Page 99 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Cheesy question, but it has to be asked. Especially as the opera singer Sophie Bevan

and conductor/composer Ryan Wigglesworth have been married for nearly four years and

created two little Wiggle-Bevans in their spare moments. How did they get together?

“I was singing in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux at English National Opera,” Bevan says. “Ryan

came to see it four or five times and kept saying after each show that he wanted to write an

opera for me.”

Quite an original chat-up line. “Yes, I didn’t really trust him at first,” Bevan continues. “Then he

did actually write an opera for me — The Winter’s Tale.”

“I’ll tell you what first struck me about you,” Wigglesworth chips in. “There are very few

singers where you have the sense that the voice is inhabiting the harmony.”

“Oh yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing!” Bevan says, with a mocking laugh. “It’s funny you
should mention that. I didn’t think anyone noticed how I inhabit the harmony.”

We are sitting in the Wigmore Hall in London, where the two of them will give a song recital in
July, Wigglesworth accompanying Bevan on the piano. How well do they work together?

“We work together very well,” she says. “I just bow down to him.”

“Yeah, right!” he interjects. “Actually I love writing for Sophie’s voice because it’s an

instrument I am lucky enough to live with. If that doesn’t excite you as a composer, what will?”

That may be true, but the two have wisely decided that their Oxfordshire home is too small to
cater simultaneously for the working day of a composer and a singer. “Ryan has an office in a

nearby village where he keeps his two big pianos, and I have a studio in our garden where I keep

my upright and pretend to do my practice,” Bevan says. “It’s a practical arrangement, but

actually I rather miss sitting by the fire and hearing him playing in the next room. Maybe one

day when we can afford a bigger house we can go back to that.”