VB: When did you realise you had a special voice?

RN: Never (laughs). What I realised was that how much it meant to me to sing rather than `Oh I've got a special voice'. I couldn't tell whether it was special or not. I only knew the sensation I got and the opportunity to work through a lot of things and use it as a tool in life to work through stuff.

VB: What do you mean, "use it as a tool in life"?

RN: In terms of personal growth. I get a lot of pleasure just singing on my own but having to perform was another aspect that propelled me into something that I had to deal with. There were things that came up that I had to learn about myself and to learn how to make life maybe a bit easier.

VB: What did you learn about yourself? RN: Well, there were so many things that I had never kind of come to terms with in terms of putting myself out there. I find that very scary. VB: What did you do after Maynooth?

RN: I joined the Irish Chamber Choir for RTE under Colin Mawby, the choir has now been disbanded. It was my first experience of being chosen for something, you know, because there were only four sopranos, four altos, four bases. We'd rehearse all week and then on Fridays we would record. That was brilliant.

That was my first sense of `oh, this was great'. You know, going in, doing something you like every day and getting paid for it. We did that for a year and at the end of that year I kind of said I think I'll try and see can I sing professionally.

Through my then teacher, Nancy Calthorpe, since dead, I made contact with Elizabeth Hawes, head of music at Trinity College of Music and Drama in London and came over. I was with Elizabeth for seven years. And then I got a place in the National Opera Studio, again 12 of us, 12 places in the National Opera Studio. I have to say Richard Van Allen [an English baritone] was the key person. He had seen me in a production in Trinity College.

Trinity College used to put on an opera production at the end of the year and I was in The Marriage of Figaro. Richard van Allen had seen that and then when I went to do the audition for the Opera Studio, he was very encouraging and wanted me in. So, I got in there. I found that very hard, especially the first term. Then after that it was like, little doors began opening.

I did European competitions. The two main ones were the Belvedere and the Queen Elizabeth. Also, I did one in Geneva. I got on fantastic in all of those. I didn't win but would get third or second place and the media exposure.

VB: What was your first big operatic performance?

RN: My break, what I saw as my break was when Elaine Padmore, who also ran the Wexford Opera Festival for years along with Opera Ireland, gave me the role of Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro. This to me was a risk for her to take. Figaro was great but you need to be a real kind of bubbly bubbly, very energetic person.

I couldn't see myself like that, I thought it was an effort. She's really got to carry the show, to be honest, and maybe I just wasn't ready. I did it but I was very aware that you have to carry the show and it didn't come quite easily. Oh I don't feel like her, give me a more morose introverted person.

[In The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, Suzanne is a maid servant about to marry Figaro but fancied by their employer, Count Almaviva, who in turn is fancied by his wife and Figaro is fancied by an older woman who turns out to be his mother. Then the plot gets complicated.]

VB: What operatic role have you enjoyed doing most?

RN: Oh, I loved Violetta in Traviata and I loved Cio Cio San in Butterfly. There's so many aspects to the part of Violetta [a high-class prostitute who is forced to give up the man she loves, Alfredo, by his father, Germont, but he, Alfredo, makes it back to her in time for see her flamboyantly die of TB].

The Violetta part is just fantastic. I did it in Nantes and they had a very weird production. It was a woman director and she's actually quite well known, especially in France, but she was quite weird.

The whole thing was a very seedy kind of life in terms of she was an actress and at the height of her career but into all kinds of partying, very weird kinds of things. Instead of Violetta being into prostitution, they had her into drugs and shooting up and instead of dying of TB she dies of Aids. It worked.

The only thing that didn't work was that she had Alfredo as somebody who wanted to be associated with a great actress or a great name. So, he didn't really love her [Violetta]. VB: Did you enjoy the Dublin production of La Traviata?

RN: Yes, I think the production depended on lighting which didn't come off because there wasn't enough money. People found it a bit stark, didn't they?

VB: Were you conscious of that whilst playing?

RN: No. I never am. That's not my business to be honest. It's the same with costumes and that. I always think they have a vision, they discuss this with the director, it's up to them to get the effects they want.

I'm there to sing and do my character and if something is interfering in terms of costumes, I'll say, but if I look like, as I have done at times, a toilet roll, a big plump blob on the stage, that's really up to them to deal with. I mean, I could say things but it's not my business really.

VB: You played in La Boheme in Dublin also?

RN: Yes, I love that. Again, that was Elaine Padmore's last production with the Irish National Opera. I also did it in Lucerne [Switzerland]. I was over there for six months. That and the Monteverdi's Orpheus.

I loved that. I love Boheme, it's one of my favourites operas. It's so real, isn't it? I love the music, I'm just an oul softy really. [Puccini's La Boheme deals with downand-outs in a tenement in Paris, two of them - Rodolfo and Mimi - falling in love and, surprise, surprise, Mimi dies at the end but with less drama than Violetta. Verdi was great at death scenes. Someone said that La Boheme was a precursor to Friends, except no one dies in Friends, which is a pity.]

VB: How do you prepare for a part like Mimi or Violetta?

