Music

‘I just wanted to sing’ – Elizabeth Llewellyn’s unorthodox journey to becoming a soprano


Some of us are destined to end up on a particular path, no matter what obstacles life may hurl in the way. Opera singer Elizabeth Llewellyn is one of those people. The 46-year-old’s unorthodox journey from her childhood in south London to breathtaking stage and concert performances around the world is testament to how there’s no singular route into classical music.

At first glance, her story starts in a way you might expect, with a piqued childhood interest. Aged 10, Llewellyn began the piano lessons that would form the bedrock of her musical education. “I remember my piano teacher gave me a cassette of violinist Nigel Kennedy, playing a version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons,” she says, speaking on a busy day in New York between rehearsals for an upcoming lead role in Porgy and Bess.

As a child born to Jamaican parents and growing up in the 1980s, a career in opera may not have been an obvious choice. But Llewellyn has never been the type to follow the crowd.

She quickly became hooked on classical music. “When you’re a child, you tend to get involved in whatever’s around you. So when you’re learning an instrument, you absorb what your teacher feeds you.” In her case, that entailed taking in classical music of all sorts, during lessons that stretched for hours at a time on Saturday afternoons. But that seemingly ordinary foray into music would start to divert for Llewellyn.

Llewellyn as Bess (left) and Manon Lescaut.



Unlike many of her professional opera peers, she took a 10-year detour at the start of her 20s, when an inexplicable illness – akin to a series of incessant, persistent colds – forced her to leave Manchester’s prestigious Royal Northern College of Music and stop singing altogether. After working in everything from IT and telecoms to the travel industry, Llewellyn wound up back where she belonged: singing, for rapturous audiences. She debuted professionally as Mimì in La Bohème with the English National Opera in 2010, and will sing as part of a BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performance in March 2020.

Looking back, Llewellyn can trace her love for music from piano to an interest buoyed by “choirs, then learning the violin when I was about 13. I was involved in orchestra, and string orchestra, the string quartet …” and as her voice trails off you wonder how she managed to fit it all in around school itself. After being accepted to the Royal Northern College of Music, however, her entire perspective changed. “I was used to playing piano concertos with the school orchestra, singing solos in concerts,” she remembers fondly. “And then … you get to music college. And you realise you haven’t got any technique; you’re not actually very good compared to everyone else around you” – and now she chuckles at the memory. “That first year, for me, was a bit of a horror,” a moment when she stopped and thought: “Oh my goodness, I’m really not that good am I?”

ElizabethLlewellyn SeaSymphonyConcertArtboard 2



Although she felt she had much to learn, Llewellyn’s always deployed an emotional heft in her singing. It’s part of the reason why, after several years away from music, a director of a local, amateur operatic music group noticed her talent and suggested she pursue opera with more commitment. After all, as she recalls: “Even when I applied for music college, I don’t think I wanted to be ‘an opera singer’. I just wanted to sing.”

Though she’d not been immersed in opera from infancy – as is a more common background – she felt an undeniable compulsion to sing. And her time away from music proved pivotal to enriching her vocal delivery. She gained the life experience to pour into her work that she would otherwise have lacked, she thinks, had she leapt into the professional world as a teen.

“Although I wouldn’t have chosen for things to have worked out that way,” she says, referencing the mysterious illness that derailed her, “I think I benefited from having that time away from the classical music scene. For singers, I think it’s really important to grow up emotionally and take time to absorb the world around you, and what it means to be human.” Though she half-jokes that “some of the plots of operas are fairly ridiculous”, she notes that “they are all rooted in real stories”.

And so she’s looking forward to digging into some of that emotive and narrative flair as one of four soloists when Richard Farnes conducts Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, in March next year. “Vocally, it’s a really interesting piece to prepare for.” She considers it “a bit more ‘full-fat’ than, say, Mozart in terms of vocal approach”. Even listening to her describe the piece’s “muscularity” it’s clear that a passion like hers has the capacity to turn someone who normally avoids classical music into one willing to experience some, live.

Llewellyn knows people may critique her, or look to knock her unusual route to success. But she’s adamant about the power of self-belief – after all, it got her this far. “You’ve got to know that your voice and your way of looking at the world, and your approach, is just as valid as the next person’s,” she says. “Your uniqueness and the thing that makes you you is really interesting. You can get pulled in lots of directions otherwise, and have no voice – and that’s death for an artist.” Chances are, even if others tried to pull her to and fro, Llewellyn would land on her feet. The stage is her home.

Listen to Elizabeth Llewellyn live as she joins three other stunning soloists and conductor Richard Farnes for Beethoven’s Missa solemnis



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