Soprano Stresses She’s Not Down, Just Down Under

Gentle but adamant, Rita Hunter, the English Wagnerian soprano who has spent most of the past decade in Australia, wants to make a few things perfectly clear.

“I am not retired, I am not through singing and I am not dead. Since I went down to Australia, I’ve heard all those things about myself in the rumor mills,” she says with some anger, concluding with a popular obscenity.

Then, that anger vented, Hunter looks around her--she is seated in a quiet corner of an elegant Beverly Hills restaurant, overlooking well-dressed lunchers, all flatteringly lit by the California sun filtered through patio umbrellas--and laughs heartily.

Hunter, who sings the role of Tove in Pacific Symphony’s presentation of Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Thursday and Friday, has no complaints about Australia.

Indeed, she speaks for her husband, vocal coach John Darnley-Thomas, and their daughter, Mairwyn, when she says, fervently, “We love Australia.”

But the 54-year-old singer, a native of Liverpool who first came to international attention when she sang the English-language “Ring” cycle at English National Opera in 1974, says she feels “cut off” from the mainstream of music, living Down Under.

One of her responses to that feeling, she says, in addition to enlisting the aid of her agents and friends in securing engagements, is to come here now.

“It’s bloody boring when I don’t work,” Hunter says. “Other singers stay in shape by vocalizing. I find the most effective way to stay in condition is to sing two performances a week. I never find my voice in the studio--I find it on stage.”

Her present assignment, Schoenberg’s neo-Romantic cantata, to be conducted by Keith Clark, is of Wagnerian scope but not Wagnerian length, Hunter says.

“It’s not a long role, and I’ve got all the best tunes,” she gloats, adding: “After intermission, the soprano can stay backstage and do some knitting. It’s nice.”

Hunter first went to Australia in 1978 to sing “Nabucco.” Then, in 1981, she moved there with her family, “because I was contracted for ‘The Ring,’ and I expected that to be 10 years’ work,” she recalls, over a light lunch.

According to Hunter, the “Ring” project fell through--after achieving a deficit condition--but the Thomas family has remained Down Under. And Hunter has not been idle.

“There’s a lot to do,” the soprano says, “In the past two seasons, I’ve done my first Elektra and my first Isolde. And, after I return to Australia in June, I begin rehearsals for ‘Tosca.’ It will be my first--it was supposed to happen years ago, also in Australia, but the production was put off several times.” Opening night is scheduled in August.

Hunter’s outspoken autobiography, published in England in 1986, only skirts the issue of her weight, a subject some critics raise regularly.

The soprano says she used to have a hang-up about her weight, but no longer.

“I look at it this way: There are skinny singers, intermediate singers and large singers,” she says. “I’m a large singer. Because of that, there are some roles I will not take, though I can certainly sing them. I will not sing ‘Butterfly,’ because there is no way I can look like a 15-year-old. I will not sing the ‘Forza’ Leonora, because I won’t wear trousers.”

She continues, matter of factly: “But, no, I’ve never been harassed about my weight as an adult the way I was as a child. Of course, everyone would like to see me thinner, but they leave me alone on the subject.”