Danielle de Niese

0:07Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which the world's leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the Australian-born opera singer Danielle de Niese. A soprano renowned for her vibrant stage presence, she made her professional operatic debut with the Los Angeles Opera at the age of 15, and four years later became one of the youngest ever singers to perform at the Met Opera in New York. Her international breakthrough came in 2005 at the Glyndebourne Festival, where her performance as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare established her as a major operatic star.

0:47Since then, she's sung leading roles at opera houses all around the world, specialising particularly in baroque repertoire, and has recorded six studio albums of music by composers, including Handel and Mozart.

1:22Danielle Denise, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you, John. You are the recipient of the 2026 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera. And as we'll explore in this programme, you've dedicated your life to an art form which is still viewed with some suspicion, sometimes even hostility. Nobody cares about opera anymore, according to Timothee Chalamet. Why should people care about opera? I think that a lot of people care about opera and opera has sort of already withstood the test of time. I mean, it's here 500 years later. It is one of the most intense experiences that you can have in a live theatrical atmosphere where you have a human voice unamplified.

2:12and it's really the only remaining raw human voice experience that there is because everything else that we get comes through a box, including this interview. So Timothee Chalamet was missing the point then. Were you surprised when you heard that? Do you know, the first thing that I did was I went, let me hear the context of this because we live in this, you know, a world of clickbait and rage bait. And I gathered from the context that actually he's in a much more similar situation to us because he is also wanting to, like the movie industry, keep the cinematic experience alive. So they are fighting to defend people walking into a movie theatre.

2:51I think we all, in each of our respective fields, radio included, we constantly want to sing its praises and promote it and keep it alive. And I think when we think of the phrase keep it alive, we assume, OK, so it's dying then, eh? And that is a mistake. You've got to keep flying the flag. Yeah, I've always felt that way. And I never started all of the outreach work that I did thinking, oh, my art form is dying. I need to get out there. It was love and passion of sharing what I do with others and letting them be exposed to it. And I think we suffer as a society right now with streamlining access to things.

3:33And because there are constraints on budget and time and investment, people say, well, what's the main things then that we should do? And we forget that actually within the niches of the arts are a lot of amazing places for people to find refuge, to find respite, to find passion, to find their own connection to it. And it's not only in the mainstream.

4:01On This Cultural Life, Danielle Denise, my guest, choose the most important creative influences and experiences. And your first choice for this programme is your mother. And both she and your dad were born in Sri Lanka. So did they meet in Australia where you were born? Yes, they met in Australia and I was born there. And my mum has been the single most important influence in my life. She taught me how to make music live off the page through watching how she interpreted music. She was a singer herself. She took voice lessons. So she was not, she didn't want to be a professional singer, but she's incredibly musical.

4:39Like even to this day, she will give me advice or guidance or a little tip here and there that will really help the way I transmit my performance to take off. So I really trust her. I didn't realize when I was younger that people had complicated relationships with their mothers. I grew up to discover that through television and through how it's sort of perpetuated. So are your earliest memories of your mother all musical? Yes. All my early memories of mum are her singing to me and actually looking at her face. So much of my memory of it is watching how she felt about music. And I think that that is why I am the way that I am when I perform.

5:23I never allow myself to not feel what I'm singing. Just tell us something about your mother and father and how they met and what they were doing as young people. So my parents, they met in Australia because many Sri Lankans of mixed European heritage went to the Commonwealth countries where they could speak their mother tongue, which was English. So my parents are mixed with Scottish and Dutch ancestry through colonization. My surname is Dutch and my parents were brought up with English as their mother tongue. They are part of the Sri Lankan burger community. And so when the British left Sri Lanka, it was quite a common move for the English-speaking burger population to go to England, Canada or Australia.

6:06So my parents met at a party in Australia and my brother and I were born a few years after they were married and grew up in Australia. Were your parents classical music lovers or fans of opera in particular? Yes, yes. My dad's parents sang classically, though I never got a chance to study with them. They sang in church as a duo. and mum and dad themselves listened to all kinds of music, all of the sort of divas of the day and all of their solo albums. But then they also listened to, you know, Peter, Paul and Mary and Paul Simon and Abba. And also my mum used to sing in church as well. So it was a real musical melting pot.

6:45But what age did you become aware that you could sing, you could hold a tune? Really, really young. I think my parents have cassettes of me when I was very small, singing with really perfect intonation. And I was enrolled in singing and dancing classes from the age of five, which I have a five-year-old now, and she does quite similarly the same. So it's quite a common thing, I think, for parents to do. It's one thing to be able to sing, another thing to love singing. But did you love singing from an early age? Well, I did. That's the thing. So when you like something and then you feel that you're good at it, and then everybody praises you for it, you're going to love it.

