Two Visually Impaired Opera Singers

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IN TOUCH – Two Visually Impaired Opera Singers

TX: 10.09.2019 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: LEE KUMUTAT

White

Good evening. The phrase “access to opera” usually refers to bringing opera to a wider audience, not just what’s seen as the opera loving few. But on tonight’s In Touch it signifies something different. We’ll meet two visually impaired musicians who’ve travelled thousands of miles to further their careers. In a moment the woman who came from New Zealand, initially as a violinist before the opera bug bit:

Roughton Arnold

I never imagined it could be anything serious, I never dreamed that actually I had professional vocal potential at all, I was very focused on the violin. So, I went and saw the head of vocal studies and said please could I do singing as a second study. And she said, absolutely, of course you can.

White

But first, on the line from London is Alan Pingarrón. I hope I’ve pronounced that right Alan?

Pingarrón

Yes.

White

Good. Welcome to In Touch. Your singing talents are pretty well known in Mexico, you’ve won a lot of prizes and awards, what brings you to the UK?

Pingarrón

My coming here is because I came to study with Royal Opera House teachers and because I am now in that place, Link Artists of Jette Parker.

White

Right, and these master classes are for young up and coming opera singers but you’ve up and come, haven’t you, you’re pretty well established already.

Pingarrón

Yes.

White

What will you learn from these?

Pingarrón

How can you sing with a relax – with your body relaxing and other things. This emotional connection with the characters and with the music, not just singing the notes.

White

How did you get into music?

Pingarrón

I heard my father, my father has a good, good voice and my dad plays the guitar. So, when I was a child, when I was young, I heard him to play something, sing guitar and I heard him listen one of the most popular and famous singers in Mexico – José José – that voice and my father’s voice was for me really impressive. So, that’s the reason I try to imitate the sounds and then I begin with experiments of music.

White

So, why did you choose opera or did opera choose you?

Pingarrón

Well because it’s really funny, when Andrea Bocelli recording arrived in Mexico, arrived in Mexico, many people showed to me that recording…

White

Because Andrea Bocelli, of course, is a famous blind singer, yeah.

Pingarrón

Exactly, exactly. So, but I don’t know in that moment I didn’t like – I didn’t want to hear anymore about that music. And five years after I heard Luciano Pavarotti’s voice and when I heard Nessun Dorma, one of the most famous arias of Luciano Pavarotti, that he performed a lot, I love it – the voice, I love the aria, I love music. At the same time, when I studied my first singing classes and my first writing and reading classes of music on braille.

White

I mean just explain about your blindness. Are you totally blind?

Pingarrón

Yes, I am, totally blind.

White

And did you foresee any problems connected with that to following a musical career?

Pingarrón

I think the problems were more at school but especially with teachers of movement – with movement teachers.

White

And what was the problem with the movement, was it that they didn’t know how to teach you or that you were finding it difficult?

Pingarrón

I think that the problem they found difficult, especially one of them because after that I found another teacher and he said okay, your problem is just your sight, the most difficult thing for us but not for the movement I think is for the different gestures that we don’t know. By the way, this morning I had an important movement class, drama class, with it a piece of opera, what’s called Tombe degli avi miei by – from Lucia, from Donizetti’s Lucia. My teacher spoke about the character of Edgardo, I imagine when I try to say Lucia, no please don’t go, don’t go, we try to with physical things develop the imagination.

White

The programme you’re on, what opportunities do you think this will give you in your profession?

Pingarrón

For example, one of the important opportunities is to prepare different characters and prepare different roles and then have different master classes with different famous important singers, for example, in this case, Royal Opera House, last week we have class with Juan Diego Flórez, then yesterday with Joyce DiDonato. I didn’t sing with Joyce DiDonato but I heard her class. And we can hear where our colleagues to do many things about their roles, the different roles.

White

Well Alan Pingarrón, it’s great to meet you and have you on the programme and you’re very welcome to stay and hear our next story if that’s okay.

Pingarrón

Thank you very much.

White

This lady has travelled even further than you, not only to develop her own career but also to encourage other disabled performers to do the same. She’s been telling her story to our reporter Toby Davey.

