Patricia Rozario
The Singer and the Songsmith

André Jute explains how an Indian convent girl became John Tavener's muse

Seconds into the interview Patricia Rozario has me laughing spontaneously. But the easy natural manner of the girl who had to compete with four brothers fails to hide her deepseated sincerity and tungsten moral core.

John Tavener, too often since his music was performed at Princess Diana's funeral described as "the most famous living composer", has since 1991 written fifteen pieces specifically for Rozario's voice. Tavener absolutely insists that Rozario be the only soprano to give the first, defining, performance of his compositions.

Rozario will deliver the world premiere of Tavener's "The World" with the RTE Vanbrugh String Quartet in Bantry during the West Cork Chamber Music Festival (27 June-4 July 1999). She will also give several further performances of works by Tavener and other composers during the Festival. Booking is essential; call +353-(0)27-61576.

Tavener defines her attraction as the "unique spiritual and primordial quality" in her voice. It has to come from somewhere.

Tavener, a convert to the Orthodox Church, explains that they have a relationship which exists "somewhere between Athens and Bombay". But Rozario rejects a meeting of Eastern and Western minds somewhere over the dome of the Santa Sophia simply because of her background.

The daughter of a devoutly Catholic family of Goan extraction (hence the Portuguese name), she points out that in India the religious communities form enclaves. "My uncle always listened to the BBC World Service," she encapsulates her family's culture in a single sentence. Her father worked for Alitalia, and annual free air tickets turned them all into cosmopolitans.

"It is only since I started working with John that I have explored Indian music."

As a teenager she often visited her aunt in Dublin, and a relative studied in Ireland to become a Redemptorist priest. As a student of Walter Gruner at the Guildhall in London, and later at the National Opera Studio, she continued to spend breaks in Ireland. She grasps instantly that the special mutual bond between the Irish and Tavener has its roots in the deep religiosity still prevalent in Ireland.

She is herself deeply devout. "Before I perform, I have to pray...I want the Spirit to reach out through me and touch the audience."

She loves children, and has two of her own with her husband, pianist Mark Troop. Ironically, the only rejection in Rozario's steady progress from outstanding student to multiple prizewinner to international fame--and to superstardom in the very near future--came when she first fell pregnant and was deserted by an agent who thought that was the end of her career.

"The World is a very beautiful but very challenging piece," she explains. She came to Cork to practice the piece with the Vanbrugh, who live in Cork. "Tavener uses my voice like an instrument. There is a canonical section where the voice is imitated by the other instruments in the string quartet. The voice takes its turn at holding a note, usually in the stratosphere, which makes it difficult to be as pure in tone and lacking in vibrato as John wants. I'm like the fifth instrument that has to blend in.'

Of the Vanbrugh, she says, "They're excellent, impressively quick at getting just the right sound."

Christopher Marwood, cellist of the Vanbrugh and artistic director of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, shrugs modestly. "It was superb to have her insights into John's music. She's great fun to work with."

"Art," Patricia Rozario mouths a platitude with artless conviction, "is an illusion we create every time we perform."

But she herself is no illusion. Oh yes, one can hear the giggling girl from Bombay in the fullthroated laugh of the woman and mother, and one can listen to her at concerts or on disc and marvel at the voice, the technique and the sensitive interpretation, but it is the morality of the Christian, and the mother, which anchors the talent of her appeal in Tavener's music.

You can prepare for listening to Rozario with one of her discs. The most recently launched is John Tavener: Eternity's Sunrise on the Harmonia Mundi label.