Saturday, October 5, 2019

I went into a depression

Julie Andrews on losing her voice after an operation...

Julie Andrews lost her voice after an operation. Picture: PA

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London

After having vocal surgery to remove ‘nodules’, Julie Andrews was left with permanent damage that destroyed her four-octave soprano voice.

Julie Andrews, the 84-year-old soprano and musical theatre legend, has opened up about the 1997 operation that caused her to lose her singing voice, saying: ‘I went into a depression’.

“When I woke up from an operation to remove a cyst on my vocal cord, my singing voice was gone,” she told AARP The Magazine for their October/November 2019 issue.

“I went into a depression. It felt like I’d lost my identity.”

Andrews, who won an Academy Award for her starring role in Mary Poppins (1964), first noticed her voice was hoarse during a Broadway show in 1997.

Shortly after, she had surgery to remove what she thought were ‘non-cancerous nodules’ from her throat at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. The surgery left her with permanent damage that destroyed her voice.

Julie Andrews had surgery that permanently destroyed her singing voice. Picture: Getty

In 1999, Andrews filed a malpractice suit against the doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital. The lawsuit was settled in September 2000.

Ten years later, the Sound of Music actress revealed that she did not have cancer or nodules but was suffering from ‘a certain kind of muscular striation’ on her vocal cords, after straining her voice while making Victor/Victoria – the 1982 comedy directed by her late husband, Blake Edwards.

Andrews has since had several unsuccessful operations to repair her voice. Fortunately, around the time of operation, a new path opened up for the singer.

“But by good fortune,” she tells AARP, “That’s when my daughter Emma and I had been asked to write books for kids,” she said. “So along came a brand-new career in my mid-60s. Boy, was that a lovely surprise.”

“But do I miss singing,” she added. “Yes. I really do.

“I would have been quite a sad lady if I hadn’t had the voice to hold on to. The singing was the most important thing of all, and I don’t mean to be Pollyanna about how incredibly lost I’d have been without that.”

Julie Andrews is best known for her role as Maria in The Sound of Music (1965). Picture: 20th Century Fox

On being cast as Mary Poppins – her feature film debut – she said: “I don’t know what P.L. Travers [the author of the Mary Poppins books] thought. She said to me, ‘You’re very pretty, and you’ve got the nose for it.’ I’m sure she laughed all the way to the bank. She was very tough and canny.”

Now, Julie is starring in the TV series Bridgerton and has a new book coming out on 15 October, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years.

But it seems those aren’t the only plans on the horizon for the singer.

“I’d love to be able to paint,” she tells AARP. “I’d love to be a good cook, but I’m rotten. I don’t have the patience for it. But I have to say, I’m a very good whistler. A lot of singers are.”

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter stops mid-concerto...

... as audience member starts filming

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter calls out smartphone use in concert. Picture: Getty

By Rosie Pentreath, ClassicFM London

The smartphones that dominate our lives are becoming an increasing presence – and for many, a problem – at live music events. Does Anne-Sophie Mutter’s experience indicate that classical music is the latest frontier in our current ‘capture-the-moment’ madness?

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter was in the middle of performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto last night when the glare of a smartphone stopped her mid-movement.

Mutter was performing the slow, middle movement of the concerto, when she suddenly stopped and confronted a member of the audience in the front row – because they had their phone out and were filming her performance.

The violinist used the pause in her playing to ask the audience member to stop recording and, during an exchange of apparently a few minutes, is reported to have said: “Either I will leave, or you will put away your phone and recording device.”

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After the disruption, the audience member was escorted out of the concert hall. Mutter, and conductor Eun Sun Kim, began the slow movement of the concerto again.

Austin Larson was there, and has taken to social media to describe the incident.

Larson wrote in a Facebook post: “Respect the Art Form: Tonight in Cincinnati the CSO and our patrons were witness to a surreal mid-Beethoven violin concerto spectacle when soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter stopped cold halfway through the 2nd mvt to confront a millennial-looking audience member who was video recording the performance from the 2nd or 3rd row.

“When the offender had the gall to stand up(!) and talk back an argument ensued and was only defused when the CSO’s president got up from his seat to eject her from the hall before the 2nd mvt was replayed.

“Apologies Maestro Beethoven for the hideous desecration of your music and an extra apology on behalf of millennials for such a poor representation of our generation. Unbelievable!”

Several people have commented on the post, sharing their opinions of the incident – “unbelievable” writes one user – while also detailing similar incidents they’ve experienced in classical music:

“I walked out onstage for a solo performance in another country a few years back to the sight of over one hundred people holding up their phones to video my playing rather than really listening,” writes horn player Bill VerMeulen.

“I was shocked. Music is best live, period. Turn your phones off. Listen. Experience. Feel. Know.”

Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrández speak to Classic FM

The pair played Brahms' Double Concerto at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre last week.

While smartphone intrusions remain relatively rare in live classical music concerts, they are an increasingly recognised problem in pop and rock gigs.

Back in June, pop sensation Billie Eilish used her Pyramid Stage spot to call out how people use their smartphones at gigs while suggesting they “live in the moment” rather than looking through their phone screens:

“All I ask is that we all try to live in the moment," the 17-year-old American singer said. “And a lot of the time I would say, ‘Put your phones away,’ but if you wanna film, that’s okay, just put it next to your face.”

She joined a long list of artists, including Guns N’ Roses, Jarvis Cocker, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar and Adele, who have previously called out how smartphones are used at gigs.

While ringtones have been known to disrupt many a concert – here are four of the most noteworthy times captured on video, – ironically, we’ve so far managed to stay relatively at arms length of the smartphone, moment-capturing craze in classical music.

Last year, though, it was revealed that one in five teenagers claimed they would actually engage more with classical music if they could use their phones to capture moments and share them on social media during concerts.

Artist and orchestras have different approaches to phones in concerts, and that's fine. Classical music has a bright future in the age of 5G, live-streaming and instant messaging – we just hope for complete concertos alongside the Instagram sharing...