In 2005, Nadine Benjamin was working as a traders’ assistant in the City of London. She also dreamed of becoming an operatic soprano, and went to a vocal coach for advice. “You’ll never be an opera singer,” said the teacher. “Go and sing jazz.” The hopeful soprano cried all the way home.Fast forward ten years. Last month the Head of Music at the Royal Opera, David Syrus, with renowned baritone Sir Thomas Allen and mezzo Yvonne Howard, awarded Benjamin first prize in an international Verdi singing competition in London. “She has technical poise, she knows this style, and she touches audiences. We believe her to be a thrilling young talent who will go far,” said Syrus.They say that success is the best revenge, and it certainly appears true in Benjamin’s case. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to see as Nadia in Tippett’s “The Ice Break” at Birmingham Opera, and she was sensational, with a rich, soaring voice and touching stage presence. On October 23, she sings the demanding role of Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” at St James’s Church in Piccadilly, in a semi-staged performance with chamber orchestra. Her own mentoring programme “Everybody Can!” is behind the project.It’s been an eventful journey for a girl of Jamaican-Indian heritage, who grew up in a single-parent family on a council estate in Brixton, south London.“I’m a doer,” she says. “If you want something, you have to go out and get it – then put in the hard graft – and then let it happen. But my story shows that you can achieve things without doing it the formal way, and I think a lot of people are attracted to that.”We meet in a café in Sloane Square to talk about her latest project. There’s a crackle of electricity when Benjamin enters; she seems to carry a thermonuclear force-field of positive energy about her. She has a megawatt smile too, and a shrieking laugh which thunders out like a railway whistle. She’s a lot of fun. She’s also very, very serious about her talent.She’d always loved singing, she tells me, and adored listening to her mother, a social sciences teacher who also regularly performed in a reggae band. She also sang in her local church. But her only contact with opera was when her school music teacher played her an aria sung by The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”.At sixteen, it was time for her to leave school and start earning her own living. “That’s how it was in my family structure. You went out to work,” she says. As part of her vocational course in Business Administration, she went to work as a PA in the world of corporate finance at Keith, Bayley, Rogers & Co in the City of London.After a few years, she decided to move to the trading floor. She became a traders’ assistant with companies such as Deutsche Bank, Rothschild, and ING Barings. “I was one of about five women, in a group of a thousand men. You had to have balls to survive. But the lads treated me like one of them.”She is very happy to recall her time in finance. “Sometimes people sneer at the City. But I worked at an old-school traditional firm, and I learned honour, integrity and honesty there. I learned to do your best, and treat people with respect.”During her city career she was also involved in amateur theatre projects, and sang jazz, garage, jungle, and Drum&Bass in her spare time. “I was doing lots of recordings, and people would say to me: Can you do it a bit less opera-y? Or, other times, they’d ask for me specifically, because I sounded so operatic. They heard that in my voice. That’s when I thought: I want to sing opera.”After many rejections from music colleges (and the brutally dismissive comment from the vocal coach mentioned earlier), she was accepted on an evening course at City Opera, run by the conductor Peter Crockford. “He saw that I didn’t know anything, but he heard something in my voice, and took a chance on me.” She began to work on Donizetti arias.Then, after ten years in the City, and with an offer of promotion made to her, she decided to make a leap into the unknown, and pursue music full-time. “My boss at Deutsche Bank said he would keep my job open for three months if I wanted to come back.” In 2007, she auditioned for a production of “Carmen Jones” in the Royal Festival Hall and was accepted into the chorus.This led to another successful audition for “Porgy and Bess” at Opera de Lyon in France, and this time she was given five solo lines. “I was in awe of the other singers. And I thought: I want to sound like them. I want to move people like they do. I felt I’d just been bluffing up to this point. But if I wanted to be taken seriously, I’d need to know a lot more.’Benjamin wrote a business plan, and sent over a hundred and fifty letters asking for sponsorship. One woman (who wishes to remain anonymous) replied, and gave her the money for three years’ study with various singers, including the celebrated teacher Jeffrey Talbot. “I’ve worked seven days a week since then, learning all the time,” she says. She has also set up a creative mentoring programme called “Everybody Can!” to help others find their feet in the world of opera.Success is now heading her way. As well as working with Birmingham Opera and other smaller companies, she’s made recordings (Dame Ethel Smyth’s “The Boatswain’s Mate” for Retrospect Opera is due out soon), and sung many recitals. She’s also continued to sing jazz, with (to my untutored ear) terrific results. Winning the Fulham Opera Robert Presley Memorial Verdi Prize last month is a welcome indicator that major operatic bigwigs are also beginning to take note.When she sings Desdemona on October 23, with the superb heldentenor Ronald Samm as Otello, it will surely be the herald of many more Verdi roles to come her way. And to think someone said “You’ll never be an opera singer.”“Otello” is at St James’s Church, Piccadilly on October 23 at 7pm. For further information: www.nadineopera.com/press/otello.pdfNadine B's journey to opera snapshot from Nadine Benjamin on Vimeo.
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