do Octavian!

BD:    [Genuinely surprised]  Why Octavian?  I would think that you would rather do either of the other roles.

IB:    I don’t know; it’s funny, isn’t it?  It’s just one of my quirks because I’ve never had to be a boy before, and I would like to try it for fun.  That’s basically it.  I also like the music very much.

BD:    Would you do a Cherubino if you were offered that role?

IB:    It’s funny because when Muti asked me to do this Susanna, he heard me sing because he’s very fussy about who he takes.  All these conductors are so sure of themselves, pardon me for saying so!  [Huge laugh]  Nobody else has asked me sing for them.  When they’ve asked me for a role, they’ve never said, “Would you sing for me first?  Let’s see if I like you or not!”  But he did, and at first I thought, “How dare he!”  Then I thought, “Who cares!”  It doesn’t make any difference whether I go and sing ‘Deh, vieni non tardar’ or not.  So I went and did it and he said, “Oh, it’s wonderful, wonderful!  Tell me something... Have you ever been a mezzo?”  I said, “Yes, when I first started training years ago, I was a mezzo!”  I thought I was, and I definitely had that kind of quality.  “I can hear it,” he said.  “I don’t think you are a mezzo but you still have that quality, and you would make a fantastic Cherubino.  However, you will make an even better Susanna!”  So that was one person who considered me for Cherubino.

BD:    Could you ever see making a recording of where you sing all three roles?

IB:    That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?!  I’d love to do that!  It may be a bit awkward to sing the duets, but I suppose you can do it with headphones!  They’d get a bit bored with the one sound all the time, though!  

BD:    You could get Herman Prey to sing both Figaro and the Count!

IB:    Yes!  You know, that could be fun!

BD:    What opera recordings have you made so far?

IB:    I did Suor Angelica with Sutherland and Bonynge, and Sonnambula with the same team and Pavarotti, and Werther with Frederica von Stade, Carreras, and Colin Davis.  I was the biggest fifteen year old in the world!  [Both laugh]  I’ve also done a Beethoven Ninth Symphony with the Hallé Orchestra, and a Mahler Second with Solti here.

BD:    How do you like working with Solti?

IB:    He’s a fairly nice man, he is really is.  I just found him a bit intense.  I was a bit nervous with him.   I also performed the Beethoven Ninth in London with him at the Festival Hall.  He was being terribly nice and very accommodating and all those things that you would hope somebody would be, but he in himself is so intense when he conducts, and I just got nervous because I’m not very good at concerts, as I told you.  I’m getting slightly better since then, and I’m going to work with him again next year in concerts, so we’ll see.  But that Mahler Second was a peculiar experience.  I can’t just say I was nervous because of Solti.  It wasn’t that.  When you sit there for fifty minutes while the orchestra is playing, and you’ve got Christa Ludwig as your colleague and you haven’t been heard of in Chicago, then you have to stand up and sing this angelic piece at the end... it really requires quite a lot of self-control, and I didn’t have any!  I was quaking.  I was so terrified, I’ll never forget it.  In Orchestral Hall, the audience is so close, and when I looked down I really could see where a woman had smudged her mascara.  So I thought she can see about me up here absolutely shaking in my shoes.  That made me very nervous.  The recording was better of course because we didn’t have those other pressures, and we got on with it.

BD:    Do you find recording work satisfying.

IB:    [Hesitantly]  Yes, but for its own reasons.  I don’t think it’s a satisfying as doing a live performance, which is the tops.  In opera, when you go on stage and everything is just happening, it’s even more exciting when you make a mistake!  [Both laugh]  But yes, I enjoy recording because I quite enjoy the techniques, and I quite enjoy the situation.  

BD:    Some people hate it, especially doing things over and over again, and doing a little bit and dropping it in.

IB:    I like the fun of it.  It doesn’t really worry me to think I’m going to do this section again.  Maybe by the time I’ve done a hundred recordings I’ll be hating it, but I really am fascinated by the way they do it.  It’s quite a nice situation.  It’s quite relaxed and you don’t have to worry about the public being there.  You just do it, and it’s all very private and really quite fun.  I like it.  You get plenty of chance to perfect what you’re doing

BD:    Have you sung roles in translation?

