‘A tango is a walk, it’s not about showing off your body or putting on a show. It’s a very intimate dance, a very sensual dance.’ In the music video of Fatma Said singing ‘Yo soy María’ from Piazzolla’s tango opera (or operita) María de Buenos Aires there’s some nifty footwork going on in close-up, with ochos and gancho flicks. No stunt double was required, though, because Argentine tango is one of the Egyptian soprano’s passions. ‘I’ve been dancing tango for around eight years now,’ she tells me. ‘I studied ballroom dancing when I was 15 and also Latin dances, but Argentine tango has changed my whole perception of dance.’

From the perspective of someone with two left feet (probably three, if I’m being honest), Said’s intricate footwork is hugely impressive. ‘It’s a dance that requires you to be very well connected with yourself in order to be connected with your partner,’ she explains. ‘There are a lot of different ways to communicate – it’s not that the man leads you and you have to say, “Yes.” The woman in Argentine tango always has the chance to show her character, to have the chance to say, “No,” or, “Maybe,” or, “I’ll think about it”! You can do all that with the moves that you learn, with embellishments of your feet but also with your body language, so I love the independence of Argentine tango.’

She loves the variety too. ‘For every partner you dance with, you can come up with a different dance. Each one will be different from any you’ve danced before, because you’re not following a strict pattern. It depends on how the music moves you; it depends on your partner and the chemistry you feel; it depends on your mood. So there is a lot of space that I enjoy in tango.’

Rest assured that you haven’t stumbled across an issue of Dancing Times rather than Gramophone. Said’s love for dance is the major inspiration behind her second solo album for Warner Classics, ‘Kaleidoscope’. ‘I wanted it to be inspired by something personal, something intimate, something I can relate to – and that is dance. There are so many dance rhythms on the album, from the Renaissance and the Baroque, the gavotte, different types of waltz, boleros and tarantellas, then moving into repertoire that is not so classical – musicals, chansons and a pop song. Dance is the common thread.’

It’s clear that Said enjoys a good thread. On her outstanding debut album, ‘El Nour’ (12/20), after which Gramophone named her Young Artist of the Year, she explores a programme – centred on Ravel’s Shéhérazade – that crosses cultures to shed light on Mediterranean composers. One of the inventive touches in the Ravel is the use of a breathy ney in ‘La flûte enchantée’. The album also features songs by Falla, Obradors and Lorca accompanied by guitar, and she fascinates listeners by including rare examples of Egyptian art songs. And by playing the castanets herself on Berlioz’s Zaïde, Said shows her dancer’s sense of rhythm.

Fatma Said (photo: James Bort)

Her recital at Wigmore Hall, London, in December 2020 was titled Flowers and Dreams, giving each half of her programme a common thread. What was also immediately apparent at that recital was her engaging storytelling, both vocal and physical, which captivated the sparse, socially distanced audience, allowing us temporarily to escape pandemic woes and fears. ‘It’s important to me that I am able to tell a story to the listener through each song or each cycle,’ Said explains when describing how she puts together a new recital or disc. ‘The goal is for the listener to emerge from the concert as a different person or with a different way of thinking or having experienced something, having come with me on a journey.

‘I also think it’s very important that I choose songs that fit my voice, because if I want to be a good storyteller, I cannot be worrying about my voice, about certain high notes. I can only focus on how I am going to make this song an experience. So that’s the comfort part I need. But then I think it’s interesting to have a combination of introducing something new to the audience that they might not know – perhaps something in a language they are not familiar with, or it could be a less-familiar cycle that is not performed too often or is by a less well-known composer – and pleasing the audience by making them feel connected to something they already know, which I have an obligation to do. So there needs to be this kind of balance in the programme. I also believe in a kind of a curve – I don’t believe in starting with the most famous art song ever. I believe there should be personal elements to think about when you put a programme together.’

‘The goal is for the listener to emerge with a different way of thinking or having experienced something, having joined me on a journey’

The soprano’s proficiency in several languages is another feature of her albums and recitals, reflecting her journey from Cairo to London via Berlin and Milan. ‘I grew up in Cairo, where I attended a German school, so I grew up speaking German almost as a mother tongue along with Arabic and English. French came later at school – I had seven years of French lessons; a lot of the music I enjoy singing is to French texts, so it kind of comes naturally. Italian came when I moved to Italy – they didn’t speak other languages at the Accademia Teatro alla Scala, so I learnt the hard way. I don’t speak fluent Spanish though … I only sing it!’ But she admits to having a singer’s ear for languages.

In many ways, the programme for ‘Kaleidoscope’ is a very personal one for Said. ‘I didn’t have great exposure to classical music growing up,’ she tells me, ‘hence the new album says a lot about what I used to listen to and what my real inspirations are! That’s why I wanted to do something so original.

‘I didn’t grow up in a musical family. There were no instruments at home where I could try things. I didn’t have easy access to the opera house, although we had a neighbour who was a choreographer and he would sometimes give tickets to my grandmother, who would take me to see the ballet.’ Perhaps this reflects an early love of dance.

