Interview, Nicole Car - The Kiss

With a big, bright and richly-coloured lyric soprano and warm, engaging stage presence, Nicole Car is fast establishing herself as one of Australia's most exciting operatic exports: following a glorious Covent Garden debut as Micaëla in the autumn, she's recently been making waves as Tatyana in their revival of Kasper Holten's controversial 2013 production of Eugene Onegin (a role which saw her win praise for her "sympathetic stage manner and secure, warm lyric soprano voice" [The Guardian] and 'bright and silvery purity' [The Independent]).

With her debut operatic recital disc on ABC Classics (which takes its title from Smetana's eponymous opera of 1876, and features the heroine Vendulka's beautiful lullaby to her betrothed's baby son as well as arias from Tchaikovsky's Oprichnik and Rimsky-Korsakov's Servilia) due for release tomorrow, we touched base with Nicole over email to find out a little more about her intriguing choice of repertoire here, and where she might be headed in the near future…

With Czech, Russian, French and Italian repertoire on offer, did you have a specific theme in mind when you put together the programme for this disc, or is it more of a snapshot of where you voice is now and where it might be headed?

When we first started to discuss the possibility of a recording it was immediately clear that we wanted to record repertoire that perhaps people weren't so familiar with, as well as a few pieces that I have performed and are well known. The overriding theme is that of romanticism and lyricism, and I'm so proud that we were able to bring some relatively unknown gems into the recording.

Have any of the roles here played a special part in your development as a singer and your career to date?

Micaëla in Carmen was my debut at the Sydney Opera House, and, more recently, my Royal Opera House debut. Her character is an interesting one to explore when you look at empowering women in opera. Eugene Onegin has been a wonderful vehicle for me, and I adore the role of Tatyana as well as the Letter Scene. We had to include that on the album!

There are a couple of real curiosities here in the Smetana and Rimsky Korsakov arias and the excerpt from Oprichnik – at what stage in your career did you realise that Czech and Russian repertoire was such a great fit for you, and how did you come across these particular arias?

When I began learning Eugene Onegin I felt a real affinity with the language. My father is Croatian and although I don't speak the language, the sounds are very familiar to me. I think they are great languages for the voice as well - you really can just sing and all of the emotion is in there. It was important to find pieces by well-known composers which perhaps hadn't had the success of other works. Toby Chadd at ABC Classics suggested the Tchaikovsky and the Smetana and as soon as I heard them I knew we had to record them!

You recently had a huge success as Tatyana and Micaëla at Covent Garden, and have another Micaëla in the diary for Paris in Spring 2017 – can you tell us if any of the other roles featured on the disc might figure in your future?

There will definitely be some Mimìs on the way in the next few seasons - I'm very excited to revisit La bohème after a few years of other repertoire! I'm sure that Simon Boccanegra is not far off, and hopefully there will be a Rusalka in the near future!