THERE can't be many who have sung the leads in Czech composer Bedrich Smetana's The Two Widows who have a relationship as significant as soprano Kate Valentine and mezzo Jane Irwin. Quite simply, explains Valentine during rehearsals at Scottish Opera's Glasgow base, if it weren't for Irwin she wouldn't be here, preparing to make her main stage debut in a principal role at the Edinburgh International Festival.
"I honestly don't think I would be singing now if it wasn't for Jane," says Valentine. The 31-year-old from Inverness is Irwin's junior by eight years and already starting to make a name for herself. Her performance last year as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at The Sage, Gateshead, was described as "an outstanding debut… one of the evening's real discoveries" and she was one of the stand-out singers at Scottish Opera's Five:15 series. She is the joker of the two women, constantly making her co-star crack up during rehearsals and creating a cheerful atmosphere that is perfect for Smetana's delicately witty comic opera about two cousins meddling in each other's love lives. Irwin has nicknamed Valentine "Footlight Fanny", in fact, because of her love of the stage, and says she will be "like a cat on a hot tin roof" come opening night.
But it wasn't always so. After Valentine graduated from the RSAMD, she went travelling in Australia, where she continued singing lessons until a bad experience with a teacher nearly put her off for life. "It just didn't work out and I took a real crisis of confidence," she explains. "I didn't think I would ever sing again. It was awful and I felt that for my own self-preservation I needed to do something else."
Valentine returned to Scotland and stopped singing until a friend told her to visit a particular teacher at the RSAMD. "It turned out to be Jane," says Valentine, who at the time was working for Haggis Backpackers, a travel company in Edinburgh. "I had a lesson with her and that was it. Once I started again, I realised how important it was to me."
"I remember her telling me she had lost her confidence," recalls Irwin, a leading British mezzo and Edinburgh Festival regular whose core repertoire includes Mahler, Elgar and Wagner. "She opened her mouth to sing and I could tell straight away that she was a wonderful musician. She had a lovely voice but she just wasn't using it properly."
At the time Valentine was only singing with a third of her voice. "It was all a bit careful," Irwin continues. "So together we unleashed the animal, and she's been out there ever since." They have since kept in contact and last year sung together for the first time in Dido And Aeneas at EIF.
Returning to Scottish Opera feels special for both women. Valentine's first job was in the company's touring production of Die Fledermaus and as The Two Widows is her first main stage principal role: it's her big break. "With Scottish Opera... at the Festival... with Jane. It's one that I will remember for a long time," she says. The duo have become such good friends, in fact, that they show up an hour late to meet me because they got carried away buying a birthday cake for Irwin's two-year-old son. "We were just saying how glad we are that it ended up being the two of us in this opera," says Valentine. "It just felt like it was meant to be."
Irwin describes her return to Scottish Opera as "coming home". So attached is she to Scotland's national company – having lived in Glasgow and sung Suzuki for David McVicar's production of Madam Butterfly, Maddalena in Rigoletto and Waltraute/Götterdämmerung in a revered Ring Cycle conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival – that the English singer is now regularly described as Scottish. "I don't mind being an honorary Scot because I love it up here," she laughs. "This role is a departure for me because I've never played the romantic lead before. I always play strange Wagnerian women. This time I get to wear a pretty frock and everything."
Both are determined that their real life "sense of sisterhood" crosses over on to the stage. Watching them rehearse the roles of the young widowed cousins, one fun-loving and independent (Valentine's Karolina), the other devout and more withdrawn (Irwin as Anezka), their affection is apparent in every glance and note. The Czech composer's 1874 two-act opera was as little known to them as it will be to audiences (The Bartered Bride is his more famous piece). They describe it to me as "fast-paced, charming and full of banter". "We flit very quickly from being nice to each other to full-blown fighting," confides Valentine. Irwin butts in to tell me about a scene they helped devise featuring an arm wrestle.
Scottish Opera hasn't mounted a production at EIF since 2005 with The Death Of Klinghoffer, and last staged The Two Widows in 1980. Even Francesco Corti, the company's new music director, who will conduct the work, confesses that he knew Smetana had composed an opera called The Two Widows, "but this was all I knew".
In some ways it is an unconventional choice, but a sophisticated one nonetheless. Smetana's opera includes folkloric music that was popular amongst eastern European composers at the time combined with dramatic recitative – the aforementioned "banter" between the widows – and Wagnerian orchestration. Directed by Tobias Hoheisel and Imogen Kogge, the duo behind last season's Seraglio, it will be sung in English and set in the period.
"It mixes so many musical styles," says the effervescent Corti when we meet before afternoon rehearsals started up again. He will make his debut as music director of Scottish Opera at EIF and says he is delighted to be conducting a lesser known work because he can put his own stamp on it. "If you play a repertoire piece, a Boheme or Rigoletto, the orchestra already has the knowledge of the music. With a new piece, there is a curiousness and eagerness. It's new land. And Smetana has a very clear signature. The music is rich, harmonic and sensual."
Valentine and Irwin cannot wait to work together again. "We're hoping once people see us on stage together they'll be queuing up to employ us," says Irwin. They would love to sing Handel or Glück, and Irwin is keen to take on more trouser roles.
"My voice is perfect for them and I've lost about 45 pounds, so I'm ready to be a man," she grins. If they could perform anything together, what would it be? "Rosenkavalier," says Irwin without hesitating, which suggests it's not the first time she has thought about it. "Wow!" squeals Valentine. "Can you imagine how amazing that would be? But we'd have to wait a few years until I'm a proper Marschallin." Suddenly I catch a glimpse of the teacher bolstering her pupil's confidence in Irwin's no-nonsense reply: "Well, okay then, but don't wait too long."
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The Two Widows, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday, August 11 and 12, 7.15pm •
www.eif.co.ukThe full article contains 1234 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
