AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Anne Fridal and, as a dramatic soprano, I was the first person to sing calypsoes as though they were operatic arias.

It absolutely doesn’t bother me if people mispronounce my last name.

It’s actually quite exotic when they do.

I was born in the city of San Fernando and lived surrounded by many cousins, aunts, uncles and friend until age 11, when I was sent by my father to attend St Mary’s Hall, a prestigious boarding school in Brighton. The school was bought over by the elite Roedean School, of which, years after, I became an alumna.

Due to my career, I live in England at present. I travel regularly to perform worldwide.

I loved my school and friends. (Being in Brighton) gave me a sense of independence, preparing me for my adult life and career. It was not traumatising at all. I went with my English school friends (to) their various homes on exeat (temporary absence from school) weekends or half-term.

Even though I missed my parents at times, I always spent the long summer holidays in Trinidad, where I would entice my father’s driver to pick up my Trinidadian friends and take them to the beach in my father’s Mercedes Benz while he was at work.

We four siblings, very much alive, two in the UK, two in the USA, had the loveliest and most caring parents in the world in Austin and Marjorie Pearl Fridal.

Unfortunately they have passed on. But they were very supportive in me having a career in opera.

I would have loved to have a family of my own along with kids, but with a career on the stage, it seemed impossible to achieve.

Besides, I believe in the sanctity of marriage and would want none other than Prince Charming to be the father of my children.

In the early 50s, my father returned from Derby Technical College in England and started Fridal & Mitchell Construction Works Ltd, that built the original waving gallery airport at Piarco. On the tender handed down by Dr Eric Williams. No nepotism in those days! Both Eric Williams and my father studied with Mr John Joseph Mitchell, headmaster of Tranquillity Boys, before going off to Queen’s Royal College.

Mitchell was the mentor to my father and died in 1948. Out of respect for him, my father included his name in the company. But my father was the sole CEO and director.

My parents had classical music and old jazz classics on the radio often, not so much opera, but musicals as the Sound of Music and My Fair Lady were favourites and of course Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.

Authentic opera started for me at school in England when I became the principal soloist of the choir.

All these influences were the catalyst for my creation of Calypsopera.

Around age 13, I started singing professionally. My father was not too impressed with the idea of me being an opera singer. He would have preferred a “legitimate” profession – lawyer, doctor, scient