Patricia Rozario

One of India’s most well known faces of Western music and director of the country’s first full fledged opera production ‘Il Matrimonio Segreto” - Patricia Rozario talks all about the production and her journey as the ’Soprano in Saree’

- Sriram Ravishankar

India’s expansive musical culture and popular media has given general audiences a rather vague and hazy image about Western music and Opera, unless you are a connoisseur of the art form, of course! What is popularly mimicked as “shouting” or “screaming loudly” is an age old art form with a rich heritage running for over 300 odd years! Opera, in fact Western Music itself in India has been quite a niche since its arrival from the British times. Except for the passionate few, the rest of them have barely accessed the music until artists like Zubin Mehta put Indians on the world map of Western musicians. On the lines of such heritage, meet Patricia Rozario, a Mumbai based British Soprano who is one of the country’s finest musicians. She has performed at the English National Opera, Opera North, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and the Garsington Opera in England, and has performed on stage across Europe in Aix-en-Provence, Brussels, Frankfurt, Ghent, Innsbruck, Lyon and Stuttgart.

“When Patricia and I inaugurated the opera house musically last year, we immediately thought ‘Now that the opera house is open, it is time to put an opera in there whenever we can. Since we teach Indian singers, we thought it is absolutely perfect! It is a purpose built space for opera,” said Mark Troop (Piano) as we began talking about their first full fledged Opera Production ‘Il Matrimony Segreto’ featuring a completely desi crew which staged at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai. “We chose a light comedy, not too grand not too very early opera. we thought our students can cope with it. Its comic! it has marriage in the title which is good in India - “The Secret Marriage”- Its a comedy of manners!