Greta Bradman has been in the interview loop for days. She has a new album out. It is a realisation of many of her dreams.

 

And, she finds herself flying on a media zeitgeist, her private past freshly exposed on a two-part Australian Story program.

If she was busy before, she is off the scale now.

 

She is on the phone from Sydney - cheerful, enthusiastic, effusive and, she volunteers, glad to be talking to someone who is familiar from home.

 

It has been a thrilling experience for her, she says, not only to meet Richard Bonynge but to be tucked under his professional wing, to make a recording with him conducting the sublime English Chamber Orchestra.

 

Do things get better than this? 

 

Greta has considered Bonynge as one of her heroes for a long time. 

“I SO admired him," she enthuses.

And he clearly admired her, describing her famously hard-to-define voice as the “true old-fashioned bel canto sound - the sort we only dream about today”.

“He asked me if I wanted to record with him,” she exclaims.

"I can’t believe how lucky I have been to be there with him, doing work in Switzerland at his home, amid all the memories of his world. Me. A girl from Adelaide, from a farm in the Adelaide Hills. That he could be accessible to someone like me. It felt quite profound.”

 

The result is the Decca Classics record, My Hero.

 

She sings a string of beautiful arias - from Handel to Verdi with some Bellini and Rossini thrown in and even a Rodgers & Hammerstein for popular measure.

Promoting the record, she pauses on the modern dilemma. Is it an album or a record? What should one say these days?

“I think I prefer ‘record’,” she concludes.

“It encapsulates a classical recording better.”

But, of course, the record is also available as a “download”.

 

As granddaughter of the famous cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, a keen musician, Greta grew up surrounded by LPs, those which we now call “vinyls”.

From these grew her love for Haydn, Mozart, Handel et al and a lifelong drive to make music her world.

 

As she bravely reported on Australian Story, her path in the complex shadow of the immense celebrity which caused her father to change their family name, was not straightforward.

When her parents broke up, she fell into a pattern of self-harm and negative self-esteem. Even at university, she was trying to sabotage her singing career, drinking salt water to harm her voice.

 

Now 35 and having studied psychology as well as music, she chose to make these emotionally raw admissions as a form of outreach to other troubled young people.

It has worked. 

 

“I have been overwhelmed at how positive the feedback has been and how many people have been in touch,” she exclaims.

 

“I’ve talked with parents who have kids struggling with issues. This was my intention in telling and I want to do more of this. It is critical that I finish my Masters in Psychology. This has energised me. It is so important and I want to make a difference for kids who are struggling and feel that they don’t have opportunities.

 

“I have been lucky in life in so many ways but it’s not just roses and sunshine and I wanted to show it is possible to overcome the dark, to come out on the other side.”

 

Greta will have to do this while on the go. She has a very full schedule ahead and plans which may take her overseas for long periods.

 

“Independent of music, living overseas has always been a goal for Didier and me,” she says.

Greta and husband Didier Elzinger have sons aged five and eight.

“We love being in Australia for the kids but moving into a second language has always been a goal and living in Europe would make it possible.”

Meanwhile, with My Hero out there as a tribute to her musical heroes, Bonynge, Bradman and her maternal grandfather, amateur opera singer Horace Young, the Adelaide girl with the magical mystery voice is out there on the road.

 

There’s a Mahler 4th Symphony performance under concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto in Sydney, a From Broadway of La Scala national tour with Teddy Tahu Rhodes, David Hobson and Lisa McCune (in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre September 5), then Carmina Burana in Melbourne, Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo conducted by her pin-up Richard Bonynge, plus a substantial tour of India with Zubin Mehta and the Australian World Orchestra.

 

On top of all this, she has special plans for her home state - a regional tour of SA singing the music of My Hero.

Oh, and there’s Annelies, the choral work based on the diary of Anne Frank which she is performing in Adelaide next year.

“It’s fabulous,” she promises.

 

Samela Harris

 

We can buy the album with a signed score from her website.

http://www.gretabradman.com/store/