Conversation: ... sharing ‘a gift of God’

Sydney
10 March 2002

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Conversation: ... sharing ‘a gift of God’ - Clare Gormley, soprano

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Conversation: ... sharing ‘a gift of God’ - Clare Gormley, soprano

By Marilyn Kerjean

Sometimes a crumb falls from the table of joy
sometimes a bone is flung
to some people love is given
to others only heaven.

– Luck, Where Morning Lies

Australian soprano Clare Gormley is young, beautiful, talented and as comfortable in a small Sydney cafe as she is at centre stage of the opera houses of Sydney, London and New York.

Clare, 32, may have achieved international success in a fairly short time doing what she loves, but her attitude to fame and fortune is firmly grounded in a compassionate and common sense approach sustained by her deep Catholic faith.

“I was raised very much in the Catholic faith and I certainly embrace that to this day,” the young opera star says. “My life is based on and in the teachings of the Church and I believe them wholeheartedly.”

Her voice, she says, is simply a means to “contribute to the world and hopefully do some good and share a gift of God”.

Clare was born in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, one of four children in a devout Catholic family, but they soon moved to Queensland where Clare was formed in the faith at home while attending state schools.

Like her sister Miriam, who preceded her into the ranks of world opera, Clare was blessed with musical talent.

She graduated from Brisbane’s Conservatorium of Music in 1989 and made her professional debut in 1991 as a member of the Australian Opera Young Artists Program.

The following year she became the highest placed Australian in the New York Metropolitan Opera auditions in more than 30 years.

She also won the Marianne Mathy Scholarship, a much sought-after singing award that carries a $30,000 prize plus a professional photo portfolio, résumé and recording contract.

Now Clare lives in New York where she is a regular on the Metropolitan Opera stage.

She also sings in London – at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – and with Opera Australia in the Sydney Opera House.

Performing in glamorous productions around the world with a voice that is beautiful and flexible has brought Clare “tremendous privilege and joy”, but she doesn’t believe this will be sum of her contribution to the world.

“I don’t believe the value of my life is in it, but at this point in time this is what I have,” she says. “I do consider it a tremendous gift that I’m fulfilled in but it’s only part of my life,” she says. “For example if I had a family, if I had children, then that would take priority.

“In modern culture we (have) a very humanistic approach and a materialistic approach to life and I just don’t think that that’s what it’s all about.”

Clare is now back in New York where she is studying for a new part after performing the role of Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in the Opera Australia season at the Sydney Opera House.

Before that she sang at the Carols in the Domain and played Pamina in Opera Australia’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, also at the Opera House.

Clare believes that the demands of professional singing on her energy and time, the lifestyle that comes with being a success in the world’s opera houses and the demands of her deeply held faith are not mutually exclusive.

“As long as I’m enjoying and committed as I can be to do my work,” she says, “then I’m always going to be doing it for the service of others and, thereby, God.”

Fortunately opera companies don’t schedule rehearsals on Sundays, she says, and there is usually a Catholic church in every town and a choice of Mass times as well.

She also tries to find time regularly for spiritual reading and draws most often upon contemporary Catholic theology or philosophy.

Having singing as her profession is a “tremendous privilege”, she says, although singing for opera can be physically and mentally arduous.

By contrast, producing her first album, Where Morning Lies, has been “a labour of love”.

It features Negro spirituals, contemporary spiritual songs and poems put to music, and reflects what is closest to her heart.

Clare says she always knew her first album would have a spiritual focus and feature the most beautiful modern music she could find.

With Where Morning Lies she offers to draw listeners into “an hour of retreat or refuge”.

“I chose songs that had just beautiful music,” she says, “but I also wanted the album to be an album of substance and content spiritually.”

She first heard a recording of Negro spirituals while a student and loved them instantly.

“The whole idea of the Negro spiritual is transcendent hope in the midst of such suffering,” she says.

“They reflect such hope and vigour, such transcendence in the face of sorrow and pain. I wanted my first album to reflect this.”

Her favourites became the foundation stones on which the rest of the album was built, she says.

She went to libraries and looked for modern texts that resonated with her desire to express the “yearning and struggle and suffering that in modern day life I think is particularly acute”.

And she found them in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the 1920s Harlem (New York) poet Langston Hughes as well as in the songs of American Ricky Ian Gordon.

The result is an album that “reflects the whole idea that even though we’re bound by shackles that restrict or oppress us, either from somebody else or from within, that if we look to the light that inevitably comes after the darkness and is, in fact, always constantly there, it renders the darkness powerless,” says Clare.

“I wanted it to be a reflection about the world we live in and an expression of looking to the light and a meditation on light.”

Her favourite song on the album is Luck, which she describes as a minute-and-a-half of musical and poetic genius that also sums up her personal philosophy.

“That to me expresses a notion of how we are beholden to a higher power; another creative being who has it all under control and that some of us are given certain things in plenty and some of us are not, and it’s not for us to question why,” she says.

“Who’s to say why someone is given the gift of song and someone else can’t hold a tune? Or why one person’s an athlete and another can’t run? It’s given according to whatever the plan and purpose of God is and that song so perfectly captures that.”

Where Morning Lies is available in ABC shops.