Pauline du Plessis has the kind of voice that can shatter glass. Cracking a light bulb in Toronto resulted in being asked to leave the stage and she’s made glasses vibrate while rehearsing at Artscape.
Currently in rehearsals for Phantom of the Opera, Du Plessis says it’s not always a good thing: “My mother says I didn’t cry, I sounded like an ambulance as a kid.”
She’s put the range to good use since, though she never seriously considered singing a career until a teacher encouraged her parents to send her to audition at the Pretoria Opera School.
They pushed her beyond her initial fear of the unknown “andI haven’t looked back since”.
“My dad said to me: ‘Don’t be stupid, very few people have the opportunity to live their passion. You can do it for a few years, you can decide six months, six years, 60 years, but while you still have the talent, use it, because the older you get, the more your guts disappear.’”
Du Plessis calls her mother’s place in Somerset West home and, like many performers, she’s a gypsy who has lived and performed around the world, particularly in south-east Asia and the UK. She’s been in musicals, acted in small roles on TV, done ads and is thinking of studying occupational therapy as a fall-back career.
During her fourth year at the Pretoria Opera School, the first professional production she sang in was Fidelio and she travelled to New York for the Rosa Ponselle International Singing Competition: “That was a big year for me and it cemented the fact that this was what I’d be doing for a while.”
Du Plessis calls herself a teatergogga, always been attracted more to musicals than opera.
“Opera has become much more natural as a performing art, though back in the day when I was still doing it, it was quite static and very precise. So, when I kind of moved over to musical theatre, I was happier in my skin because I’m quite laid-back as a person,” said the 39-year-old.
While singing in London in 2000 for Broomhill Opera, she watched Phantom of the Opera for the first time at Her Majesty’s Theatre and thought it “absolutely amazing”.
“When I was 12 years old, my brother bought me the double LP of Phantom of the Opera, so it was something I kind of had an obsession with. I didn’t look at the part I’m playing now, of course, everyone looked at Christine.
“It was so exciting. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be in the show.”
Four years later, she bagged the Carlotta role for the Cape Town premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.
She sang Carlotta for three and a half years but always had to work hard at it because she’s not naturally a nasty person, nor is she on her way out in terms of her own career.
Reprising the character is more comfortable now because she has greater life experience and knows what to expect.
“She’s just a bitch,” Du Plessis said with a little chuckle.
Although the character is written comically, Du Plessis plays her very sincerely: “In everything that she’s going through, she’s very honest. She knows she’s on her way out and she’s desperately holding on to the position she has.
“It’s actually quite a sad character.”
Still, it’s more difficult now because she has to be better than last time and stage fright gets worse with every performance, not better. “I think the only thing that happens is you learn how to fake it better.”
Du Plessis has been around long enough to tell some hair-raising stories about being part of the Phantom family. Like the time when Lana English (playing Christine in Cape Town) got her costume stuck in a groove on the floor, just before the chandelier came swinging her way.
“Things like that happen, where you get stuck to the scenery and you think: ‘Oh my word, am I going to survive?’ ”
For her own part, the story she will share is about the ridiculously fast costume change between the first manager’s scene and an opera sequence.
Her dresser once forgot the bodice part of her dress for the opera sequence: “She pre-set everything in the dark. So, out comes the skirt, I step out of the one and into the other… They’re taking my wig off and putting the other one on. People are undres-sing me, I just stand there like a dummy.
“And then, she froze, and she couldn’t even speak, and the sound girl started laughing. I’m, like: ‘What’s up guys, time’s running out.’
“‘Pauline, you have no top,’ says the sound girl.”
The dresser tried to forcethe extra fabric on Du Plessis’s evening gown around her, but it didn’t work: “I couldn’t suck it in.”
Then the sound engineer put the sound up: “It was my cue and the entire audience heard: ‘Nee, ek kannie (no, I can’t), my darling,’ wonderfully loud and it wasn’t like it was in China where they wouldn’t know what was going on.”
“By that time, the sound lady was lying on the floor (laughing so hard) and she just held up the top that I had on before, so I had a very eclectic frock on. I looked like a complete nut.
“Those types of things happen all the time. For us as performers – okay, I’m a bit of a loony, so I find something like that very funny – but you might get the odd performer who’d be thrown. But the show goes on, you have no choice.”
l Phantom of the Opera plays at the Artscape Opera House from November 22 to January 15.