Biography

Lesley Garrett is taking stock and feeling a little nostalgic. Britain''s glamour girl of opera, she is dressed down, eating sushi and sitting back on her dressing room sofa at the London Palladium. A legend of the English National Opera, she is currently enjoying rave reviews as the Mother Abbess in The Sound Of Music, a box office sensation, but only one part of life for a renaissance woman in the prime of her life.

Her new album, When I Fall In Love, her 13th in all and first for her new label Universal Classics and Jazz, is not an after-thought in the midst of a heroically busy schedule. She joins a heavyweight UCJ roster including Luciano Pavarotti, Anna Netrebko, Bryn Terfel and Andrea Bocelli and in an almost wanton display of her range, The Sound Of Music cast soundtrack and her lavish recording of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti are also about to hit the streets.

But When I Fall In Love represents a personal labour of love that speaks volumes about where Lesley Garrett is, has been and wants to be in the future. With her television appearances in Strictly Come Dancing and the BBC''s genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, her explosion into musical theatre and diverse recording career, she has never followed the narrow expectations of opera purists.

And if some artists record classic tunes just because they are popular, Garrett refuses to sing anything that she is not deeply connected to. "I''m at a time in my life when I''m looking back counting my blessings," she says. "I have a lot of love in my life from family, friends, fans. When you get to your middle years, you do start to reflect a bit, your life is supposed to slow down, mine hasn''t at all!"

Although the new record features classic love songs from the charts and screen, its sentiments reach deeper than a first glance might suggest. "Love''s a big word," she cautions. "There are so many different kinds of love apart from the obvious romantic variety. There''s love between parents and children, grandparents, brothers and sisters. I have a daughter and a son, they''re close in ages and very close emotionally. It makes my heart sing when they hug each other, I can''t tell you what it does to me."

If she glows just talking about it, hearing her sing these songs is all the proof anyone needs that she means every word. Her voice has hit the back of the world’s great opera houses, but Garrett knows how to record with an intimacy needed to reach listeners one by one.

She has taken these songs and told her own story through them. They encompass her childhood as the daughter of a Doncaster railway signalman, her single life, her husband Peter, family and the very reasons why Lesley Garrett just has to sing.

"‘When I Fall In Love’ was a song I used to listen to when I was on my own, before I met my husband Peter," she explains of the Nat King Cole favourite. "It was after my first marriage, in my mid-30s. I came to the conclusion that, having auditioned the whole world, I was never going to find the man for me. I suppose it was a sad time, but it''s a very optimistic song. It said I would fall in love and I have. It reminds me of Peter now.”

"But Peter''s favourite is ‘He Was Beautiful’. He picked it for me to dance the waltz to for my first Strictly Come Dancing performance. It''s a song about loss but that first verse reminds me of the birth of my son Jeremy. Those lines - ''he was beautiful just to hold, in my arms in the spring time, in the winter, in the cold.'' He was born on January 1st and when I looked at him, those words just came to me."

Other songs on When I Fall In Love reach even further into Garrett’s roots. Born in Thorne, a village near Doncaster in 1955, opera seemed an unlikely career path for the young Garrett, but in 1977 she headed to London to train at the Royal Academy of Music, winning the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1979 and joining the English National Opera in 1984.

“There is no opera in Doncaster," she admits. "My father had a strong tenor voice and we sang classical and folk music. We had a book called the Beecham''s Book of Communal Songs. I liked protest songs too, Joan Baez was a big influence on me, even though I was young. I just missed the 60s. Actually, the 60s missed Doncaster."

‘La Mer’, the French song by Charles Trenet that became the basis for Beyond The Sea is dedicated to her father. "Dad loves the sea," she says, "Every spare moment as a child, we''d visit the coast. And it''s a big powerful song and my father is big and powerful too." Lesley''s father passed his O-levels from his railway signal box and became a teacher then headmaster. It made an enormous impression on the young Lesley. "I thought, if he can do that, why can''t I be an opera singer? I wanted to go to the Royal Academy of Music, I wanted to train and see how far this would go. My father wasn''t in favour at all, so I had to persuade my mum and she talked him round. He just couldn''t see how I could make a living from it."

Garrett has connected her down to earth roots with high art ever since. When I Fall In Love is a continuation of a life long project of breaking down barriers, never accepting that theatre, film or pop songs are off limits to a particular artist. Her version of Edith Piaf''s Je Ne Regrette Rien is her tribute to a seminal artist who she believes could have been an opera singer "if she had laid off the Gauloises."

‘Where Do We Begin’ from the 1970 film Love Story was one she first heard on a cinema date with her first boyfriend at 16 and her ‘Moon River’ sounds like a delicious childhood dream. With the pop charts last Christmas filled with classical CDs, Garrett can take credit for her key role in bringing classical and opera to public consciousness through her albums, performances and BBC 2 programme, Lesley Garrett Tonight.

"When I did that album," she points to a poster on the wall, an ecstatic looking Lesley draped over a chez lounge in a sumptuous dress, the shot from her 1992 album Prima Donna, "Not many opera singers looked like that. For me, that says ''opera'', it says ''that woman is having a passionate, fabulous time.'' I''ve always tried to link visuals with music, that''s what opera is anyway, it''s a close cousin to film in that way.”

"I take pride in uniting feelings, people and images. That''s what I''m doing with this album, what I''ve been doing all these years.”

By Chris Goodman (January 2007)