Se tu m’ami, se sospiri

Winner of Second Prize at the 2020 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Ella Taylor is a soprano with a passion for performing contemporary music and works by women and gender non-conforming artists. They graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, where they gained Distinction in MA Performance, a DipRAM for an outstanding final recital, and the Charles Norman Prize, and during 2019 / 2020 were a Young Artist at London’s National Opera Studio. For more about Ella, read their full bio below.

Here are highlights from Ella’s conversation with The Enormity of Now:

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Ella Taylor. I’m a freelance classical soprano. I’m trans and proud. I’m at a stage in my career where I do most things because I need the money but hopefully one day I won’t have to accept everything. I’m at the start of my career and stuck between a rock and a hard place. There’s no work, but the work that there is goes to people that would already get the work.

How did you get here?

I’ve wanted to be a singer, probably since I was fourteen. That was when I was having singing lessons with a teacher who was fierce. It wasn’t about singing because it was fun, it was because you were good and it was possible to do things with it. I always knew I wanted to be a singer, I just wasn’t sure what type.

The path of a singer can never be straight. Sometimes things just don’t go your way. After my Master’s, I was rejected from every single place I applied for. I spent a year feeling sorry for myself and doing bits of freelance work and teaching. Then I tried again a year later. I got rejected from almost everywhere. The last place was The National Opera Studio, and that was the one I thought I’d never get in there. And that was the one that took me. I eventually came second in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards (thank f*ck), found an agent (again, thank f*ck). Now for the first time in my life, I feel secure in my position as a singer in this weird world. I’m just trying to ride the wave and not feel too anxious about it.

How has the journey of your art/career engaged your voice – personally, artistically, politically?

I don’t think there is an artistic journey without an emotional or political journey. I came out as trans at twenty-two years old. I’d finished my undergraduate, got into the Royal Academy of Music, I was moving. There were decisions to be made about how to present yourself to the world professionally. If you do that as a trans person, that’s a political choice as well as a personal choice. I did it a couple of years later, at twenty-four. At first, I thought I’d lead a double life, like a sh*t spy, but that was personally and artistically draining. My decision has completely freed me personally and artistically. Most trans people have spent most of their lives being bloody miserable. Certainly, they have to analyze their body and mind so much more. It’s a curse and a privilege, in a way, to know oneself so intimately, to be able to take those steps.

What is the voice that you found while finding your voice?

I like to hope that it’s the voice of someone brave, of someone who can speak up when they see things that are wrong. And on a shallow point, a voice that’s bloody good at singing.