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Karen Cargill has certainly scored successes at some of the opera world’s most prestigious venues like New York’s Metropolitan Opera and Great Britain’s Glyndebourne Festival. The Scottish mezzo-soprano even goes so far as to call herself a “stage animal.”
But most of Cargill’s time is devoted to symphonic concerts, and that’s just the way she likes it. “I love my orchestra work. It just feeds my soul. I love the fast pace of coming in for a week and really working at a high, high level to create these wonderful pieces,” she said from Philadelphia, where she was recently performing with that city’s famed orchestra.
She will return to the United States for a set of concerts May 23-25 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, serving as soloist in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (1888-93), often referred to as the Resurrection Symphony, a work she has performed many times.
“It’s a piece that means so much to me,” she said. “In any troubled times, we can find solace in music, and this is one of those pieces that speaks directly to the human condition and that sense of community, that sense of togetherness that we need to feel and don’t always feel. It speaks to there being a greater purpose in life. It’s one of my top five pieces, not only to sing but to listen to.”
Cargill is a particular fan of the Auferstehn (resurrection) section when the chorus enters about halfway through the final movement. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a performance,” she said,” where I haven’t had a beaming smile on my face at the end as I sing with the chorus, because of that mass choir and orchestra and everyone making music at the highest level and just throwing themselves into this huge beast of thing. I think that’s one of the great powers of music, the sense of community of bringing people together to make it, and the sense of bringing people together to listen to it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a performance . . . where I haven’t had a beaming smile on my face at the end as I sing with the chorus, because of that mass choir and orchestra and everyone making music at the highest level and just throwing themselves into this huge beast of thing.”
The CSO announced in April that Neeme Järvi will lead these concerts, substituting for Esa-Pekka Salonen, who withdrew for personal reasons (he is to receive the distinguished 2024 Polar Music Prize in Stockholm on May 21). The 86-year-old Estonian-born conductor, who has a discography of more than 400 recordings, made his CSO debut in 1985 and most recently led the orchestra in December 2017.
Cargill has never worked with Järvi, but she knows his work well, because he served as principal conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 1984-88 and has returned to the ensemble many times since. “He’s someone I really respect,” she said, “so I’m very happy to be able to make music with him. Really looking forward to that.”
The mezzo-soprano grew up in Arbroath, a seaside town on Scotland’s east coast. “My house was always full of music when I was growing up, but it was never full of classical music. It was not something that my parents were into or knew anything about,” Instead, they were fans of the Beatles, Wings and Boney M., and when Cargill was just 2 or 3, she could already sing some of the songs of those pop groups.
Indeed, she showed enough talent that an aunt recommended to her parents that she take vocal lessons, which she started when she was 8 or 9 with a local teacher. She performed folk songs and competed in local music festivals, “I loved the way it made me feel to make music, the way it made me feel to sing,” Cargill said.
“I loved the way it made me feel to make music, the way it made me feel to sing.”
After graduating from high school, she chose to remain in her native Scotland for music studies, enrolling at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow. “I wanted to do it in a quiet way,” she said, “where I could really discover who I was as an artist and not feel the pressure of being in a big city like London.” She has lived in Glasgow her entire adult life except for a student exchange year in Toronto, Canada, and some time early in her career in London.
The big turning point for her came in 2002 when she was a joint winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, an honor named for the famed English contralto, who died at 41 from cancer at the height of her career. Winners of the annual competition in Leeds have included such notable singers as bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and soprano Kate Royal. “This was my entry into the London scene,” she said. “And it was an intense period, and I’m very grateful for that. It opened an awful lot of doors for me.”
Cargill made her Scottish Opera debut in 2007 as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, and she has returned regularly to the form since. But she limits herself to one or two staged productions a year because such projects demand multiple weeks for rehearsals and performances, and she is “quite protective” of her family life.
Last summer, she appeared in Francis Poulenc’s 1956 opera The Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Glyndebourne Festival. “It’s a piece that I’m obsessed with,” she said, noting that she also performed it as a student in Toronto and returned to it with the Metropolitan Opera in 2019, a production that also included such famed singers as mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and soprano Karita Mattila.
She had high praise for Glyndebourne’s take, which was staged by Australian director Barrie Kosky, who is based at the Komische Oper Berlin. “This production was a real look into who I was as an artist,” she said. “Barrie is someone who really gives an artist space to explore who the character is as they want to portray them, and he helps you create this beautiful rounded person.” She will be back at Glyndebourne this summer in Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
“When we came for Ravinia, I brought my husband and son, and we had a week in Chicago,” she said. “I just love it there.”
Cargill has not presented any solo recitals since the COVID-19 pandemic. “I haven’t really gotten my sea legs back for recitals,” she said. But she is beginning to work with her longtime collaborator, British pianist Simon Lepper, on a new such program. She likes to take her time crafting recitals, which she believes should reflect where she is both musically and personally in her life.
As noted, though, orchestral concerts continue to dominate her schedule. Cargill’s May engagement with the CSO will be her subscription series debut. “I’m very excited,” she said. The mezzo-soprano made just one previous appearance with the ensemble in 2016 at the Ravinia Festival, joining James Levine, the series’ longtime music director, who was making his first return appearance since leaving his post 23 years earlier.
Cargill has fond memories of that 2016 visit, which included an architectural boat tour and an array of other activities. “When we came for Ravinia, I brought my husband and son, and we had a week in Chicago,” she said. “I just love it there.”