7:21I love it to this day like I did when I was a kid.

7:32Your next choice for this cultural life is musical theatre. At the age of eight, you won a TV talent contest in Australia, singing Tomorrow from the musical Annie. Was that already a favourite song then? Well, it was the song I sang once I was announced as the winner. I actually performed a Whitney Houston medley of I want to dance with somebody in the greatest love of all. And I sang and danced. So tomorrow was your encore, in effect. Tomorrow was when the announcer was the winner. They said, here she is, Danielle Denise. Tomorrow is for our winner of the year, the beautiful Danielle Denise. And I sang The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.

8:07And I still weep when I see this clip because it reminds me of all the dreams I had at that age. The sun will come out tomorrow

8:26I can't believe I sang that live on national television. When I think of being nine, it's so small. It's such a tender age.

8:53Yeah, I was so ready. Were you nervous? Do you remember the moment? I remember Johnny Young saying, after giving me one of my prizes, was a grand piano that I still have with me. It's travelled the world and now lives at Glenborn. Wow. And then he said, do you play the piano? I said, yes. And he said, well, go on and play something. And I set the piano and I thought, oh, my God, I don't know what to play. and he said would you rather sing instead and I did and so I was probably nervous but I don't show when I'm nervous I think I think people don't believe that I get nervous because it doesn't look like I am have you ever seen an ice skating when you have the skater who is doing all of the beautiful movements and then they get ready for the triple axel all of a sudden the concentration phase comes on I don't manifest that concentration of here comes the difficult bit So people struggle to believe that I might be nervous, but I do get nervous, and I probably was when I was nine too.

9:49But you are also very confident, aren't you? I mean, were you a precocious child? Yeah, I must have been. I must have been. I had a very good head on my shoulders, though, and I had parents who kept me very grounded and didn't coddle me at all. Singing tomorrow at the end of that show, having won it, I mean, that's quite a moment, and there's a great sort of lyrical theme which chimed, of course, with what you'd just done, What about Whitney Houston, though? Had you been a big fan of her voice as a kid? Yeah, Whitney was somebody who, you know, she was a dream. Because the greatest love of all is happening to me She was somebody who was able to make the most distinctive sound, a beautiful voice.

10:39She was beautiful to look at. And it's really funny because some of the singers who I really admire, I've not necessarily set out to be like them. So just because you're a fan of Whitney Houston didn't mean that you want to be a soul singer. Yeah. Because it's a very different approach, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, and Kiri Takano is one of my greatest role models. And she's from the Southern Hemisphere like me, from a mixed background like me. But I don't think that many people would say that I am an artist who is like Kiri. I don't think we're made the same, and yet she's one of the greatest role models that I had when I was young and someone I really looked up to.

11:14She is a former guest of This Cultural Life. What did you learn from Kiri Takana? I got to study with Kiri, and it was one of the most fascinating times of my life because I think people listen to Kiri go, oh, it's so effortless, it's so perfect, it's so luxurious.

11:49And all of that's true, but she actually is an incredibly hard worker and she's a great technician. It isn't a case of waking up and just sounding like that every day, but she makes it so effortless that you think that that might be the case. And I spent a great amount of time with her, kind of recalibrating my voice when it was evolving. Back to the musicals. You mentioned also in your notes that you sent us Les Miserables, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Chorus Line. Did you go to see these musicals live at the theatre with your parents as a kid? Not all of them came to town, but they had, you know, the film version of My Fair Lady, the film with Richard Harris of Camelot.

12:27One of the really strong memories I have is a chorus line, the film version. And one of the songs I used to sing all the time from it, and I sang it in my competitions. If we did any singing competitions that weren't classical, then I sang the song Nothing, the song that Diana Morales sings in a chorus line. On the first day of acting class, Mr. Karp puts us on stage with our legs around each other, one in back of the other. And he says, OK, we're going to do improvisations. You're on a bobsled. It's snowing out and it's cold. Okay? Go! It was such a beautiful song. Every day for a week I would try to feel the motion, feel the motion down the hill.

13:13I remember practicing this so much with my mum and I wonder what it must have been like for people to hear a nine-year-old sing, you know, And I felt nothing, that girl is nothing. It was a very emotionally laden song, but it was perfect for everything I wanted to express. And I think it was seeing musicals at that age that must have influenced how I chose to sing classical music. And I want to treat opera as an incredible piece of theatre as much as I want it to be an incredible piece of vocality. Well, I should just point out to listeners that when you broke into song there, you were expressing yourself with your hands, which is why we heard that thump on the microphone, because you were so excited.

