Frances McCafferty performing with Liam Forrest in Dunfermline Abbey

From D'Oyly Carte to Dunfermline

Tuesday April 28 2020

Opera singer and Church of Scotland elder Frances McCafferty tells Jackie Macadam about her career, the influence of the church, and her role in the development of a young talent.

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t sing,” laughs Frances McCafferty. “And I made my acting debut aged seven or eight, I think, in a church play. I remember it had the wonderful name, ‘The Dragon of Tangly Mountain’!”

It’s possible the helpers at that church play had no idea what kind of talent they were nurturing, but Frances went on to sing and act in opera companies all over Britain – and beyond.

An elder for the past three and a half years and currently Joint Session Clerk at the Abbey Church of Dunfermline, Frances counts the church among her lifelong influences.

“My dad died when I was relatively young,” she said, “but my mother was a staunch church-goer, and of course I loved the singing.

“By 13, I had joined the choir at Saughtonhall Congregational Church, my family church, and by 16 or 17 I was singing in the St Giles Singers, the Cathedral choir.”

A school friend introduced her to opera and realising her two great loves of singing and acting could be combined, the idea of becoming an opera singer was born.

“Of course, living in Edinburgh there was plenty of opportunity to sing. Encouraged to audition for the Edinburgh Gilbert and Sullivan Society I sang a principal role with them in The Gondoliers, having previously sung in a production of Carmen with the Edinburgh Opera Company. I sang several roles over the following years with Edinburgh Grand Opera.

“Church music was and still is important to me and singing some of the great sacred works – the Verdi Requiem, Mass in B Minor and Messiah, to name a few – has been a privilege. Although church was important and I attended weekly, it was not until 1993 that I finally confessed my faith and joined the Abbey Church of Dunfermline.”

By the early 1970s, music had become something that Frances knew she wanted to make a career out of if she could.

“I studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and spent four happy years there. I also spent a wonderful time studying with the late Hans Hotter in Germany.”

In 1979, Frances moved to London for further study with the late Audrey Langford. Sadly, within a matter of weeks of the move her mother died and she had to decide whether to forego her study to take over the tenancy of their council house or continue with her studies, effectively leaving her homeless. She returned to London after the funeral.

Two years later she came back to Edinburgh, finally moving to Dunfermline in 1981, both teaching and performing across Scotland as a guest soloist. “During that period I was also fortunate  to meet Christopher Bell, who was forging a career as a conductor and choir master, and was the organist at Palmerston Place Church and is Founder and Director of the National Youth Choir of Scotland.

“I regularly sang for him and he was instrumental not only in shaping my career but in acquiring an agent, having created an opportunity for me to sing at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I sent a demo tape to two London agents and told them about the concert. One of them sent a representative to the concert, who appeared at my dressing room door during the interval, threw their arms around me and asked where had I been all their life! They were delighted to recommend me to the owner of the agency.”

It was a turning point for Frances. The work began to pour in. Being young, free and single, she enjoyed the ability to be able to take off for months at a time to perform across the world.

“I spent the first ten months as a professional singer with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, performing on tour around the country as well as having a London season. Living in Fife, that meant being continually on the move as it was too far away to pop home to on a Saturday night.”

Frances worked with Opera North on many productions, which included going to the Ravenna Festival in Italy and Narodni Diavolo in Prague. A co-production with Tel Aviv Opera gave her the opportunity to visit Israel and a production of Mikado with English National Opera was taken to Venice.

“My debut in Covent Garden was as 1st Maid in Strauss’ Elektra. As the curtains opened, I was there, on my hands and knees, washing supposed blood off the floor. Not everyone makes their Royal Opera debut scrubbing the stage!”

Often away from home, it was always grounding to come back, and Dunfermline Abbey played a large part in that grounding. Over time the gaps between jobs grew longer and Frances became more involved in activities in the church, ultimately leading to becoming an Elder.

It was during a Moderator’s Concert in the Abbey in 2014 that Frances first heard Liam Forrest sing. Liam was a young lad who had caused quite a stir when he’d walked in to the music department at Dunfermline High school and told the teachers he wanted to sing. When he showed them what he could do they were astonished and moved to tears. The Rector was brought down to listen to him and was equally moved. With the Moderator’s Concert coming up, it was decided to give Liam a solo and to ask Frances to listen to him and   advise on how to proceed.

 “He was untrained, raw, but there was definitely a very high quality voice hiding in a young lad with no real stage presence. He’d learned music by listening to the records in his gran’s house, so though he’d picked up the music and the words, he’d also developed quite a few bad habits. There wasn’t a lot of spare cash on hand for lessons so they were delighted when I offered to give him some training voluntarily.”

Over the next four years, Frances spent one or two hours a week working with Liam after school, teaching him breathing, stagecraft, how to sing without straining his voice and ways to put a song across. He was a willing pupil, eager to learn.

The congregation of the Abbey, of whom the Rector of Dunfermline High School was a member, took Liam under their collective wing. There were many who were able to offer Liam opportunities to sing and his first major event was the launch of The Tycoon and the Bard, John Cairney’s book about the relationship between Andrew Carnegie and Robert Burns, an event arranged and hosted by the Carnegie Trust Dunfermline.

“The interesting thing about Liam is the way he interprets things,” Frances says. “I don’t know how he does it. We rehearse things and I think it sounds great, and then during the performance, he’ll instinctively put a tweak on a passage or sing a line in a completely different way, and it just sounds so much better. On a recent occasion, he was singing a piece in which the tradition is to sing one particular line with power, but instead he dropped his voice so much it came out as heartbreakingly beautiful and soulful. I’d never ever heard it done that way before and I asked him where he got the idea. He didn’t know. It had just come to him as he sang.”

Although Liam’s hopes of going to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland were not to be, he is now in his second year of a degree course in music at the University of Aberdeen. He applied for and won a choral scholarship to join the Choir of St Machar’s Cathedral, is now in his second year as choral scholar and had a featured solo in the BBC Radio Scotland Watchnight Service this past Christmas.

Frances doesn’t have children of her own, but she feels she can take a share in Liam, like a fond auntie.

“By all accounts he was beginning to drift a bit at school, maybe just on the verge of getting in with the wrong crowd. But thanks to an extraordinary set of circumstances, and the backing of people determined to see this young talent succeed, he’s come a long way. This is just the start of his journey.”

And you just know that Frances will be behind him every step of the way.