IB:    Yes. 

BD:    Do you like singing in translation?

IB:    No!  I really don’t, I have to admit.  To be honest, most of the translations I’ve done have been into English, and I just don’t think they’re very good.  The things I’ve done have been Mozart mainly.  Figaro I’ve done in English in Australia, and Magic Flute I’ve done in English as well as German.  But some of the translations, especially The Magic Flute, are terrible.

BD:    I would think especially for The Magic Flute, with all the dialogue, that being in English would be better.

IB:    Yes, you would think so because the audience would appreciate it more.  Even in Figaro there are lots of jokes going on, and the audience often misses them if you don’t speak the language.  That can be great, but some of it is so vile.  I also did Così Fan Tutte in English, and the translation for ‘Come Scoglio’ is hard and rock-like, which is very obscene.  I remember I just couldn’t do it without laughing.  They had to change things and it was terrible.  The Magic Flute I had sent to me was just awful with a terrible translation.  I don’t even know whose it was, so I can’t tell you.  But I prefer singing in the original language because usually the vowel sounds are made to fit whatever notes you’re singing.  So if you’re singing high, you’re not singing some ghastly vowel that’s very hard to sing.  And often that’s lost in the translation.  If you are singing something very high on an EE vowel, you’re screeching your head off trying to do it well and you’re just totally unintelligible. 

BD:    Even if you’re singing Italian in Chicago, do you strive to make the words understood?

IB:    Yes I do because I don’t actually speak Italian.  I speak very, very bad French and I don’t speak any German.  So because of that I try even harder.  I make an extra special effort and I know exactly what I’m singing about, and I try to get it across to the audience as well without being ‘hammy’ about it

plebes!  And I wasn’t booed.  They liked me, but they booed people I thought they shouldn’t have booed, and I just took umbrage at that.  So I will not sing there, I’m sorry.  It’s a circus.  Nobody gets to open their mouth and they’re booing already because they’re not French.  Maybe because of the old Scotch-French alliance they didn’t boo me!  I escaped, and the man who was singing Leporello also escaped.  Everybody else they hated, and they were not below quality, I’m sorry.  Anyway, that was the French, and the last performance they televised.  For once I was really thrown because it was so bright.  It’s usually quite bright when they’re filming something for TV, but because it was open-air as well, it was very, very bright.  And this audience, would you believe, were lighting cigarettes, and taking flash pictures during the show.  I was singing Elvira, and I couldn’t remember whether I’d sung the first verse or the second verse!  [Both laugh]  I suddenly made this dreadfully stupid noise, and John Pritchard, who was conducting, looked up at me and I got a fit of the giggles.  It was really terrible.  We continued on and I still wasn’t booed for some reason or other.  But usually if you just make one mistake, they’re out to get you.

BD:    How much do you rely on the prompter?

IB:    Not at all.  I hasten to say that when somebody is there you can’t help but hear what they’re saying, obviously, but I don’t like prompts.  I just can’t understand it, because if something is so rhythmical as music is, and somebody says your line before you’re about to sing it in rhythm, it is jarring.  The first time I was ever prompted was in Australia, and they had never had a prompter there.  But Joan Sutherland was doing her first Lakmé, and because it was in French she wanted a bit more confidence.  That is fair enough, and it’s a long role, so they had a prompt.  Somebody prompted me and I said: “Who’s that?”  [Both laugh]  This poor girl down there was saying my line and it really put me off.  She didn’t prompt me after that, but here they prompt you willy-nilly whether you like it or not.  Sometimes they’re not always clear.  If somebody is saying your line and they don’t quite say it clearly enough, that can be off-putting.  You wonder if she is right or if I am right.  So really for me it’s best if there’s not a prompt because I think it’s part of my job to really know my role well, apart from anything else.  In Glyndebourne this year, we had the dress rehearsal of Figaro and Peter Hall said, “What we have to think about is that the critics are going to come and they’re going to hate it anyway because critics are critics.  We also have to say that half the public are going to be out there on the first night wondering what the hell they’re doing there, and the other half are going to be there for the social event.  So we’re all going to go out and enjoy ourselves.  Now show me some of that in the dress rehearsal.”  There was an audience because they have public dress rehearsals.  So we went out to do the dress rehearsal and while I was sitting there on the couch immersed in my role, Cherubino and Susanna were singing away to each other, and I suddenly thought I know I’ve got something next, and for the life of me I couldn’t think what it was.  We were very tired and we’d worked a lot, and no one’s infallible.  I just couldn’t think of the line in the recitative.  So I turned round and I said to Martin Isepp, who was playing the harpsichord in the pit, “Excuse me, what do I say there?” and he shouted the line up.  So I continued and some thought it was rather funny.  Peter Hall came back to me afterwards and said, “That is the coolest ‘fuck you’ to the audience I have heard in all my life!”  [Huge laughter]  It wasn’t really meant to be cool, it was just that there was no point in getting panicky.  I knew that Martin would shout it up!

