Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee on Golden Age

Released tomorrow on Pentatone, Golden Age sees a king and queen of the high Cs coming together for the first time on record as outstanding bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee and stratopheric soprano Erin Morley join forces for a programme of arias and duets from operas including Rossini's Le comte Ory, Donizetti's Don Pasquale, Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth and Delibes's Lakmé. 

In a break from rehearsals for Laurent Pelly's production of Donizetti's La fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, the pair spoke to me about how their friendship evolved from a cold-call, the joys of bringing Marie and Tonio to life together, their approaches to the extreme high notes which stud their repertoire, and what the term 'golden age' means to each of them...

You’re both in the thick of rehearsals for Laurent Pelly’s production of La fille du régiment at the Met - how are things shaping up?

LB: I’ve done this production six or seven times. This is my third time at the Met and I also did it in Chicago and Paris with Laurent last fall, so I have a pretty good understanding of it now!

EM: We have a veteran in the room, so he can tell us what we’re doing wrong! It’s my debut as Marie, and I just adore this sassy, scrappy, down-to-earth girl. Fille isn’t your typical opera because of all the dialogue, but it’s such a wonderful challenge for me right now – this role has been on my bucket-list for quite a while. The other Donizetti roles that I’ve played have been very different, so this is really refreshing: Lucia is miserable the whole time and Norina [in Don Pasquale] is a swindler, so she’s not necessarily always a likeable character. 

It’s lovely to play a character that everyone’s rooting for, and I really connect with Marie. When I was seven or eight, my dad put himself through medical school by joining the army and I wanted so badly to be a soldier too – it was a phase for sure, but for a while I had this huge desire to be a tough girl! I used to look wistfully at his uniform hanging in the closet and ask him to tell me stories of his army days… 

Larry, do you take that notorious sequence of high Cs in your stride these days?

LB: I don’t get The Fear, but I have a healthy respect for them! Understanding how to deliver those high Cs is a key part of approaching this role, and coming back to it as your voice and body changes is a challenge. When I first started singing this aria in my early twenties I would wake up and the Cs were just there; in fact my teacher at the time said they sounded too easy! So I worked on giving them more character – it has to sound like champagne, all bubbles and sparkle. But then I noticed that I’d started pushing…they need to sound well supported without losing that crucial sense of abandon.

I’ve had great success with this role and still love singing it, but last year I found myself having some problems in the practice-room. My voice-teacher told me that at some point you have to teach yourself: become the listener and really dissect what you’re doing. Then the lightbulb came on and I realised I was pushing again…so I went back to basics when I went on stage that night and was really mindful to engage my core.

I hate recording myself, but being a great listener is a necessary part of this business. I listen to great singers like Erin who approach their singing from a technically informed, clean, pristine way, and in doing that I realised it’s a formula. My friend Joyce DiDonato once said something beautiful that’s stuck with me: ‘Don’t think about the result, think about the process’. That always makes me go back to myself and look in the mirror - it’s about being studious and making sure that I’m taking care of the things I know work. 

You both share a lot of that process on social media - Erin, the clip of your young daughter’s furious reaction to you practising Zerbinetta’s aria during the lockdown still makes me smile!

EM: Ah, that moment of true honesty: so this is how my kids really feel about my singing! It was a perfect encapsulation of COVID, trying to practise at home in the living room with the family around. We have to share the moments that don’t go right, because I think it’s important for people to know they aren’t alone when that happens. As Larry says, we don’t just wake up and produce beautiful sounds: we have to continuously hone our craft. We need other people’s ears and advice, but ultimately we’re responsible for what we put out there on stage.

LB: My friend Alex Esposito was in a room with Mariella Devia who’s known for being absolutely perfect, and as they were marvelling at her singing she did something wrong and she said ‘Ragazzi, son umana!’. I think it’s important that people (and young singers especially) know that we are human – we’re not robots or machines. 

How did the pair of you meet?

EM: We didn’t actually know each other before we started working on this album, and it was pure serendipity that we’ve ended up on stage so much since then: we did Magic Flute at the Met in 2023, and it’s wonderful to be back together for Fille. We’d never even spoken until Larry called me up – I don’t know how you got my phone number! –  and said ‘You wanna make an album together?!’ 

I was so thrilled that a singer I’d looked up to for so long was asking me to make music with him, and it feels meant to be: our voices are well matched, and I really appreciate all of the experience he brings to the table in this repertoire. I’ve dabbled in bel canto, but Larry has lived there for so long, so it’s been wonderful to learn from him and get to know him better – we’ve had a lot of fun along the way!