‘You can’t prepare an opera role in just two or three weeks – each role deserves months, to really immerse yourself in the character’

‘Opera entered my life in my teenage years, around 14 or 15, thanks to the school I attended, which put such an emphasis on music. My teacher pushed me to be a soloist in the choir, so I wasn’t some wunderkind singing opera at an early age. I joined the choir with all my friends who loved to sing, but it was my teacher who pushed me to explore more and introduced me to a singing teacher in Cairo’ – Egyptian soprano Neveen Allouba. ‘She taught me until I applied to the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. So school played a big role in introducing me to the classical music genre. We had a class where we studied analysis of forms: we had to analyse a sonata, an art song, to differentiate between Mozart and Beethoven by ear and style analysis. We studied the history of jazz, the history of Baroque music. So there was a huge emphasis on history and theory, and I am very grateful for that grounding.’

After completing her bachelor’s degree in music in Berlin, Said headed to Milan. ‘I went to La Scala because I lacked stage experience. I was very happy to be on a programme at the academy that allowed me to be on stage as much as possible, because this is something you do not learn at university, where you do maybe one production a year. I met so many different high-quality directors and conductors, as well as great singers who would be performing at La Scala and would teach us in masterclasses. We were learning by doing! I could be thrown on stage and put in a situation where I was singing Berta in Barbiere, and I’d have Leo Nucci on my left or Ruggero Raimondi on my right. What more could I need?! This was a huge experience, learning from these people right in front of my eyes.’

Yet at the same time, it made Said aware of both what she doesn’t want and what she does want in her career. ‘I knew when I finished in Milan that I needed to work more on my technique if I wanted to sing opera, so I went back to Germany and continued studying with my teacher there’ (Renate Faltin). ‘It also taught me that I needed to balance singing opera and Lieder, because when I went to Milan, I’d had enough of chamber music, but when I was there I missed Schumann so much!’

It’s clear that Said relishes being on the operatic stage. ‘I enjoy the characters I play so much. In Lieder, I love being myself, but it’s also nice to experiment with being someone else for a change!’ However, she’s conscious of not overloading her diary with operatic appearances. ‘Opera takes a lot of time and I don’t want to be jumping from one character to another, jumping from one city to another and being away from home for a long time. Also, I really believe in preparation and I don’t think you can prepare a role in just two or three weeks and turn up on stage. I think each role deserves months – to really immerse yourself in the character.

‘What will people think if I sing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”? How am I going to sing it? Am I stupid enough to compare myself to Whitney Houston?’

‘I’m now preparing Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito, which we will tour at the end of the year. I’ve been studying her for the last two months now … without singing a note! I’ve been studying the text, the text of the other characters – analysing the role. I am singing every sentence – with all the recitatives – in my head. I tell you that I know the music by heart but am not singing it yet. I’ve spent two months doing that, and now I need two months to master the singing and then I’ll go on stage and master the role. I want the audience to know that this is a role that is in my blood. I’ve realised that I’m someone who likes to take my time immersing myself in these roles, especially when I don’t do many of them. We only have four days of rehearsal for Clemenza in a role I’ve never sung in my life. When there is someone like Cecilia Bartoli singing Sesto – excuse me, I have to be prepared!’

That same sense of preparation and polish is apparent in recital and on disc. ‘Kaleidoscope’ isn’t a haphazard collection, but is an album whose contents have been chosen with consideration and care. ‘I do love exploring repertoire, and this goes back to when I entered the international Robert Schumann competition back in 2012. On the application form, six months before, you had to list all the repertoire you would sing if you got to the final, so this meant that I was already learning repertoire a year before the competition started. If I had to sing about 25 Schumann songs in the whole competition, I would learn more than 60 songs – from which I made my selection.’

How did she choose the repertoire for her new disc, then? ‘The classical ones were clear: Massenet’s Manon, Gounod’s Juliette, Léhar’s Giuditta – but then I had to give it an edge. If I had continued like that, it would have been just another “arias” album, which I respect completely when other artists do it, but once you get to know me well enough, you’ll learn that I always have to put my touch somewhere! I started thinking outside the box: what if we have musicals? What if we have film music, or chansons, or a pop song? What will people think if I sing I Wanna Dance with Somebody? How am I going to sing it? Am I stupid enough to compare myself to Whitney Houston?’

Fatma Said is not stupid. She puts her own take on it, and it sounds entirely natural. ‘It’s not about being different just for the heck of it. It’s about focusing on what I really enjoy and my inspirations in life – every song on that album has a story for me. Every language I sing has an intimacy for me. I didn’t want to sing anything that wouldn’t be done well. If I’m going to use my chest voice, I know how to. If I want to sing pop, I know how to make it sound pop – so it is not a question of choosing a pop song and singing it in an operatic voice. I’m adapting my larynx to different styles, vocally adapting. I would hope that you can hear different colours between my Manon and my Juliette, rather than it being “this is my classical voice” and “this is my non-classical voice”.’ Listen to her classy account of Irving Berlin’s Cheek to Cheek and you’d think she was born into this repertoire.

‘One of the most challenging songs on the whole album was singing Eliza from My Fair Lady. I needed to capture her soul – she is not a Manon or a Juliette!’ I relate how Birgit Nilsson famously sang ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ in the gala sequence on Herbert von Karajan’s recording of Die Fledermaus. It’s safe to say that Said’s rendition is rather more idiomatic!

This interview originally appeared in the September 2022 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today