In conversation with FRANCES O'ROURKE
VERONICA DUNNE
made her debut as a singer at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1953. Married with two children, she began teaching in 1961 in DIT College of Music. At 84, she teaches four days a week at the Royal Irish Academy of Music
‘I KNEW ABOUT Celine, was an admirer, but I hadn’t met her. I’d heard her singing and thought, this is a fantastic voice. After she’d finished her music degree she came and said, I want to do my masters with you. I took one look at her and said, ‘I’d wait a few months, until you have the baby’. She was pregnant with her third child, the last one. I said, ‘if you’re taking this up as a career darling, you’ve had enough’. She said, I like to have my family first, then go for a career. I thought, ‘God bless you child, you don’t know what’s ahead of you, having gone through it myself’.
“I struggled, even though I had a nanny and a housekeeper, but that was a different age. Celine’s husband is 100 per cent behind her, he’s marvellous. And that’s what you need in this business.
“Anyway, bless her heart, we got on like a house on fire and it was a pleasure to work with such a wonderful voice. She just had to go onto the next stage. We worked very hard and she was a great student and I could see she really had great potential. She entered my competition in 2007 and she got pneumonia. But she went on to win the Maria Callas competition in Athens later that year. I was dying to go over. We looked on the internet but it was so expensive, I said ‘no, all I can do is pray for her’. When she rang me and told me she’d won I was so, so proud of her.
“Celine is a very clever girl, and such a lovely looking girl, she has everything going for her.
It was unfortunate about the Covent Garden production of Bohème, that she got ill. I was so sorry for her. She’d stepped in for somebody who had been ill, then she got ill and the conductor said, I’m getting my own soprano who’s healthy. When I heard, I waited a day . . . then I rang her and she could hardly talk. I told her to put it behind her and to move on. And she has. She’ll be singing Agathe in Die Freischütz in Austria in September and has been asked back to Covent Garden to sing in Parsifal.
“This can be a very precarious career. But Celine has fantastic stamina. She’s a great wife, a great mother, a great girl to deliver. She stood out from day one.
“Opera has changed, they have to be film stars. Producers want a big sound today in a small body.
“Young singers have to be first class musicians, they’ve got to look good and they’ve got to act. There’s nine million sopranos in the world and you’ve got to be one jump ahead of the posse.
“I’m always here for Celine, I am for them all. And I’m still working full-time – thank God!”
CELINE BYRNE
is a soprano. She played the lead in Dvorak's Rusalka in March; she was offered the role of Mimi in La Bohème but had to withdraw due to illness. She lives in Kildare with her husband and three children. She will perform in the NCH on Friday, June 1st
‘I KNEW WHO RONNIE was, of course, but had never had a conversation with her. Then I had a session with her at a young artists’ programme in Wexford Opera in 2005 and we just clicked. And now we’re friends, even though there’s an age gap between us of 50 years.
“When we met, she asked ‘are you going to go on and study, luvvie? You should come to the Academy and I’ll mind you’. She did ask the question, ‘what’s the story with all these children?’ She’s famous for telling her students not to get pregnant – she’s aware of the implications of having children as it affects opportunities. I was 28, the mother of two and pregnant with my third but she could tell I was focused and determined, knew I had maturity. So I did my Masters.
“Ronnie’s a lovely person, she’s very direct and so am I. There’s no fluff. And she’s very nurturing, takes pride in all her students. And she’s fun and I’m like that, I don’t like to be totally serious. I like going to her house just to have a cup of tea and chat.
“When I got the role of Mimi at Covent Garden, Ronnie was the first person I called; she’s the first person I call in any circumstance. I call her for advice, or if something is wrong.
“Thomas, my husband, is wonderfully supportive. I’m from Caragh, Co Kildare, grew up next door to where we live now and he’s from the big town of Naas nearby. There are people in the village who don’t know what I do. Call me naive, but I didn’t know you could get singing lessons. I fell in love with opera when I was an au pair in Milan. I never saw it as a career, I wanted to be a nurse. Then I got pregnant with Noel, decided against nursing, and started taking singing lessons.
“It’s true, the last few months have been tumultuous. But I did make my debut at Covent Garden in March. It’s unfortunate that I got sick, but you have to move on. My career is doing very well, I’ve got engagements to the middle of 2014. After Vienna in August, I’ll be in Parsifal in Covent Garden in winter and will play Violetta in La Traviata in Belgium in spring 2013.
“In the concert on the bank holiday weekend, I’ll incorporate Irish songs. I want to do a CD of Irish songs next year. I’ve had the chance to do nice things: I sang for Obama and Queen Elizabeth last year and I’ll be singing at the Eucharistic Congress – my religion means a lot to me.
“What I love about Ronnie is that she’s so loving, so maternal to her students. She’s a determined woman, too, as I am – she’ll work until she drops. I see Ronnie as more than a teacher, and not as a mother figure, but as a loving woman whom I care deeply about. She’s just wonderful.”
