Alasdair Kent on The Pirates of Penzance

Interview - February 16, 2025

CONTEXT

Returning to Australia is one of the country’s finest singers, Alasdair Kent. An internationally acclaimed interpreter of Rossini and Mozart, Alasdair has performed in some of the world’s leading opera houses, including Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro Real Madrid, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Opernhaus Zürich. Amid exciting engagements in Italy, France, Canada, and Spain, his 2024/2025 season sees him return home—specifically to Perth—to star in West Australian Opera’s production of The Pirates of Penzance, led by Stuart Maunder.

Don’t miss the chance to experience Alasdair’s world-class talent in The Pirates of Penzance, running from March 28 to April 5 with West Australian Opera.

RETURNING TO AUSTRALIA

I’m really thrilled. I sang in the chorus with West Australian Opera while I was a student at WAAPA and UWA, so it was the company that really gave me my earliest professional experiences of opera. It’s been several years now that we’ve been trying to organise projects for me in Australia, but for various reasons they’ve not come to fruition. Truly, the most difficult part of managing a singing career is logistic - scheduling! I’ve lived in Europe for five years now and I’m really fortunate that I’m starting to sing regularly at some of the best houses around the world, Vienna, Paris, Milan etc. But of course, I’d relish the chance to come back to Australia and sing more often – there’s no place like home. Hopefully this will happen in the coming years.

LOVING G&S

I basically wore out the VHS tape my family had of the first Essgee Australia-New Zealand tour of The Mikado from way back. I do a lot of Rossini, bel canto, Mozart and increasingly Baroque music where a big part of the job is colouring inside a clearly defined shape. It’s one of the beautiful things about Gilbert & Sullivan, it’s inherently more fluid, more similar to what we think of these days as musical theatre, and it lends itself so well to small adaptations, modern jokes etc. I’m looking forward to seeing how the piece evolves in our production at WAO. My first experiences at WAAPA were also in Gilbert & Sullivan – John Milson directed a beautiful semi-staged Trial by Jury in my first year at WAAPA, and the combination of this fantastic music and his particular genius was so enjoyable.

REFLECTING ON 2024

Honestly, my takeaway is increasingly… to just do it. It’s a bit of a whirlwind at the moment, with crazy numbers of role debuts and the… “stress” of singing in major houses for the first time. You’re tested as a singer and as a person. But it does become normal. And either you survive, or you don’t. I’m one of the least anxious performers that I know, because on the one hand I accept that I’m imperfect and on the other hand I trust my instrument, my technique, myself. That’s probably the big takeaway – build a great foundation, and then trust it. Be unapologetically the best version of yourself that you can in that moment.

On paper, the highlights from the last seasons are debuts in Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Zurich, Aix-en-Provence… but I’m increasingly aware that I’m not driven by those kind of achievements. Yes, I want to sing in the best theatres and with the best colleagues because it’s the only way to work at the highest level.

But music-making at the highest level, that’s what gets me excited, not so much the external markers of success. If I can pay my bills, have a nice life and sing the way I want to sing, then I’m successful, and I’m happy.

My highlights are more things like… sitting next to Sara Blanch onstage for our Sitzprobe in Lyon and hearing her absolutely nailing her coloratura and high notes in Il turco in Italia, or building an aria that has almost never been performed before phrase-by-phrase with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques, or being thrilled and inspired by Emmanuelle Haïm and Les Concerts d’Astrée with their phenomenal reading of Gluck’s two Iphigénies… or working with Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau, Julie Lezhneva, Emoke Barath, Marie Lys… it’s my colleagues now who give me the greatest pleasure in what I do.

ON 2025 AND BEYOND

“I mean, come on, The Pirates of Penzance with West Australian Opera!”

I do have my debut at Teatro alla Scala in concert with Christophe Rousset… I have a really interesting unknown Baroque/Classical piece with lots of coloratura and craziness also with Christophe in Innsbruck… and I add Rossini’s Semiramide to my repertoire, which is a lot of fun for me musically, but also because I grew up listening to Dame Joan Sutherland’s recordings of this fantastic opera. But, I’m sorry, there’s no place better than Perth in the summertime, and Pirates is going to be a lot of fun.

I have a few more really big-name theatres that I’d love to debut in, London, New York etc., but I’ve also either already done many of them or will do them. So, what will be will be. I want to sing La sonnambula and Lakmé, preferably yesterday. I rehearsed Falstaff but the shows didn’t happen because of theatre closures during the pandemic, so that’s another one that I want to bring to the public. Pearlfishers… I’d love to do Puritani again but with some actual rehearsal this time… Comte Ory eventually… Mozart’s Idomeneo as Idamante… I want to do some Lully, and I want to sing more Rameau as well. I’d be interested to do some more Haydn too. There’s a lot of things, and surely not enough time to do them all, but for now, I’m happy with the direction everything is going.

DON'T THINK ABOUT MOTIVATION

There are absolutely challenges, but they’re less to do with the actions of the job itself – singing, making music etc. - and mostly to do with the lifestyle of constant travel and repeated stress. The fundamental building blocks of “life,” like eating, sleeping, socialising, they take a back seat to your travel, rehearsal and performance schedule. But let’s not get into this too deeply – I think life’s difficulties should occupy us for as little time as possible!

What keeps me motivated? I really don’t think about motivation at all. Honestly, I think motivation is a bit of a trap – if I have to be motivated, if I have to feel like doing something in order to get the job done, then… I’m not much of a professional! And this is, after all, a profession, a career, work. Like everyone on the planet, I often have to do things that I don’t “feel like” doing, that maybe I’m not motivated to do. But it’s your job. And, if you really don’t like it, then do something else, go somewhere else, do a different version of what you’re currently doing. It should feel, for the most part, organic. Singing opera and building a singing career is harder than it has ever been… if it’s inorganic on top of that, then forget about it!

But if the question is… why this? Why singing? I have asked myself that question a lot, especially in light of the pandemic. I could certainly do other things, maybe one day I will, but for now, I do this. Why? Because I enjoy it and I’m good at it, because I did it yesterday and I plan to do it tomorrow, because it’s my career and my livelihood, because I’m still fascinated by singing, music, opera. And there is, at the very heart of it, something very special in the singing of an opera. Singing this kind of music takes your whole body, it changes the way you breathe, the way you use the musculature of your torso, your stance on the ground, it’s physically all-encompassing. It’s emotionally demanding and stimulating too, because we are creating, as much as possible, living characters, often dealing with extreme situations and extreme emotions. And intellectually… take a look at an operatic score, the level of detail there is just insane. Collaborating in real time with your colleagues onstage, with the conductor, with the orchestra, sometimes with individual instruments, it’s extraordinarily gratifying and intense for your brain too. Plus, actually, the sensations of creating an operatic sound – when it comes together as you’d like it to – it is incredibly pleasurable.

"There’s a good chance I’m addicted to singing opera, but I hope I’m at least a high-functioning addict!"

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