Danielle de Niese is thrilled that her mother is coming to watch her rehearse for her latest role, as the queen of the underworld in the West End transfer of the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown.
The world-class soprano trusts her mother uniquely to tell her when she is making mistakes, but Beverly's arrival from the US is also a chance for them to be together after the death of the singer’s father, Christopher, in May.
"It's been a terrible time," Danielle tells HELLO! in this exclusive interview. "We're a small family of four, so to lose my dad is like losing one of our foundational columns. [My mother] is my beacon. She's the person I trust the most."
Danielle, 47, is busier than ever. Born in Australia and raised in the US, she now lives in Britain with her husband, Gus Christie, who oversees the Glyndebourne opera house in East Sussex.
In April, Danielle received an Olivier Award for her outstanding contribution to opera, and she is about to present the Sky Arts documentary The Handel Scandal, which tells the story of Susannah Cibber, the singer who overcame public disgrace to star in Handel's Messiah.
Her most pressing engagement, however, is Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre. Danielle plays Persephone in a modernised retelling of the ancient Greek myths of the underworld queen's marriage to Hades and of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. Musicals were her first love as an art form, but she turned them down until reaching her mid-forties, because she felt that accepting such a role would undermine her credibility as an opera singer.
Now, she says: "I've cemented my status in a way that I'm allowed to artistically branch out.”
She is filming herself in rehearsals so that Beverly can watch and offer tips on how she might improve, as she has done since Danielle's childhood.
"She's my eyes and ears in the one place I can't be, which is in the audience," she says. "I utterly adore her, and we've been through a tough summer.
I don't have a clichéd "stage mum"
"Having a relationship that is one of feedback and critique is healthy and good and supportive. It defies that cliché of the mother-daughter dynamics that I came to know through my friends in adulthood: the 'stage-mum' cliché.
“I learnt as I grew up that people can have really complicated relationships with their mums, and I'm very lucky that I don't have that. She's the reason my brother and I have been able to flourish and stay grounded."
© Dave Benett/Getty ImagesDanielle is now trying to instil the same grounded nature in her son, Bacchus, 11, and daughter, Sheherazade, five. She feels torn about whether to encourage them to pursue careers in music because she knows how hard it is to make it.
Sheherazade is keen to perform public duets with her mother and has helped Danielle learn every word to the soundtrack to the Korean musical film KPop Demon Hunters.
"She's growing up with me, so she's viewing music through my eyes in the same way as I've viewed music through my mum's eyes. It's beautiful to see.
“I see her sometimes expressing her feelings about music when she sings, and it's as though I'm looking at myself when I was little, when music was a thing that was just so beautiful that it had to come out of me. I'm very touched by it.
"As an artist, there is a part of me that knows how hard the slog is. Do I wish that for my children? But if they're hungry and they want it as much as I do, I will be the wind beneath their wings, like my mum was for me."
© Grant Buchanan/Dave Benett/GettyDanielle hopes that she can pass on her work ethic to her children, too. She has told Bacchus that "there is no such thing as having an aptitude" for performing music.
"There's no such thing as: ‘I picked it up and then, oh my god, it was good and my fingers could do what I wanted, and I didn't need to practise.’
"You have to work the muscles in order to develop whatever talent might be there."
Her mother recently reminded her that Danielle was not always a model student.
"My dad archived all of our home videos and my mum discovered some videos of [me] not wanting to practise." When her mother told the rest of her family, they couldn't believe it. "Everyone was like: 'What?' Everyone thinks of me as someone who’s loved singing – and always wanted to do it – my whole life."
© SkyMeeting her "gardener" husband
Danielle laughs at the memory of meeting Gus in the gardens of Glyndebourne in 2005, when she was rehearsing for Handel’s Giulio Cesare.
"There is no other opera house in the world where you're going to meet the chairman in a T-shirt and shorts. I was like: ‘Wow – I can't believe even the gardener people know you. This is a really welcoming festival.’"
She realised her mistake a few days later at a birthday party for the show’s director, Sir David McVicar, who found that she didn't know the family's history of building an opera house at their property.
"I'd only been there a couple of days. I'd only just learned to drive on the other side of the road. I'd only just learned how to use an Aga," she says.
Her second meeting with Gus was just as disarming. "He was wearing a relaxed shirt and jeans and what looked to me like cowboy boots. I thought: ‘He's such an un-English Englishman.’
"It's because Gus spent time in Africa as a cameraman. He's his own person. That's what bonds us to one another.
"We're two people who just live inside our skin as we are, with no pretence or artifice."
Danielle de Niese stars in Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre, London, open now. The Handel Scandal airs on Sky Arts and NOW later this year.
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