The lady's not for squashing OPERA

There is even more to Lesley Garrett than met the eyes of an ENO audience in 1991. The people's soprano talks, volubly, to Paddy Burt

"SOMEONE up there looks after me," says Lesley Garrett, wide-eyed and rumple-haired as we sit in a functional empty room at English National Opera's rehearsal studios in West Hampstead, where she is rehearsing Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. And she points to the ceiling.

She's late for our meeting, but her excuses are so laced with charm that it would be churlish to mind. Garrett has agreed to talk on an exclusive basis on condition she is portrayed in serious mood. Well, yes, I'd like that too. None the less I'm curious. Being a bouncy Yorkshire working- class girl and proud of it, Garrett has a mission in life to spread the word that opera is neither highbrow nor elitist. "Opera was always in our home," she declares. "It was only when I came to London that I discovered it is something only the intelligentsia were supposed to enjoy. That's a load of bollocks. Opera is full of passion - and passion is part of all our lives."

It's a laudable aim. But in pursuit of it, it seems to me she has appeared on some pretty dodgy TV shows - she has trampled on tomatoes in a bucket, posed in a bath and received a "Gotcha Oscar" from Noel Edmonds - and has been on everything from Last Night of the Proms to Channel 4's mindless youth show The Word.

For English National Opera's principal soprano, it is one thing to take your clothes off (as she did in Die Fledermaus), quite another to lark about on shows like these. Garrett is without doubt a breath of fresh air on the opera scene, but why does she dabble in this nonsense? Is she helping her cause?

"I had a ball with Noel Edmonds," she says. "I don't appear on these shows just to shock, you know. Anyway, I always watched Noel's House Party with my kids (Jeremy, two; Chloe, 20 months) before I received the Gotcha. They love Mr Blobby. This is me, the way I am. People have this stereotyped image of what an opera singer should be like."

The proof of the pudding is that audiences are going up; and people are buying her albums (Diva, released 1991, has sold 60,000 copies; Prima Donna, 1992, entered the British classical artists' chart at No 2). When she does signing sessions in record shops - "and this thrills me more than I can tell you" - they say things like, "We would never have listened to this music if it hadn't been for you".

The eldest of three girls, Lesley Garrett was born in her grandmother's bed in Thorne, a village near Doncaster, in 1955. One of her grandfathers was a classical pianist; the other had his own skiffle group. Destined to sing ("I just knew"), she passed her music A-level and got into the Royal Academy of Music, where she stayed for six years. In 1981, she entered the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition and was joint winner "with a baritone I've never heard of since".

This led to a role at the Wexford Festival: "It was in an opera called Orlando by Handel and I was Dorinda, the shepherdess who upstaged everybody. She had all the best lines." Work with English National Opera, Opera North, the Buxton Festival and the Welsh National Festival followed. "I had always expected my career to unfold gradually, but it just went whoomphh!"

What marks her out from other singers, apart from comments like this, is her ability to communicate the meaning of an aria - an apparently simple thing that is beyond the range of many sopranos. She is also a versatile performer who is able to differentiate between the heroines she plays. Not that she doesn't have the vocal cords. According to Andrew Lamb of Classic CD magazine: "Her voice is one of extreme purity - not only is it beautifully agile, but she is totally lacking in any sort of affectation."

It was with Richard Jones's ENO production of Die Fledermaus (1988) that she found fame, or notoriety. "It's very difficult to talk about this Fledermaus business," she insists, "because people are determined to think it was a calculated thing, that it was all publicity for me and ENO. But it wasn't like that at all. Actually what I did was born out of the music - you don't have to believe me, but look at the words and they're all about stripping. Besides, I didn't do a strip-tease. What I did was a very fleeting moment of artistic nudity which was just part of a show that was full of extraordinary visual moments. You have to take it in context. It was a crazy, wonderful, visually extravagant evening of which my bottom was the sensation. I completely upstaged the whole thing."

