Features & Interviews
A diva’s dream
Paying tribute to Garland, Monroe and Piaf on stage is a dream come true, Katherine Jenkins tells Entertainments Editor Viv Hardwick.
WHILE US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton may have exaggerated her moment under fire while visiting a war zone, the same cannot be said of international entertainer Katherine Jenkins.
The Welsh singer regularly stages concerts for British service personnel in Iraq and says: "I'm hooked on it now.
They keep telling me 'I don't think you'll make it to Iraq it's too dangerous' and the more dangerous they tell me it is the more I want to go. Our helicopter got fired at, but that was a while ago."
The trustee of the British Forces Foundation explains that she's out there to support the troops and not to make a personal political point. "My opinion is irrelevant, I'll go out there as long as they want me to, " she says.
At that particular moment Jenkins was taking a break from rehearsals aimed at "vamping up the routines" for her Viva La Diva! double act with Darcy Bussell which arrives at Newcastle's MetroRadio Arena on Tuesday. "I'm adding in Edith Piaf and Darcy is adding in some more Bob Fosse and Fred Astaire numbers, " she says.
But how does a classical singer find herself taking part in song and dance routines and cracking jokes on stage in the first place?
"I'm always up for a bit of a challenge and I met Darcy quite a few years ago and when she said she was leaving the Royal Ballet we discussed about doing something together. For me, I think I work best when I put myself under pressure and Darcy and I trust each other an awful lot and I think, when you've got that, you can be brave. If you try things in the rehearsal room and it doesn't work then nobody else saw it, but if it does it's great, " she laughs.
She used to do a couple of dance classes when she was younger - about an hour of tap and jazz a week. "I knew the basics but hadn't done it for at least 15 years so it was a long time, and it's not like riding a bike, you have to relearn it all over again."
Jenkins also had to work hard on her fitness using gym training and running.
She says: "I'm so used to doing concerts where I more or less stand there and sing.
This time I'm being thrown all over the place and I have to dance and run upstairs while I'm singing. So it's a runaway train from the moment the show starts. We don't stop because when one of us is on stage the other one is offstage having the quickest change possible and then we do a big tap routine and then it's time for bed."
Jenkins has the chance to bring back the era of Judy Garland, Maria Callas, Doris Day and Natalie Wood and she says: "I remember the point I first saw Marilyn Monroe do Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend and Doris Day in Calamity Jane and these are moments that I look back and knew that's what I wanted to do. . . wear that dress and sing that song. And that's how it all happened.
People might expect me to sing Maria Callas songs but not Marilyn Monroe or Madonna. But it has to be genuine because we have to pitch the scenes and the films that we want to perform. It's almost like a little girl's dream to be able to do this. All my Christmases have come at once, " The performer doesn't just sing about diamonds either. Recently, she was loaned £6m-worth to wear for the Grammies as part of her role as ambassador for Mont Blanc pens and gifts. "I have to say it makes you feel incredibly special, but one of the things that is very funny is that you've got these two massive bodyguards all the time and they follow you everywhere. They even wait outside the ladies loo, so it can be quite embarrassing. Sometimes I wonder if they think I'll do a runner, " she says.
Jenkins feels that stories she is going to star in Lord Lloyd Webber's revival of Phantom Of The Opera have become over-hyped speculation.
"We obviously meet regularly and we did start talking once about the new Phantom show, but I think it's one of those things that got highly exaggerated.
I love Andrew's music and I love Phantom but, at the moment, I don't see myself in West End stuff because I've got so many singing engagements. At some point in the future it would be a lovely thing to do, " she explains.
After the tour of Viva La Diva she's off to Japan and will spend the summer finishing off her sixth album for Universal, full of sacred and religious songs from her award-winning Welsh choirgirl days, and performing a series of concerts.
"It's manic, but I really love it that way, " says the mezzo-soprano who is talking about studying with Placido Domingo having appeared with him in a Hong Kong concert as well as expressing her interest in appearing in opera.
She's anxious not to discuss her private life. Ex-boyfriend Steve Hart, the Worlds Apart boyband singer, was rarely seen with her in public and she is said to have gone little further than confirming that her current boyfriend is TV presenter, Gethin Jones. This makes her decision to write an autobiography, Time To Say Hello, which was published in January, all the more fascinating.
"It isn't really about things I haven't already talked about and the reason I wanted to write it was that I get a lot of letters from people who are either going through losing somebody or having someone with cancer. I lost my dad to cancer when I was 15 and I wanted to talk about how that affected us as a family. I also get a lot of letters from young singers who want to know how to get into musicals. I wanted to write the story of how I got the record deal and what it's like and all the things that have happened, " Jenkins explains.
While she feels that singing is her life she is anxious that her fame doesn't damage her family life. "I want to be able to go to the rugby, the cinema or out with a couple of friends and it not be a problem. The most important thing to me is that I want to talk about my music rather than my private life because my family and friends didn't ask to be brought into this limelight."
Early in her career she was offered some help in dealing with the press interest and jokes: "They did send me to an afternoon's media training but the guy said 'I don't think you need any' because mostly it's about encouraging artists to talk and they told me 'if anything you're a bit of a chatterbox'."
Viva La Diva! , MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, Tuesday, April 29, £27.50-£65.
6:21pm Thursday 24th April 2008
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