Katherine Jenkins: Why it's all change for the newly-engaged singer
By Lydia Slater
Last updated at 3:50 PM on 14th October 2011
She’s a global superstar, has sold millions of albums and reputedly secured the biggest classical record deal in history, but Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins is ready to switch tempo. She tells Benji Wilson why family has become her number-one priority
'I have travelled the world several times in the past few years, so I've missed so much of what's going on at home,' says Katherine Jenkins
Katherine Jenkins’s large blue eyes are spilling over with tears. ‘Honestly, family is so important to me,’ she says, her low, softly Welsh-accented voice quavering. ‘It’s much more important than my career.’ To say I’m taken aback would be an understatement. I’d always assumed that Katherine’s peach-perfect exterior concealed a steely ambition that would rival Madonna’s: you don’t get the biggest record deal in classical music history and go on to sell in excess of five million albums if you’re a shy, retiring homemaker. Now a regular judge on ITV’s Popstar to Operastar, her personal fortune was estimated this year at £13 million, considerably more than her rival Welsh songstress Charlotte Church (though Katherine says that’s ‘complete rubbish. I’d love to know how anyone can possibly estimate what I’ve got in the bank. These things get really exaggerated.’)
Perhaps it’s the prospect of her marriage next year to Gethin Jones, one-time Blue Peter presenter turned TV personality. Or maybe it’s weariness after spending last year touring the globe with her platinum-selling album Believe. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Katherine is putting herself under increasing pressure to reconcile the domestic side of her life with the demands of her extraordinary career.
We have met at YOU’s photo shoot, in a beautiful house in North London. Katherine has been in make-up for hours before I’m allowed to see her, but I can’t believe she needs it – she’s as pretty as a Disney princess made flesh. Her eyes are enormous and thickly lashed, her skin a flawless caramel, her hair bouncy, and her Dolce & Gabbana sundress barely contains her pneumatic curves. Altogether, Katherine looks the picture of glowing good health, but she admits that she is tired.
‘I have travelled the world several times in the past few years,’ she says. ‘I have six weeks at home now, which is the longest time in about three years. Unpacking my toiletries was such a joy – to be able to put things back in the cupboard was really nice.’ By the time you read this, though, she will have spent the summer performing at concerts around the UK, before heading off to Australia to sing with Plácido Domingo.
From left: Katherine as a child with her late father Selwyn; with fiancé Gethin Jones at Ascot this summer
From left: The choir girl, 1996; on the Popstar to Operastar panel with Vanessa Mae, Simon Callow and Rolando Villazón
Is it tough maintaining a relationship with a new fiancé under those circumstances? ‘It’s hard to keep a relationship going with anyone,’ she says. ‘I miss so much of what’s going on. Whenever I get a minute, I go to see my godchildren and do all that kind of stuff. I Skype and try to stay on top of what’s happening in everyone’s lives, but it is really difficult.’
And even while she is in London, she’s not putting her feet up. On top of doing up the house that she and Gethin have bought in Richmond, Southwest London, she has been putting the final touches to her eighth album, Daydream. ‘Believe was by far the most commercial album I’ve made,’ she says. ‘This is a return to my roots and the sound people know me for – folk songs, light classical pieces, music from shows, hymns in English and Welsh. Songs that touch me.’ It includes an interpretation of the Celtic classic ‘Black is the Colour’, ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from Les Misérables and a new composition of ‘Ave Maria’. ‘I’m drawn to the emotion in a song. There’s no point in singing the song if it doesn’t do anything for me. Things have changed – it’s the first album I’m making in my 30s, I’m getting married, and I feel quite a lot of the music is about where I am at the moment.’
Another album of Katherine’s music has just been released, although she has pleaded with fans not to buy it: ‘Universal Records are putting out yet another compilation album of my music called One Fine Day. Considering that I haven’t recorded for them since 2008, there is no new music and I don’t want you to feel conned,’ she tweeted.
‘Tonight I’m going to dinner with Plácido Domingo, which is hilarious. I keep thinking, “But I’m from Neath!”’
Alongside her career, her relationship with Gethin Jones is the most important thing in her life right now. Katherine is determined to keep it out of the limelight – so it was perhaps a tactical error to fall in love with a TV presenter whom she met on Strictly Come Dancing.
Since then, however, the couple have made superhuman efforts to stay well below the radar. ‘This is not a relationship for getting extra publicity,’ Katherine says firmly. ‘I understand to a certain extent why people are interested, but some things are off-limits. It was a battle to begin with, but people are getting better at understanding why I don’t talk about my personal life. We just want to keep something for ourselves.’ When pressed, she admits with a blush that the enormous solitaire sparkler that glitters on her ring finger was designed by Gethin himself. But when they tie the knot next year, probably in Wales, you won’t be seeing the nuptials splashed all over the pages of
a celebrity magazine – she says they’ve already turned down generous offers to talk about the engagement.
‘From day one, we’ve said that that’s not what we’re about,’ she says. ‘I’m not a person who puts my private life out there. I was on my bike the other day in Richmond Park and I was followed by photographers. I didn’t even see them, but a couple of days later, the people decorating the house said to me, “Hey, Kath, you’re in the newspaper!”’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t like moaning – I know I’m so lucky – but I find it difficult when I’m intruded on.’
And fame, unlikely as it seems, was never part of Katherine’s game plan. She was brought up with her younger sister Laura in Neath in a close-knit, supportive family. ‘It was like The Darling Buds of May,’ she says with a smile. ‘My mum was one of four, my dad was one of five and there are lots of cousins and aunties. My nana lived in the same street; one auntie lived a few minutes’ drive in one direction, another in the other. My best memories of growing up are of us all going away in our caravans together, or going to the beach en masse, 20 of us.’ Money was tight: her mother Susan, who worked as a mammographer, was the breadwinner as her father Selwyn had retired from a factory job.
‘My parents didn’t have lots of money. What they had, they spent on us. Any spare cash went on singing or piano lessons.’ The whole family was musical – everyone sang in the church choir and Katherine’s paternal grandmother was a locally renowned mezzo-soprano. ‘I sang from the age of three,’ she says. ‘It was all I wanted to do and my parents were supportive. From an early age I took any opportunity to perform.’ She joined a church choir in Neath at the age of seven and later became Welsh Choir Girl of the Year.
Her dream was to become an opera singer and her father’s death from cancer when she was 15 made her all the more determined to succeed, for him as well as herself. But in her wildest dreams, she never imagined her career taking her further than the choruses of the Royal Opera House or the English National Opera.
‘I would have sung in whatever I could find,’ she says. ‘If I could have made a small career as
a singer, I would have been happy. I didn’t think about fame and fortune.’
She won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she studied for four years. ‘After I graduated, I felt particularly young in my voice, so I decided to take a couple of years out to teach and earn the money to go back and do the postgraduate course,’ she says.
Meanwhile, a producer friend approached her with an idea to record the ‘Flower Duet’ from Lakmé (aka the theme tune from that famous British Airways TV advert) as a dance track. The demo tape got passed to Universal, and three months after she graduated, they signed her up
to a six-album deal.
‘When the album came out, I was still teaching. That was a weird time, because the students
would be saying, “Miss! You were on telly last night!”, and asking for autographs.’
In fact, it’s not just her looks that remind you of Disney, it’s the Cinderella-style transformation
of her fortunes as she was catapulted in a few months from teacher to nation’s sweetheart and now, thanks to a reputed £5.8 million deal with Warner, a worldwide superstar.
She has sung for the Queen, the Pope and at Barbra Streisand’s birthday party, at which she put on an impromptu performance of Puccini’s famous aria ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’. ‘On the outside I must have looked quite composed but on the inside I was screaming,’ she confesses. ‘And I was thinking, “I don’t know how to begin telling my mum about this.” It was the ultimate pinch-yourself moment.’ Those moments keep coming. ‘Tonight I’m going to dinner with Plácido Domingo, which is hilarious to me,’ she says. ‘We are really good friends. But on the way over here I kept thinking, “But I’m from Neath! How come I’m going to dinner with Plácido?”’
Although Katherine always seems polished and poised, no matter how daunting the occasion, you can’t help but wonder if a tiny part of her wishes she hadn’t made it quite so big, so fast.
‘There were people in my year who I think were better singers than me,’ she says. ‘If I’d gone back and done the postgraduate course, I’d only have finished a couple of years ago. I’d still be working my way up through the choruses. That was the path I was supposed to go down.’
She would love to perform the whole of Carmen one day, hugely admires operatic sopranos such as Angela Gheorghiu and is cross and slightly defensive about the snobbery that comes her way from the music purists who disapprove of ‘popera’.
‘I get it all the time,’ she says. ‘They’re not happy about anyone who makes classical music more popular. Well, that’s fine. I don’t make my albums for the classical critics. As long as someone buys my album and enjoys it, I really don’t care.’ All the same, now she’s got eight albums under her belt and is famous around the world, you can’t blame her for fantasising about a change of pace.
It’s telling that it’s when we get on to the subject of marriage and children that she becomes emotional. She says that she wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her stellar career for her family.
‘If you’re lucky enough to have kids, you want to enjoy it. I don’t want to compromise on that. I will make a decision to be a really good mum, that’s what I’d want to focus on. Hopefully, I would be able to come back afterwards.’ And if she can’t? ‘If I can’t, I’ll just enjoy being a mum.’ So how would she like to be remembered, I wonder? ‘I’d like my tombstone to say something like, “Beloved mother and daughter…who could sing a bit.”’ And then the tears start to flow.
Katherine’s new album Daydream is out tomorrow on Warner Music. Her UK tour starts on 7 January
MORE EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS OF KATHERINE
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