Aigul Akhmetshina: A thought-provoking phenomenon

‘When I sing on stage, I don’t think about how I am singing – what I am thinking is usually my feelings, and how I am reacting.’ Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina’s words have an elusive ring to them – because a probing and searching thought process has underpinned the dramatic and psychological power of this prodigiously gifted virtuoso’s wide-ranging characterisations that have gripped her international audiences ever since her sensational Royal Opera House debut singing the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at just 21 years old. Since that performance, seven years ago now, she has been the star of no fewer than eight very different productions of Carmen, with the ninth one just around the corner at Glyndebourne, and, as her new debut recording album from Decca, entitled AIGUL, vividly reveals, the fruits of her scrutiny bring a striking maturity to her remarkably versatile vocality.

Not many mezzos sing such extremely differing styles and characters so idiomatically and insightfully, as this album testifies in the sum of her Carmen, Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther, and three coloratura bel canto roles – Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Angelina in the same composer’s La Cenerentola. One might imagine that for such a talented young artist, her route to tremendous success was a foregone conclusion – but the history of Akhmetshina’s life before that spectacular debut at Covent Garden is a compellingly unusual story. She grew up in hardship in her home country, the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, where, as she explains, the abundant folk music tradition first inspired her love of singing.

‘In the beginning I was singing folk songs from my country, and in fact I think this helped to develop my voice for classical singing, even though I had no proper technical training then,’ she recalls. ‘But it was when I left my home – at just 14 years old – and moved to Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, that I really started to understand what I had to do if I wanted to sing classical music seriously. This was when I enrolled at the College of Arts and met my teacher, Neilya Yusupova – my guiding star! She fixed my voice properly and constantly pushed and supported me through a challenging journey. She believed in me more than I did. I had lots of doubts about myself: so many times during my four years at college, I would reach the final of a competition but not win it. Often, I thought to myself “I can’t go on anymore”, but my teacher’s belief and also my stubbornness always in my life insisting on finishing something that I had started kept me going, and continued to do so in very difficult times after my four years at college.’

Akhmetshina recalls her first time on an opera house stage: ‘I remember feeling how big the space was – it was breath-taking. And then – well, the whole story began.’ ©Lera Nurgalieva

Akhmetshina describes the particular struggles she faced during her training: ‘For a year, Neilya taught me for free, as I had little money, and then I tried for a scholarship at the Gnesin Academy in Moscow: I got through all the examination rounds until the final one, when they cut me out. Now I really did intend to quit, and I told Neilya “I’m sorry to flush all your work down the toilet, but I am finishing”. And almost at the same time – I had a car accident! Altogether I felt that I had come to the end of this period in my life. But – Neilya called me and insisted I returned to her for more lessons. She persuaded me, and she was extraordinary: at first, every time I opened my mouth everything that we had worked on for so many years had disappeared as my voice was in such a psychosomatically traumatised condition, but in under two months we managed to repair everything.’

After all Akhmetshina’s hardship and training, finally a stroke of good fortune: ‘Then I had an invitation to sing at the New Opera World Competition in Moscow, and although I didn’t think I was ready, Neilya pushed me to go. I cracked the high note in Rosina’s first aria from Il barbiere di Siviglia – and got the first prize. The chairman of the Jury was David Gowland, the director of the Jette Parker young artists’ programme at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and he invited me to audition – for the second round. I didn’t know what it was, and I thought “I don’t speak English, I’ve never been abroad alone, I don’t even have a passport or visa, and I can’t afford the travel fare.” Then some very generous people offered to help me by paying for my expenses, and so I decided to try. I remember crying on the plane and saying to myself “You’re so stupid, why are you going there? You’ll fail”. Well, I arrived – and I remember so well being on the stage of the theatre for the audition: it was the first ever opera house stage I had stood on. I remember feeling how big the space was – it was breath-taking. And then – well, the whole story began.’

Yes, it did, as Aigul was accepted – and immediately showed exceptional talent. So much so that in the same year, 2017, as a 21-year-old understudy she was suddenly thrust into the title role of Bizet’s Carmen and, as the youngest ever artist to sing that extremely demanding role at Covent Garden, made a profound impression on the audience and the critics. This indeed was how the whole story of her extraordinary success began – and if she didn’t speak any English then, today she has a fluent command of the language that is another indication of her remarkable resourcefulness.

So it is that she can enlighten us about the deep emotional and dramatic challenges in Carmen that make the opera such a timeless masterpiece: ‘I always defend her, and I hate it when people chastise her. In the end, she didn’t deserve to die – and the problem was that nobody wanted to understand why she is the way she is. There’s great pain and loneliness in her. There are so many complex emotions inside her – and also, she is not free. She believes in freedom, and she wants freedom, but she has no freedom – and she is not free from herself. This is her trouble – she is searching, hoping, dreaming. To the people around her she is a great attraction, and yet she is intimidating.’

Aigul Akhmetshina: ‘I always defend [Carmen], and I hate it when people chastise her.’ ©Lera Nurgalieva

‘You can study that role again and again and keep finding something new in her. It is always so demanding, and she can be very draining: as I am talking to you now, I am feeling very overwhelmed after singing her last night. Every time I live her, I have to investigate myself – and to make the performance believable, I have to respond very much on the moment to the specific reactions of the characters I am with on the stage. One can’t prepare that reaction, which is why I can spontaneously end up on a different side of the stage in a different performance of the same production. Other than the basics, you can’t rehearse Carmen, as she is so volatile – you have to live her. Of course, you have to prepare everything very carefully with the stage director and the conductor, but when the performance comes, if you try and conquer her, it never works. It’s a hugely demanding multi-dimensional process with Carmen.’

And in the greatest contrast, Aigul Akhmetshina colours her voice with the purity yet nostalgic poignancy of a completely different world in the final track of her new album: Handugas – The Nightingale. It’s an arrangement by Kamil Yusufovich Rakhimov of a folksong from Aigul’s native Bashkortostan, telling the story of a man who has left his homeland and is reminded of its beauty when he hears a nightingale singing. As she tells us: ‘In the music you can hear melancholy but also pride about his country. This song connects me with my roots, which more and more I feel the need to be with, and now that I have my voice, I want to introduce the world to this nation. Few people know about it and that we have our own language and culture. The world is so big, and the beauty of it is that we still have things that we don’t know.’