If there is a piano around, Emma Pearson will be at it tinkling the ivories and working out a tune.
It brings relief from the pressures of a successful operatic and solo singing career, being a mum and completing her Master of Musical Arts at the Victoria University of Wellington.
Having knocked off her master’s recital, she is typing day and night trying to get her thesis done in the hope that by the time she arrives in Dunedin to perform Mozart’s Requiem alongside Maaike Christie-Beekman, Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono and Wade Kernot, she will be able to relax and enjoy the experience.
"It’s just very tricky when you’ve got a full-time career as well, and a small child. It’s always harder to get into these things later in life.
"I’m looking forward to having that behind me for sure."
The study is all part of her long-term plan to teach at university level, although first her goal is to open her own singing studio and share some of the knowledge she has gained over her career.
"I’m brimming with information. I’ve got stuff I want to pass on."
That includes what she learnt in nine years as principal artist at the Hessisches Staatstheater, in Wiesbaden, Germany where she performed over 30 roles for the company including title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, Shchedrin’s Lolita, Cavalli’s La Calisto and was nominated Singer of the Year by Opernwelt magazine for the title role in Alban Berg’s Lulu, a highlight for the singer at just 28 years old.
During that time she would perform three different operas a week, while rehearsing another and learning a fifth.
"So you cram a lifetime’s worth of performing in for a very short time."
Working with people who have grown up with Mozart and Wagner deeply entrenched in their culture was an education, as was living in Germany, where she enjoyed the seasons and traditions like Christmas markets.
"I had a little, I call it an altbau, which I think you could sort of describe as a brownstone building, bit like in New York, where they had the long stairwell up to your apartment, and then you look out down on to the street, and 14-foot ceilings, and it was just a magical place to live."
When she left, the State of Hessen awarded her the honorary title of "Kammersangerin", the youngest opera singer to have received this title.
Pearson returned to New Zealand which has become her adopted home.
She was born and brought up in Australia where she trained to be singer at the University of Western Australia and the Australian Opera Studio.
But when Bruce Greenfield, a Wellington repetiteur and opera coach visited Perth, he recommended Pearson, who was then 22, audition for New Zealand Opera, who were looking for a Gilda for its production of Rigoletto — a role she has gone on to perform for Saarlandisches Staatstheater, Saarbrucken.
Then she returned to Australia where she won the Australian Singing Competition’s Marianne Mathy Scholarship and the Symphony Australia Young Artist Prize. In the same year she also won the More Than Opera German-Australian Opera Grant, which led to her contract at the Hessisches Staatstheater .
Over the years in Germany she returned to Australia and New Zealand to perform in productions of Rigoletto, as Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), and the Marriage of Figgaro.
"I had a very amazing experience singing the Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute) at Opera Australia twice, and that was always memorable. It was certainly the hardest sort of role I’d ever tackled. When you climb a mountain and you win, or you knock the bastard off, as they say, then yeah, you feel like you’ve reached a sort of pinnacle in your career."
She moved back to Australia in 2015, continuing to perform in both countries, before settling in Wellington in 2019 and then moving to Auckland more recently to be closer to family.
Since moving back to the southern hemisphere, Pearson has performed roles such as Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Reims) with Opera Australia, the title role in La traviata for Queensland Opera and Wellington Opera, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, the title role in Semele and Contessa Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro for New Zealand Opera, Jenny in Iain Grandage’s The Riders, and Armida (Rinaldo) for Pinchgut Opera.
She has also been enjoying performing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor which she has done for Wellington Opera and the State Opera South Australia, with one reviewer describing her performance as "superlative" and "mesmeric".
"I really enjoy that. It gets more comfortable as I get older, and I’m enjoying that one more and more."
But it is the comedies she has a soft spot for, such as New Zealand Opera’s recent Rossini comedy Le Comte Ory (The Count Ory).
Most of the time the works she performs are serious and dramatic, requiring her to rein in her natural tendency to "quirks" and "excitability" to make a much more powerful impression.
"It kind of feels better when I can be a little bit of a flippity-jibbit. It’s nice to be able to play."
Those sort of roles play into Pearson’s love of the dramatic. As a child she liked theatre and drama and was having some great success in her early teens until she reached 14 and got rejected because they wanted fresh faces.
She realised she could not rely on that, so when the music department suggested she join it, she did, and the scholarships and solos came along.
By then she was thinking of becoming a classical singer and toward the end of her university degree the opportunity to study at Australia Opera Studio came up.
"I liked that it was quite a lot of acting classes, that kind of drew me into that. And then we were flown to London and I saw a really good opera. And the acting was really believable. And then I thought, yeah, I want to do that. It sort of blended my passion of acting with the thing that I’m better at, which is singing."
It was there she was taught how to study and learn, inspiring her to want to apply herself.
"I think I took a long time to grow up, basically. My friend and I joke that we’re late bloomers. It took a while."
"When you’re in opera, you have to be able to sing well, sing in tune, know your languages. There’s so many little things you can actually control that can determine whether you are employed again. There’s more control, I guess, over your future that I like."
Between the major operas, Pearson enjoys concert work, performing in Europe and America as well as in both her "homes", such as the concert in Dunedin.
"It’s just great to be able to balance concert work with opera work. One informs the other."
Mozart’s Requiem allows the singers to perform solos and quartets and is a piece of music most people are familiar with if not through the music itself, then through the movies.
"Mozart is definitely a core part of my repertoire. Usually the operas, but also concert arias."
But when she needs a break from it all, it is the piano she turns to.
"I like playing the piano by ear and trying to work out pop songs and make my own little [songs]. I’ve got my own little repertoire list."
TO SEE:
Mozart’s Requiem, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, soloists and City Choir Dunedin and Otago-Southland members of national choirs, Dunedin Town Hall, August 24, 7.30pm.