BD:    Do you ever want to do that in performance?

IB:    Sometimes it does relax everybody in rehearsal, so it really would be interesting in performance.  Sometimes the audience is a bit hyped-up and it would be really nice if something stupid happened.  I’ve had disasters of course.  My favorite one is the time I was singing Fiordiligi.  I had just done the second aria, and at that time of the show I was tired because I was so young.  I had got through the aria and it was the best I’d done that particular night, and I was quite pleased with myself.  My exit was to go upstage center and in a flurry of excitement rush off stage with a huge crinoline on.  Well I did that, and just as I got to center stage, I fell flat on my face, right in the middle of the stage.   I thought, “Oh God, I’m falling!” and I couldn’t do anything to save myself.  When I leaned on the dress at the front, the crinoline went up at the back, and the audience thought it was just so funny, they really did!  They applauded for quite a long while.  I thought I’d keep it in the next time!  [Both laugh]  But so many things happen on that stage that ...

BD:    Do you ever give a performance that you feel that is less than your best, and then get applauded and feel that you’ve fooled the audience?

IB:    Yes, that’s a horrible feeling.  It does happen, especially if you’ve done a long run of something.  Often you feel that it’s not your best, but in actual fact, most people say it was just fine.  I’ve done that and I’ve thought, “Oh, I’m just not good tonight,” and people will say, “That’s the best you’ve done in that.  You were so relaxed.”

Francis George Scott (25 January 1880 – 6 November 1958) was a Scottish composer. Born at 6 Oliver Crescent, Hawick, Roxburghshire, he was the son of a supplier of mill-engineering parts. Educated at Hawick, and at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, he studied composition under Jean Roger-Ducasse. In 1925, he became Lecturer in Music at Jordanhill Training College for Teachers, Glasgow, a post he held for more than twenty-five years. He wrote more than three hundred songs, including many settings of Hugh MacDiarmid, William Dunbar, William Soutar and Robert Burns's poems. MacDiarmid stated in an essay that his key long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle could not have been completed without Scott's help. The Anglo-Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson has transcribed several of Scott's works for piano. His daughter, Lillias, married the Scottish composer Erik Chisholm. *     *     *     *     * Francis George Scott was born in Hawick, on 25th January, Burns Day in 1880. That seems fitting for a man that set many of Robert Burns poems to music. He became one of the main exponents of the movement called the Scottish Renaissance, a flowering of Scotland’s creative talent in the inter-war years of the twentieth century, showcasing Scotland on the world stage. As a young composer his songs were compared favouably to German lieder, he was hailed as a young Mussorgsky, and he was later enticed to France where he received instruction from Jean Roger-Ducasse in 1921 but he declined his subsequent offer to stay in Paris and learn at the Paris Conservatoire, preferring instead to return to Scotland. He was a friend, teacher and mentor to Hugh MacDiarmid and helped MacDiarmid shape his masterpiece poem ‘A drunk man looks at the thistle’. Like MacDiarmid he was passionate about Scotland and he gave to the SNP his manuscript of his setting of ‘Scots wha hae’. He also set many of MacDiarmid’s poems to song. The friendship with MacDiarmid was to be a double edged sword. MacDiarmid’s frequent eulogising of Scott as one of the best composers in the world made Scott reluctant to promote his own work. --  Edited versions of two brief biographies

© 1981 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded at her apartment in Chicago on October 14, 1981.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1985, 1988, 1994 and 1999.  This transcription was made in 2014, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM.