Selena James, an internationally renowned opera singer who taught some of Canada’s top operatic talent, died in her Saanich home Friday. She was 96.
Known for her enduring elegance, her penchant for calling everyone “dear” and the red Camaro she drove well into her 90s, James founded the Opera Studio at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where she trained Canadian opera singers, Ken Lavigne, Benjamin Butterfield and soprano Eve-Lyn de la Haye.
James had a heart attack last week and declined medical intervention, opting to die at home surrounded by loved ones, said de la Haye, who last saw James on Monday.
James didn’t have children, but many of her students became like children to her, said de la Haye, who has been close with James since her first lesson 20 years ago at age 17. James married briefly but realized music was the love of her life, de la Haye said.
“She really was like family to all of us. She didn’t just nurture the voice, she nurtured the person,” she said.
People would travel from across the country to study under James.
She taught her students “to use everything, your mind, your body, your soul, your spirit,” de la Haye said.
One of James’s star protégés was Victoria-born tenor Richard Margison, now the artistic director of the Highlands Opera Studio in Haliburton, Ont.
James was a “radiant and highly accomplished colouratura soprano in her early years” who went on to become “one of the greatest vocal pedagogues of the 20th century,” Highlands Opera Studio wrote in a statement about her death.
Coming from a rock and roll background, Margison first auditioned in front of James in Victoria in 1975.
“She called me a diamond in the rough,” Margison recalled, speaking from Montreal after an opera. “She had an incredibly firm belief in me. She really mentored me all along the way in making the transition from a baritone … to a tenor.”
Margison said he came to think of James as a mother.
“She was a member of our family,” he said. “She was a truly remarkable person and the reason I’ve got to where I am today.”
She was born Selena Freeman in Camrose, Alta., on Sept. 4, 1922. Her father was a public servant and her mother taught piano, voice and elocution, according to a 2013 profile by Robin J. Miller in the Opera Times. She had a sister, Peggy, and a brother, Hal.
She moved to New York to pursue her music career, and was soon singing in operas such as La Boheme and La Traviata, according to a Times Colonist feature in 1981.
She toured with the National Opera across the United States and moved to Europe at one point. James later returned to New York, where she took her master’s degree in voice from the Manhattan School of Music.
In 1973, she took a job with the Victoria Conservatory of Music, then operating out of Craigdarroch Castle. It was there that Robert Holliston, now the conservatory’s head of keyboard, studied under James.
“She had incredible tenacity,” Holliston said. “She was uncompromising in her honesty and adherence to the highest possible standards.”
James gave all of herself to her students and never gave up on them, Holliston said.
She also taught opera and music theatre at the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts. Butterfield, now the head of voice at the University of Victoria’s school of music, studied under James at the conservatory, then decided to follow her to Banff when she took on the position in 1986.
“She really coached me and mentored me through this whole process,” Butterfield said.
Butterfield remembers incredible adventures with James, driving through snowstorms in the Rocky Mountains on the way to a concert, singing at the top of their lungs, despite barely being able to see the road ahead.
“We were in the mountains, having parties, doing crazy things — that was the height of contemporary music theatre,” he said. “Selena kept bringing a real sense of style and elegance to all the shenanigans we had going on there.”
James always pushed her students to spread their wings, leaving them with the impression that “she is eternally with us, even though we wouldn’t have seen her months or years at a time,” Butterfield said.
“There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t invoke her words to my students.”
Whether the student was a beginner or a master soloist, James would give the same intensity in her lessons, said Timothy Vernon, founding artistic director of Pacific Opera Victoria.
“She encouraged that focus and discipline, but she also had a good understanding of the basics of good vocal production,” Vernon said. “Some teachers, all they’re doing is babysitting the voice, they’re not developing it.”
Vernon said thanks to James’s perseverance, the conservatory’s opera program has lived on.
“Her legacy absolutely will continue as long as we keep mentoring the next generation and giving back everything that she instilled in us,” Margison said.
“It speaks for a healthy future for opera if we can pass on her legacy.”