Giggling, she recalls the time she taught Sir Michael Tippett to curtsey. It was 1985 and she was playing Bella in his opera Midsummer Marriage, in honour of his 80th birthday. "I was so in awe of him. He was so far above me. I was curtseying in a very short green mini-skirt and very pink high heels. He had on a grey suit and bright yellow pumps. And, bless him, he wanted to curtsey too! So as we walked down the stage, I was saying: `Right leg behind, bend your left knee', and he was trying so hard, but the poor man was very stiff. However, he did manage a doddery little curtsey."

At one point she had to give up singing. Her first marriage (to a teacher) broke up, she became ill with a kidney infection and eventually lost her voice - "I wondered if I'd ever sing again." Through the Alexander Technique, she learnt that she had lost her voice as a result of losing her physical self-confidence. "It was the first time I realised that you sing with your whole body. It was a revelation. It's not just this bit of gristle in your neck. You sing with your whole body and mine was very weak."

In February 1985, now fully recovered, she re-auditioned for English National Opera. ("They'd offered me roles which, because of my illness, I'd had to turn down - I thought they'd never want me again.") But the audition was almost a disaster. Somehow she got one of her high heels stuck in a hole in the stage and fell down in a spectacularly undignified fashion. "Lord Harewood and the board were right there, saying things like: `Are you all right, my dear? Would you like a glass of water?' This is the end of my ENO career, I thought - but in fact that spill broke the ice. We spent 10 minutes laughing, after which I sang really well and was offered the post of principal soprano, a properly salaried job. I am devoted to ENO, I love being part of a team."

Especially if it is led by Jonathan Miller. "I love him to distraction. He allows me such freedom and scope. I can't be outrageous enough for him. I love directors who take my energy and use it. What I hate are those who squash me. Thankfully there aren't many of them around any more."

In January 1990, two things happened: she met a GP called Peter; and signed a record contract. "Those two events were - how can I describe it? - cataclysmic. Peter and I just recognised each other. I knew I'd met the father of my children and he knew he'd met the mother of his. Thank you,whoever and wherever you are up there."

Afterwards there came, as she puts it, "this explosion of creativity - I went creatively berserk". She started making records, having children, travelling, doing concerts, doing television, doing interviews. She discovered she enjoyed promoting her work, adored talking about music, loved having her photograph taken. "I'm interested in photography," she says, "and in all my photographic work I try to show my love of fantasy. After all, music is all about fantasy, accessing your own emotions and releasing them. That's why I am so passionate about music reaching more people. People have said to my record company: `How do you get her to be photographed like that?' But these photos are honest representations of what a listener can expect to hear on an album. So if you pick up one of my albums, and see a photograph showing wild passion, then that's what they will hear on the record. Or if it's a contemplative picture, then that's what they can expect to hear."

Garrett particularly likes the role of the Vixen, which she is now singing for the second time. "I identify so much with her. She's had to struggle through her life, she met the man of her dreams and they fell in love and had children right away - all those little cubs - so that's very personal. It is a wonderful role because it is the whole life of a person. Janacek wrote the opera after a cartoon he'd seen in a newspaper . . ." Her performance last time, according to the Evening Standard's Rodney Milnes, "projected a life force that makes Zorba the Greek look like a shrinking violet. Fabulous."

She has a series of new projects lined up for this year: at Easter, the Lesley Garrett Special on BBC2; in the autumn, her own TV series, designed to show people that music is not in a box marked "Opera, Private" (for the benefit of those who didn't see the Harry Enfield series of a couple of years ago which attempted the same thing). There's also a new ENO production of Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany, in which she will play the lead part of Jenny and . . . "Whew! my operetta album in the summer. I just hope I can keep up with myself."

For my part, with Garrett's 40th birthday coming up in April, I'd like to think that, while continuing her crusade to bring opera within everyone's orbit, she finds she hasn't the time to appear on tacky TV shows. "My life now is so full," says Garrett. "I do it all on adrenalin and some sort of natural energy tap. Please" - and she gestures upwards once more - "just keep it going."

! This month marks Lesley Garrett's 10th anniversary as principal soprano with English National Opera. `The Cunning Little Vixen', originally directed by David Pountney, revived by David Sulkin, opens at the Coliseum, WC2 (071-632 8300), on Saturday, and runs for eight performances to 16 March, of which Garrett sings seven.