13:57You moved to Los Angeles with your family when you were, I think, 11 years old. What took them there? Was it you that took them there, in effect? Yeah, it was a mix. It was a holiday, but that ended up also being a sort of exploratory trip to see what kinds of training there also was for a girl of under 18, because Australia wasn't really equipped with academies for children who weren't in university. And having, I'd won in Australia, every Icededford category up to age 18 by the time I was 10. Nothing left to win. There was actually quite literally there was nothing left to win in Australia for me.

14:32I had won every competition. So you headed off to Showbiz Central then? Well, it was actually my parents wrote to the conservatories and a lot of the academies like Juilliard or New England Conservatory, you know, they had written and said, you can send her to live with us and we'll put her with a host family, which my parents couldn't really imagine doing at such a young age. So it ended up kind of morphing into something different. And I ended up going to a school called the Colburn School in Los Angeles, which is now hugely established, but which was a school in an annex that was connected to USC with a very distinguished list of instrumental alumni.

15:09And they had basically not a fully fledged vocal department. They created a vocal department in order to train me. They created that course for you. Yeah, they drafted in a teacher to start a vocal department because there weren't other young singers of 11 and 12 training as a soloist. There was a choir, but there wasn't a vocal studies department. And that course still exists to this day. Yes, yes. So without you turning up in a role, that is... Well, who knows? It might have happened anyway, but it was amazing. They took a huge punt on me. I sang for them and I just remember them saying, we can't let her go and we will find a teacher for her and we will train her.

15:48And what age was this? 11. 11 years old. Yeah. That is extraordinary. So you knew from that moment then that this was something special, that your life was going to be dedicated to singing. Yes, I actually knew from eight. I knew the moment I took the voice lessons that my mum struggled to find a voice teacher that would take me on at eight because everybody said that I should wait. I didn't want to wait. So a lot of work went into finding someone. But my mum did find someone called Amanda Colliver with the Victorian State Opera. And she said, I will teach her. And I went in and I started to take these voice lessons and sing Bach and Haydn and the Vakai scales.

16:25And she was the woman who set you on the course then? Yeah, she started to train me. And I remember thinking, all of my friends can sing and dance and act, but none of them can do this. And I thought, this is really special. I think I want to do this. And I thought, I want to be an opera singer. And I can be an opera singer who can tap dance and jazz dance and do all the other things and sing musicals, but I want to be an opera singer who does those things. Primarily it was opera singing. Yeah, I basically fell in love. At the age of 16, though, you won a major award, not for singing or for the dancing that you were doing by that age, but for being a television presenter.

17:00An Emmy award, no less, for your role as a host of an arts programme called LA Kids. So did you have a plan for a career at this point, or were you just juggling all of these skills and seeing what would land? Yeah, it wasn't even so much to see what would land because I knew that I wanted to be an opera singer. So everything I did was about training as a performer so that I could become the thing that was my childhood dream. So you were just moonlighting as a television presenter at this time? I was scouted. I was featured as LA Kid of the Week on the show LA Kids. And this producer, Terry Gray, she rang up my parents and she said, I don't have a child host.

17:37I have an adult host, but I think that I want to have a child host do the specials. And I think it should be her. The specials of this show called LA Kids. LA Kids, which was an arts cultural. It was like 60 minutes, but for kids. But for many people working in television, winning an Emmy is like a pinnacle of the career. And you just did it. Yeah, but you did it very easily. But you weren't thinking, OK, this is probably this is a different route I might take as a television presenter. And during those years, and I remember when I got to New York to make my debut at the Metropolitan Opera, there was also stuff always lingering on the outskirts.

18:12I got asked whether I wanted to go and read for soap opera on CBS. And I remember my manager telling me, you could leave opera and go and do four years on a soap opera and, you know, get famous. And when you would come back, you'd still be younger than anyone who ever did anything in the business. I remember him telling me that. And then I thought, I don't think I could do that because I'd always be looking over my shoulder wondering what's happening in opera. So this kind of core identity, it was like a jack in the beanstalk. It was born when I was eight, but it continued and continued and continued.

