8 1GT Monday October 26 2020 | the times

arts

ALLISON MICHAEL ORENSTEIN; ALASTAIR MUIR/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

A

s the “air bridges”

collapse around

us like ninepins,

the classical music

world is clinging on

to Germany. Artists

can still travel from

the country to the

UK without quarantining on arrival,

so something of a Berlin Airlift in

reverse is under way as concert

schedules are slowly replenished and

some international talent jets in.

Not that Julia Bullock would

put it that way. One of the

most exciting singers of

her generation, blazing

a trail not just

as a soloist, but

a programmer

and activist, the

American soprano,

34, is — hurrah —

based in Munich,

where she lives

with her German

conductor husband.

The last live performances

she gave pre-pandemic were of

Britten’s song cycle Les Illuminations,

given with the conductor Esa-Pekka

Salonen. Neatly, her return to the UK

is for the same piece with the same

maestro (but with the Philharmonia

orchestra) in a streamed performance

from the Southbank Centre, followed

by two concerts, with crowds, at

Snape in Suffolk.

begins her tenure as a “collaborative

partner” with the San Francisco

Symphony, one of a kind of

supergroup of mostly millennial, hip

musical innovators. She says that the

idea is to let artists share their ideas on

how an organisation should be run.

Raised on musical theatre (her

mother taught tap dance) and opera

(her stepfather gave her recordings

of favourite divas), Bullock enrolled

at music college, but midway through

her degree spent almost a month in

rehab dealing with alcohol and

substance abuse (“really anything I

could get my hands on”). This at least

meant confronting demons head-on. “I

was grateful that I drove myself into a

dark and distant place fairly early on.”

More gruelling battles were to

come when, as a postgraduate at the

Juilliard in New York, she developed

a psychosomatic disorder where she

would open her mouth and nothing

would come out. She puts a hand

around her throat to show me; let

alone singing, it was “not being able

to speak for hours at a time”.

She asked mentors whether she

should quit, but they pointed out that

the singer they saw on stage was much

stronger than the person asking them

for advice. It was “a realisation that

that person can inform the rest of

you, and not the other way round”.

She slowly worked through the

crisis, and her career took off. While

she was at college the maverick

director Peter Sellars handpicked

her for his production of Purcell’s

The Indian Queen and John Adams

chose her to sing in three of his works,

including creating a role in the 2017

opera Girls of the Golden West.

Sellars worked with Bullock to

develop the Josephine Baker show.

“It’s embodying roles that she played

throughout her life,” Bullock says.

“I’m still asking many of the same

questions in 2020 that she was.”

So how will she inspire the Guildhall

students at a time of crisis? She’s

wary of trite moralising about her

personal battles, but they do illustrate

one lesson. “Whatever it is you are

processing as a person, that will find

its way into how you make music.” The

goal can only be to work with what

you have. “Find your genuine voice

and what you want to say with it.”

Pick up the key to the savage parade.

‘I wasn’t able

to speak for

hours at a time’

Soprano Julia Bullock tells Neil Fisher

about overcoming serious trauma —

and singing an English masterpiece

“I’m excited to perform,” she says

via Zoom from her home. “But in

thinking about all the artists who are

also really seeking work right now, I

do have a little bit of tension internally

about coming to another country to

work. But of course that’s how our

business has been run.”

And Bullock isn’t all that impressed

with how the business is run. “The

resources that are being used! How

are they being used? How we were

running things before... it’s becoming

clear to me that it has maybe

not been with full

responsibility.”

The singer of Les

Illuminations begins

the cycle with

Rimbaud’s

enigmatic

declaration, “I alone

have the key to the

savage parade,” then

repeats it twice. “The

third time it is this

raging thing,” Bullock

says, and as she chews over

it we segue into her anger about

how many artistic organisations have

failed artists and audiences this year.

She won’t go into specifics, but says

she has been “not just frustrated, but

deeply hurt”. One firm conclusion is

that this period has provided her with

“space to consider ever more carefully

how I want to be spending my time —

and not wasting any”.

I drove

myself

into a dark

and distant

place

She has not dawdled yet in an

unconventional, eye-catching career.

“I’ve had the privilege of being able

to choose what I want to do and with

whom I want to work. So I could say,

‘Maybe that’s not the repertoire that

interests me, or maybe there’s another

way I can use my creative voice.’ ”

If the Aldeburgh Festival had

not been cancelled, in May British

audiences would have caught up with

her acclaimed one-woman show, Perle

Noire, inspired by a fellow émigrée

from St Louis, Missouri, Josephine

Baker. All being well, the show travels

to Baker’s spiritual home, Paris, in the

spring. As it is, after the Philharmonia

concerts Bullock starts as artist in

residence at the Guildhall School in

London for two years, charged with

developing the students’ “creatives

processes”. And at the same time she

Julia Bullock sings

at the Southbank

Centre on Thursday

(philharmonia.co.uk)

and at Snape Maltings,

Suffolk, on Friday

(snapemaltings.co.uk)

Julia Bullock

and, below

left, with Noah

Stewart in The

Indian Queen