LB: And we’re going to have a lot more fun with Fille: the relationship between Pamina and Tamino is quite disconnected, but Marie and Tonio get up-close and personal. Of course I knew of Erin’s great work in roles like the Doll in Hoffmann, but the thing that really inspired me to reach out was when we did the Met’s At-Home gala during the lockdown and Erin wowed us all by playing and singing 'Chacun le sait' from Fille. She says she ‘dabbles’ in bel canto, but she broke the internet with that!

I was so impressed by her innate musicality and mastery of the piano as well as her voice, and as we’re well-matched in terms of voice (and height!) I thought we had to work together. Two of my really good friends are Joyce and Renée Fleming, and I remember them both telling me that you have to create your own projects in this business  – reach out to the people you want to collaborate with, because the worst thing that can happen is that they say no!

How did you set about selecting repertoire?

EM: We had some immediate ideas for duets that we really wanted to sing together: things like Fille du régiment and Don Pasquale were on the list from the beginning, but we were also keen to shine a light on some gorgeous things that don’t get the attention they deserve. I consulted with our friend Gerald Martin Moore, and he’s responsible for pulling a lot of this music out of the woodwork. Lakmé, for instance, doesn’t get staged very often: there are of course very famous excerpts, but the tenor/soprano duet isn’t that well-known these days. And the excerpt from La jolie fille de Perth is so beautiful. I’m sure Larry can tell us about his aria from Donizetti’s Marino Faliero, which is hardly ever performed…

LB: I was asked to do Marino as we were coming out of the pandemic by my friend Riccardo Frizza at the Bergamo Festival – someone had pulled out and he called me up to see if I would step in, but somehow it didn't materialise…

A little while later my friend Levy Sekgapane said ‘Larry, let me play you this aria from Marino that’s absolutely impossible to sing…’ and when I listened to it I thought ‘This is never happening!’ - even as someone who’s known for having a high-ish voice it was too high! It was written for the great tenor Rubini, and the approach to singing was very different back then; they’d use a sort of falsetto for the top notes, whereas people now are required to sing all those high Cs and Ds in full voice with a forward ringing placement.

It’s the single most difficult thing I’ve ever approached, so I set myself a challenge to record it – but doing the full role on stage is another matter altogether! When I listened back to the edits for this recording I thought ‘OK, it’s not awful’...and for me that’s a big endorsement, because I’m the most self-critical person ever. My next goal is to perform the aria in public...

Erin, you sing the highest note I've ever heard on a recording in the Bell Song! How do you both look after the extreme tops of your voices?

EM: It’s a G sharp, and maybe I was a little cheeky to throw that in! I did go up to an A flat when I sang Olympia, but both of those arias are real showcases: it’s a performance within a performance, so it’s supposed to attract attention!

That register has always been there naturally for me, and my job over the years has just been to keep the passage-way open and healthy. Less is more when you’re talking about the extreme high soprano range, so I’m really careful about practising up there: I just touch it every once in a while, and I certainly don’t need to get up there every day. Sometimes it’s something that I only pull out for the performance itself.

LB: It’s the same for me when I’m singing Puritani and I know everyone’s waiting for that high F that comes right at the end of the show…it’s essentially a party trick, but it can only be produced with good vocal technique and when you’re in the zone on that particular day. I don’t sing it in every rehearsal, and even for the show itself I have a contingency plan…

EM: Larry has a whole secret code with the conductor, based on hand-signals!

LB: If I do that whole verse with my left hand raised, that means we’re good to go - and if I do it with my right raised, that means ‘Not tonight!’. 

What does that phrase ‘Golden Age’ mean to you both?

EM: We chose this name very early on, before we recorded the album. The idea was always to celebrate composers who really loved the voice, and the repertoire that showcases the wide expressive range of the bel canto and beyond. We want this to be a celebration of opera’s golden age: the time when opera was super-popular, when people were clamouring for tickets, and the star singers were the real celebrities of the age. The opera industry can’t afford to ignore the huge success of that era; we should be continuing to learn from it and why it worked so well, both artistically and commercially. I’ve seen a lot of opera seasons that include no bel canto works at all, and I think that’s a mistake.

People go to the opera to hear the extraordinary things a trained voice can do, just as people tune into the Olympics to see the crazy things that people have spent their entire lives training their bodies to do. For me, the insane acrobatics and sheer power of bel canto singing are the epitome of that. 

LB: When I think about the ‘Golden Age’, it’s the wonderful artists who dragged me into this artform that come to mind. So many of the singers whom Erin and I admire sang a lot of this repertoire: for example Alfredo Kraus (who was born on the same day as me!), Luciano Pavarotti, and Marilyn Horne (who I remember singing an incredible Italiana in Algeri with Sam Ramey at the Met)…We still go back and listen to these great voices from the 60s, 70s and 80s. They captivated me, and I hope that people will be captivated by what Erin and I have produced in this album.