18:44So nothing has ever been able to deter me from the classical side of things. But I've loved doing all the other things. 1997 seems like it was a really pivotal year for you because not only did you become the youngest singer ever to enter the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist Development Programme, I think you were just 18 at the time. Yes. But you also joined the cast of Les Miserables on stage, making your Broadway debut. Was this a fork in the road moment, though, when you had to decide between opera and the musicals? Yes, John, it actually really was because I actually did Les Mis first. so I was in my senior year of high school I missed my high school graduation I went out for two separate stints with my physics homework under my arm and it was amazing and I loved the community it was amazing to make a Broadway debut like that in a show that I had been listening to since I was eight years old and in Australia I auditioned for Cosette for the Australian premiere of Les Mis when it came and I got down to the final two and they ended up picking the other girl and I remember being very sad about it.

19:51Their loss. Well, we moved on. But how beautiful, full circle, to then come back and make my Broadway debut in Les Mis. And it was while I was there for Les Mis that my mum gave me a check for$75 to sing for a teacher called Ruth Falcon for half an hour. So she bought me half an hour's time, having researched and found out that Ruth Falcon was one of the most eminent teachers in New York at Manus College of Music, which is where I subsequently went. And in that half an hour, that's when my life really changed because Ruth said, you have to go to Manus. You have to audition tomorrow and you can't go to school in California, which is where I planned to go to university.

20:30So I was doing Les Mis and then I went and auditioned for Manus and then they decided to accept me and gave me a full scholarship to come to Manus College of Music. And it was like, oh, my God. And when you went to Manus, was that when you then focused primarily on opera? I was always focused on opera. Right, OK, so your head wasn't turned by this Broadway debut. I loved doing that. But I ended up coming to New York and I got the role of Susanna in my first year of uni in The Marriage of Figaro and The Met came to that. And that's how I was invited to audition for The Met when I was 18. Did you find, though, the creative process of opera different to all of that work that you'd done on Broadway with Les Mis?

21:10I mean, was there a different sort of rigour or a different kind of sense of creative freedom in opera? or maybe was that missing? Well, I think because I brought my approach into opera, I treated both rehearsal rooms in the same way with the same amount of rigour. It has to be said, I made my debut at the Metropolitan Opera in The Marriage of Figaro with the most luxurious cast. Cecilia Bartoli was Susanna, Bryn Terfel was Figaro, Renee Fleming was the Countess. Jonathan Miller, one of the most amazing directors on earth ever to be was directing it. And it was the A-list. They were called the Dream Team.

21:50It was a landmark production. Oh, my God, it was amazing.

21:59I think there were tensions, weren't there? Artistic tensions, particularly between Jonathan Miller and Bartoli herself. Were you aware of a sort of a fraught atmosphere during that production? No, the atmosphere had none of that tension. The tension that there was was over just one aria. There was a thing about this alternate aria. Which she wanted to sing. She wanted to sing the alternate aria that Mozart wrote. I happen to know this because I then sang that aria a lot in my 20s in auditions.

22:39It is a fantastic aria, but so is De Vieni Non Tardar, which is the actual aria that Susanna sings in Act 4. Which Jonathan Miller wanted her to sing. Yes, and so... I think he said later that he had been sacked from the production, didn't he? Oh, that I don't know. I mean, he wasn't sacked when we were there. I just don't know which aria. Who won? I don't know. But this is a whole new worldview, the world that you've been aiming for since the age of five. Yes, yes. And also there was a huge amount of, about this 19-year-old. It was spoken about in this kind of, allegedly the Met has given a debut to this, apparently a 19-year-old from Maness College of Music.

23:22You know, it was treated like it was a real salacious thing to be gossiped about because it was so unusual. Did that put pressure on you? Well, I think the, I mean, I didn't feel the pressure from the surrounding gossip, but from the act of being at the Metropolitan Opera at such a young age, oh my goodness, I was very aware that this was so unusual and all eyes were on me. But not so much in a negative way. I think a lot of people were kind of taking deep breaths and thinking, God, we hope we've done the right thing putting this child out here. And I remember a whole lot of people knocking on my door on the opening.

24:00Everybody was like, how are you doing? How are you doing? But I remember being cool as a cucumber. That's not helpful, really, is it? Well, you know, I think they all wanted to just check in. And of course, like all of the arts business, if you don't do well, you're out. So what were you thinking sitting there in the dressing room? all these people knocking on the door, asking if you were okay. You say you were cool. You weren't nervous. I was nervous and cool. I mean, I had been already performing my whole life. I'd already done all the Iced Edfords and all those high-pressure things. This is what you trained for.

24:34Yeah, I was kind of ready. I was ready. I'd spent my whole young life getting ready for this moment. Do you remember the very moment when you opened your mouth and the first notes came out? I mean, I don't have a crystallized memory of the very first note I sang, but I do have wonderful memories of just what it was like to stand on that stage at such a young age.