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Toronto
Sun |
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Charlotte
Prefers Pop |
Yes,
it's true. Charlotte Church, the 13-year-old Welsh opera star,
turned down New Year's dates to sing for, respectively, the Pope and
Bill Clinton. Instead, she took in a concert by her favourite band,
Wales' own Manic Street Preachers.
"I wouldn't have missed it, I was so excited," the
soft-spoken little diva said. She was in town yesterday for an
invite-only Sony Classical Records showcase at the Royal Ontario
Museum, and rounds of promotional interviews.
"I just wrote a review of the concert for a magazine in
the U.K." Which magazine? "I'm not really sure," she
says with a giggle. They approached her, of course, and the world's
best-selling female classical artist is probably not too concerned
with who's sending the freelance cheque.
But she loves her Welsh bands. Church, who, on her self-titled
latest album, injects pure light into Puccini's O mio babbino caro
and Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga, gushes over rockers Stereophonics.
"And I love Catatonia, and there's a new band I like a lot --
they're not Welsh, they're Scottish -- called Travis."
She's tried acting, too, guest-starring in Touched By An Angel
this season. Subsequently, this sprite, who makes Mozart's Voi che
sapete come alive, is fielding movie scripts and thinks it
"would be wicked!" to be in an Adam Sandler movie.
Church, it seems, is a walking dichotomy of classic versus pop
culture. But then, she didn't know much about opera when she decided
at age nine that she wasn't going to be a dancer after all, and
asked her parents to pay for singing lessons. "Classical just
suits my voice," she says, "I have a great teacher, Louise
Ryan, who taught me about 'bringing it to my face,' so songs
resonate through your cheekbones."
Church brought her preternatural voice to everyone else's
face, however, when her aunt enrolled her in a British TV talent
show the week before her 11th birthday. She sang Pie Jesu from
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem. The performance got her a manager,
and eventually a contract with Sony. Her first album, Voice Of An
Angel, went multi-platinum and earned appearances on all the U.S.
talk shows (plus command performances for the Queen, the Prince Of
Wales, the Pope and the U.S. President -- which made the New Year's
decision easier, Karol and Bill being so last year).
A chunk of her take-home pay last year was a million-dollar
contract to tape an "advert" for Ford Millennium (with her
song Just Wave Hello as the commercial theme). "I can't drive
yet, but we did get a car for it."
She finds the concept of the paydays a little abstract.
"Some of the rubbish they write in the papers! Before Christmas
I read that I was worth #13 million ($28 mill, Cdn). After Christmas
I read I had six million. Am I ever naughty, spending #7 million
pounds over Christmas!" She's still getting by on an allowance
from her parents of #50 a month.
Wearing glasses, denim overalls and a fuzzy sweater, Church
seems a classic 13-year-old of the good girl variety. Asked by a
photographer to take her shoes off for some lounging shots, she
protests, "My feet are terribly smelly" and, complying,
looks at her feet and exclaims, "Oh, look, my dad's given me
odd (mismatched) socks."
One aches thinking of what has become of other suddenly-rich
child stars. "They (child stars) go do lally (crazy),"
Church agrees. "But I don't think that's gonna happen to me,
actually. Shirley Temple and those kind were all taken from their
school and their parents ... but my parents travel with me. And Sony
pays for my friends to come with me.
"They don't travel with us all the time, but there's my
friends Kim and Jo. And there's three Charlottes in our group. I'm
called Charl, there's Charlie P and CC. Mostly we eat so much sweets
we're always on the verge of throwing up, and we watch loads of
telly."
Just typical diva behaviour. By JIM
SLOTEK
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