In 2004 I won a year's contract in an audition with 30 other mezzos to sing Mistress Quickly in Verdi's Falstaff and Mrs Gross in Britten's Turn of The Screw at The Landestheater in Salzburg. It was a dream come true. Better roles than I had had at The Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp and Ghent plus the thrill of living in mountains in the romantic Austrian winter with cross country ski-ing easily available.
My mother visited in the spring. We had a wonderful time drinking Grüner Veltliner on the roof terrace of the Hotel Stein and enjoying my performances and the general camaraderie. However she was not well. I knew in my heart that on her return to the UK she wouldn't make it. The heart surgeon said that one in twenty drop dead within the first thirty days of the operation. And so it was that the day after I had walked into the Salzburg mountains and seen a luminous sunset, my mother died. Thirty days exactly since her aortic valve had been replaced. I contemplated the wild garlic growing outside my urban apartment in Rettenparkstrasse.
" Can I speak to Penny ?" "Oh, I am so sorry " the nurse said "But Penny just died". I could hear my husband wail on another extension. What a co-incidence that we had rung at the same time, me from Salzburg, he from Hampstead. It was almost worse to hear him sobbing rather than receive the news that my brave Mum was no more. What should I do? Go home immediately? But for what? There had been no provision for goodbyes, anyway the Ryanair flight had already gone that day.
Frau Schlager the Landestheater Intendant's secretary was uncommonly sympathetic. I performed Mrs Grose that night and was beautifully supported by the wonderful Maestro Ivor Bolton.
Mrs Grose in The Turn of The Screw
"Susannah Self is a British singer who also sings Mistress Quickly in Salzburg, her Mrs Grose is as good as any I have heard"
Hugh Canning Opera Magazine 2005
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