Roughton Arnold

Hello, I am Joanne Roughton Arnold. I am an opera singer. I’m the co-founder of Formidability but originally I came here from New Zealand to pursue a career as a violinist.

Davey

You busked your way around New Zealand to afford the funds to come over here and you came here as a violinist to study, what made you want to take up singing and become an opera singer?

Roughton Arnold

I’ve always been fascinated by language and when I was doing my post-graduate violin studies at Trinity College of Music in London there was the option to take a second study. So, there’s something in me had been wanting to sing but I never imagined it could be anything serious, I never dreamed that actually I had professional vocal potential at all, I was very focused on the violin. And so, I went and saw the head of vocal studies and said, please could I do singing as a second study and she said, absolutely, of course you can. So, she sent me to a wonderful, wonderful singing teacher called Esther Salaman and when I came out of it, I thought well, I really love this singing but I don’t know if I love it because there are no strings attached – no pun intended. So, I did a concert where I sang and I played, so it was a lunchtime recital and I played the Debussy Violin Sonata and I sang some songs by Flórez in the middle and then I played some Saint-Saëns on the violin at the end. And after the concert I thought, no, it is singing, it really is because you’ve got the text, you’re telling a story, you can have really direct communication with your audience, so that’s what made me think, no this is the right path for me.

Singing

Davey

Back in New Zealand what sort of support and facilities were on offer for you as a visually impaired musician and did it differ from the sort of support that you’ve got here?

Roughton Arnold

I didn’t really get a lot of support in New Zealand, which sounds terrible but then I don’t mean it in a terrible way at all. The attitudes that my parents really instilled in me was never mind, you can’t see so well, so have a good life anyway, get on with it. And just find ways to do what you want to do. So, I just used to manage as best I could. As a violinist it was always challenging in orchestras because I couldn’t – you have to share a music stand and I couldn’t get close enough to be able to read both pages of the music, so I could see the page nearer me but the other one was always out of focus. But to answer your question about the support. I’d been over here for a little while and I would just out of – I forgot – boredom one day, I can’t remember, I Googled nystagmus, which is the condition I have, and lo and behold I found the UK nystagmus network and suddenly there was all this information that I hadn’t had before. So much more than I was ever told by eye consultants and so on in New Zealand. And suddenly a lot of things fell into place about what I found difficult and why I found it difficult.

Singing

Davey

As a visually impaired person how accessible is the career of a singer performing on stage because some people might say well it’s not the most easiest of environments for somebody visually impaired to get around and know where they are on stage and also react as a singer to conductor and everything else?

Roughton Arnold

There are ways around it, it depends on how severe the visual impairment is. So, in my case I’m partially sighted, everything is out of focus unless it’s very close and I don’t have depth perception and I struggle with bright lights, which would make you think a stage probably isn’t the most friendly and welcoming environment. But what I’ve done, I’ve dealt with the lights because thanks to the fabulous contact lens department at Moorfields Eye Hospital they’ve issued me with piggy back lenses, so I wear one lens in each eye that has a really deep green tint to it to cut out the glare and then I wear my prescription lens on top of that and a rigid one. The issue with depth perception – so, as you can imagine stages can have different levels and you could find yourself dealing with steps and uneven surfaces and all sorts, so I just always make sure I get on the stage and I walk around the set and let myself develop the muscle memory for how deep each step is, where is there a handrail. Seeing the conductor, in rehearsals you’re closer to them, so that you build up a relationship, you are physically closer to the conductor than you are when you actually get on the stage and they’re down in the pit. And for them to understand what works for you and where they might need to give you a bigger gesture for you to catch it.

