News - 04 Sep 2025

Leese returns with purpose

Former Dunedin-based opera singer Anna Leese is back performing with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra this month. She tells Tim Scott of the ODT about what has changed in the past four years since she last sang with the orchestra.

Anna Leese says it feels like she is 18 years old again every time she sings at Dunedin’s Town Hall.

The "shoebox-shape" is the perfect size for her voice, and all the wood around the room fills her voice with "all this glamour".

"You feel like time just goes back to the first time you sang in there.

"It’s an amazing place to sing. It’s got to be one of my favourite acoustics."

The internationally credentialled soprano soloist will again perform in the town hall this month, joined by the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra (DSO), City Choir Dunedin and Choirs Aotearoa Otago-Southland Choir, for a rendition of Poulenc’s Gloria.

Leese last performed with the DSO four years ago for the Celebrating 2021 concert, also held in the town hall.

A lot had happened since then, she said.

Her husband Stefano Guidi — who was diagnosed with the rare motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — died in 2021.

The following year, she moved with their two children to Cambridge, near Hamilton, after accepting a teaching job at the University of Waikato.

And in May this year, she graduated from the University of Otago with a doctorate in music.

The more you lived and pushed yourself, the more you discovered what you were truly capable of, Leese said.

"I’ve had some pretty extreme experiences, some of them brought on by myself on purpose and some of them that I’ve had to live through that were not free of choice.

"So I think that lots of these rich life experiences can make you into a more interesting performer and you can get a more complex and assured performance."

Leese says she hears in Gloria a soundtrack of war and tragedy — a tragedy she feels she can sing to.

"I know I’ve been there.

"I don’t just have to imagine what it’s like to live through awful things any more because I’ve done that."

Gloria is "one of those dream pieces", Leese said.

She last performed it in 2011 in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Australian conductor Simone Young.

It was pretty special to be performing it again, in another place special to her, she said.

Gloria was a difficult piece, so it was comforting to know she had already done the hard work 14 years ago.

It was already in her muscle memory.

"And I’ve still got my markings on my score that I used back then.

"Simone Young took it at a very fast tempo, I remember, so hopefully we’ll be a bit more relaxed this time."

A setting of the text familiar from the traditional Christian hymn, it requires a more mature soprano sound.

The singer needs to be able to sustain a high and soft sound for a long time and with real strength.

It was a skill one learnt over time and develops over decades, Leese said.

"I feel like that is something I can do now at the age of 44.

"I remember it being hard work the first time."

Getting her doctorate had certainly made a difference, Leese said.

People understood she was "an authority" on the subjects she spoke to them about, and it gave her the confidence to branch out into other areas.

She no longer thought of herself as just a singer, but now as more of a teacher and artist.

Being on her own with two children meant she had less time to devote to her practice, she said.

She had made "a lot of sacrifices" in her career to benefit her family.

"But as far as I see it, that’s much more important at the moment.

"I’ve had a big career, and I’ve done my doctorate, and it’s time to concentrate on the boys."

She had always been "pretty picky" about the gigs she accepted, and "very staunch" in choosing what was vocally healthy.

"But now, because I am so severely limited by my lifestyle, that I’m a solo parent that doesn’t really have any help, I am really, really severely impaired as to what I can accept.

"And so what I end up getting is just the absolute icing on the cake."

Dunedin was an important place to her, and one she had not even considered leaving until the job at the University of Waikato arose.

She had performed with the DSO many times over the years.

"When they were my home orchestra, I just would roll out of bed and go down the road and sing."

While logistics had now become a greater challenge, she would "never turn down a gig from the DSO", she said.

The audiences in Dunedin were special and it felt as if they knew her better than anyone.

There was so much going on in the world and the concert was a good opportunity "for people to sit in a room together and have a serious contemplative moment", Leese said.

"It’s big, cool works like this which make me, personally, turn my thoughts to massive world events — like what’s happening in Gaza and the terrible situation in American politics.

"Maybe people will go home with a feeling of positivity that maybe they can do something to change it.

"Things like art and music lift people up and out of misery."