RN: Well, everybody is different obviously. I mean I learn quite slowly. First of all I translate it all, get a feel of the character. Then I'd learn the music and I'd see what comes out in the music that pertains to the character and if something doesn't work, if I see it this way but the music seems to be saying something different, that's the kind of preparation, that's what I call preparation because then I have got to kind of work out why, why is this feeling this way when I don't actually think of a character. I found that particularly doing Butterfly, couldn't get a handle on it for ages.

VB: What was so difficult about the Ma- dame Butterfly part? After all it's just about a teenage Japanese girl being conned by the American, Pinkerton, and giving up all for him, having a child by him and then being abandoned. Isn't that what American men do for a living?

RN: I was kind of saying to myself there's no way she did not know what she was getting into, this is calculated. But actually it wasn't. She had determined to give this her all and love him to the utmost. It took me a long time to get into the part. I found Butterfly particularly hard. Traviata just sat very naturally for me. I kind of instantly knew about her and felt her in the music and the struggle that she was in. That was much easier.

When you love in the purest way as Cio Cio San was loving in Butterfly, it isn't exploitation. It depends on where you're looking at it from. She flicked from one mood to another and then she'd be intensely intense and then, it was like that all the time and when she was dealing with the child, she'd be very rough with the child.

It was very hard to kind of get a sense of that because that doesn't allow itself to come out as much in the music because he [Puccini] had to cut it back so much. He had to do two or three revisions of it because it didn't work originally because Pinkerton was such a bastard basically. It was too real in its original version. Puccini softened it an awful lot.

VB: Who of the other opera singers that you have worked with has had the finest voice? RN: It is never about voice to be honest. It's about intensity of emotion, somebody being in the moment with me.

VB: How about Placido Domingo? Was singing with him not something special?

RN: Yes, that was brilliant. Such a gentleman. He was just lovely, very generous, very giving, just a lovely man. We met only the day before the concert [in the Point] and we had a rehearsal on the day. It was fascinating to watch how he handled the media. He kept everything in balance, in control in the press conference that took place and during the concert.

VB: What soprano have you admired?

RN: I love Mirella Freni's voice. I thought her Boheme was just gorgeous. Maria Callas in terms of dramatics and the way she approached each character that she played. She was a very focused woman. I read a lot about her and got a video of an interview with her.

For every great artist it's about how they dealt with their things in their lives. You can hear the vulnerability of Callas in her voice and yet the strength there at the same time. She kind of bounced both balls at the same time to create something very real. She really thought out everything. I love Catherine Malifitano as well, I love her dramatic approach to things. Again, each different singer brings their own truth, there's no one way.

VB: Any part that you'd like to do that you haven't done?

RN: I'd love to do Salome, just the character of her maybe in a smaller kind of theatre because the orchestration is so big. I love Strauss and I love Strauss music and he brings it all out in the music and in the character. I mean Salome is basically an abused child. It is so powerful. It was quite shocking.

[Salome has dismemberment, murder, striptease and music. It tells a redone version of the story of Salome, John the Baptist and Herod. John the Baptist disobligingly kills himself after Salome makes a pass at him and because she is so infatuated by him she later asked for his dismembered head on a plate. Along the way she does a striptease.]

VB: What's your party piece?

RN: Oh, I never sing at parties. Hardly ever, if I were to sing it would probably be Danny Boy, or Beneath the Lights of Home. That always makes me cry.

VB: Why?

RN: I don't know. It's sort of about memories and time going by and what could have been.

VB: Do you regret things?

RN: No. I don't regret things. But there's always a question of if that hadn't then maybe. I used to more, not so much now. I mean, things are meant to be as they are.

VB: Have you had a happy life?

RN: I would say the last five years have been my happiest. That's because I came to terms with a lot of things for myself personally.

VB: What?

RN: Ah well, you know. Everybody has stuff in their lives that they have got to work through and deal with.

VB: What's your voice like now as compared with what it used to be?

RN: It's kind of reaching its maximum, I would imagine. In the next five years, when I can feel the voice, you know you reach peak. My voice has definitely been growing to this point. It's such a pleasure to sing these days. It's brilliant because I can do so much more with this. The technique is not a problem, exactly where it should be for me to access what I need to access to portray a character or to interpret the music.

I personally think the voice is about you. It's about the person. I think as you grow as a person and as you develop as a person, your voice is a mirror for you for inside. Allowing yourself that kind of growth and being patient because apart from the technique, which is just merely something that you learn, in order to perfect, it's not even perfect, it's just giving you more room to access different areas.

I know there are times I could sing and I know I'm not there, I'm away with the fairies and I'm kind of thinking `Oh God this is not going right' and that is so out of the moment. But when it is all connected physically, mentally and emotionally, spiritually, that is worth every moment in life. That's what happens when a performance goes well, very little to do with our voices, it's about an inter-relation of energy. Let's be metaphysical here (laughs). I do think the voice is a powerful tool. I mean look at the way we sing at Mass.

It has been such a friend, it's been such a prop for me all my life since the time I was a little girl.

Regina Nathan is giving a recital at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on Thursday next, September 6th, and at the Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, tomorrow week, September 9th. She will be appearing in Julius Caesar by Handel in November at the Gaiety

Singer Regina Nathan who is half-Malaysian and half-Irish encountered racism growing up in Dublin. One name called out to her and her siblings was "balubas". She yearned not to be different. Going back to Malaysia for the first time five years ago she felt at home, because she no longer looked different. Photograph: Frank Miller