Singing

I had kind of conflicting advice about how to cope as a visually impaired singer. And the advice I was given was to audition and in my case my visual impairment is not obvious to people who don’t know me, so I could walk into an audition and perform and they have no idea that I’m partially sighted. But because of being worried about safety issues on stage I think it’s kind of a good idea to mention to a company that I’ve got a visual impairment. And I followed the advice and the reaction I usually got was embarrassment and no work. So, I stopped saying anything. And then I thought I’ve got to go the other way, so I kept really quiet about it and I began to get work. And I had my first contract was with Opera Holland Park, I spent four seasons not saying anything about being visually impaired, except for some very close friends in the chorus who knew, who could just give me a little bit of help if I needed it. And then along came the Paralympics in 2012 and it just felt like things were changing and I forget exactly how soon after that but RNIB were running a workshop for visually impaired children in conjunction with Opera Holland Park and the RNIB said they’d love me to be involved in that workshop but they realised that Opera Holland Park didn’t know that I was visually impaired, so it might – I might need to say something and they wanted to make sure I was comfortable. I decided, right, it’s time to say it. So, there I was in my fourth year of working for them, fourth summer, and I said – so, I’ve been talking to James at RNIB and they’d really like me to be involved in this workshop. Oh yes. And I said, because I’ve been a client of them for quite a while. And then you could almost hear the jaw fall on the floor. And I explained that I hadn’t said anything because I’d had this experience of people making two and two make five. But they were absolutely wonderful about it and immediately got me involved in the workshop. And the following year I led the equivalent workshop. So, it was just really nice to actually be able to be open.

Davey

You’ve just co-founded Formidability, which is all about both access on stage and off stage for performers and audience alike, what made you want to form the company?

Roughton Arnold

I felt that opera could reach so many more people if the people that you see onstage better reflect the reality of the diversity of their audiences. And I read somewhere that I think 20% of the UK population has a disability but you don’t see anything like that number on stage. And I don’t know if you even see that number in the audience. So, I thought well let’s find a way to make it possible for disabled artists to work on stage but we’re not about exclusivity, we’re about bringing people together. So, Formidability is a healthy mix of both disabled and non-disabled artists working together because the most important thing to us is to create really, really high-quality art and to make the production the most important thing, it just happens to be that a healthy proportion of us are disabled.

Davey

What’s the future for Formidability and for yourself as an opera singer, how do you see the future going?

Roughton Arnold

Well I really hope that from this Formidability can slowly grow, we’re going to be taking it bit by bit by bit incrementally. I’d love to be able to commission new music, work with companies like Sign Dance Collective and Rationale Method more, continue the sort of partnership and I think that accessibility doesn’t need to be boring, it can be really exciting and beautiful. And so, something that enhances the performance for the whole audience, whether you’re disabled or not. So, yeah, so I think this has got wings.

White

That’s Joanne Roughton Arnold singing part of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire ending Toby Davey’s report.

Now after our two programmes about visually impaired people losing and then regaining control over their lives we asked for your reactions and experiences. David Bates was concerned for those who, like him, lost their sight after a lifetime of seeing. He says: Quite apart from the trauma involved this can completely overwhelm some people and present others with a very steep learning curve in order to try to change their long-established lifestyle methods and communication skills. Often with minimum help from any experts. Even the people who cope successfully with these problems will still then become what David calls inbetweeners, who are neither sighted nor proper blind, who therefore may feel they’ve lost their identity and don’t belong to either group.

Terry James is keen to find solutions. She works as a freelance trainer. Terry says: It’s my believe that when someone’s registered sight impaired or severely sight impaired part of the rehabilitation they receive should be training in how to practise assertive behaviour, so that they can learn how to express their needs clearly and ask for help where necessary to live as full and rich a life as possible.

And Sean Randall also thinks coping with loss of control can be taught. Blind himself he says a large part of his appeal to the visually impaired students he teaches is confessing when he’s messed things up. He said: Seeing a blind adult in a powerless situation is something I very much encourage when working with a student, especially a student without good IT skills themselves. My seeming infallibility isn’t always to the good and far from the real situation.

And that’s it for today except to say Alan Pingarrón from Mexico is still with us and Alan, can I persuade the voice of Mexico to be the voice of In Touch and provide us with a singing finale? Would you…

Pingarrón

Yes, yes of course. I will sing from Mexican composer a special song, what’s called a [name].

White

Okay, thank you. From me, Peter White, producer Lee Kumutat, goodbye.

Singing