Audio File
Michael Kennedy
Royal Northern College Of Music (RNCM)
2019

Howard Bamforth remembers Joan Rodgers performing as a student in the Royal Northern College of Music's production of The Magic Flute.

Howard: It was in the very early days of my time at the RNCM. Joan Rodgers was quite outstanding and the wonderful Michael Kennedy was knocked out by her performance as everybody was and Michael Kennedy wrote a wonderful review of the whole Magic Flute in the Daily Telegraph and in Opera Magazine. Partly through that, Joan Rodgers became a world star within a few months. I remember – it's a personal recollection – I remember being so impressed with Joan’s performance and then I read that she’d been chosen to sing Pamina at the Aix en Provence festival immediately after leaving college simply on the strength of Michael Kennedy’s review. And the reason was apparently that the world famous singer who was supposed to be doing Pamina refused to follow the stage directions of the director, who wanted to do a proper fire and water ritual where the singer had to put her head in a bucket of cold water and then sing! So, thanks to gimmicky directors Joan Rodgers became a world class – a world famous – singer at Aix en Provence festival immediately after leaving college.

Ref: JGH