Salome the social worker

meets soprano Penelope Chalmers.

TONIGHT soprano Penelope Chalmers steps out from the shadows of an

invisible profession into the glaring spotlight of centre stage at

Glasgow's Theatre Royal. At six days' notice she has taken over the

title role of Salome in Richard Strauss's opera from American soprano

Beverly Morgan who pulled out last week.

The invisible profession is that of the operatic cover, or understudy.

It won't be perceived by the opera-going public, but when an opera is

cast, the company contracts a number of singers to cover the principal

roles. They are on call for the duration of their contract, but, except

in the case of illness or cancellation of the scheduled singer, will

never be seen on stage.

There is an network of covers, and it operates on an international

basis, as soprano Penelope Chalmers experienced last week, even before

the crisis at Scottish Opera blew up on Thursday.

She had been contracted to cover for ScotOp the title roles in both

Janacek's Katya Kabanova and Strauss's Salome. Until last weekend, when

the former opera was up and running, she had been keyed up for that

role. Once Katya was out of the starting blocks, Penelope Chalmers took

the day off to spend time with her family.

Last Monday she returned to Glasgow and opened her score of Salome.

Her agent rang and informed her that she had been put on immediate

standby to take over the Salome role in a production in Munich. In the

event she wasn't called.

''So I had that shock at the beginning of the week which made me

really concentrate. Then just when I had relaxed again, I got the phone

call on Thursday morning that I was doing it here.''

From that moment she was catapulted into a punishing schedule of work.

Covers are prepared throughout the long run-up to a performance by the

music and production team (included being measured for any costume

requirements). But prepared only to a point. By the time the entire

complex of an opera, including its scenery, production, and orchestra,

is moved into the theatre, there is, said Penelope Chalmers, ''little

enough time for the actual cast to sing with the orchestra; as a cover,

you never get to rehearse with the orchestra.''

By Thursday afternoon she was in at the deep end with a dance

rehearsal and a production rehearsal of the second half of the opera. By

the evening she was on stage, with the full orchestra in the pit. That

night she slept not a wink.

On Friday she was six hours with conductor and music director Richard

Armstrong, ''while I struggled through bits I couldn't quite get

right.'' At this point she was ''absolutely dead, completely

exhausted.''

By late Saturday afternoon, the time of our meeting, she seemed quite

cool and contained. (''You should have seen me half an hour ago, in a

heap on the floor and in tears.'') Sunday held a half-day's rehearsal,

Monday the full dress run-through, and tonight all systems go.

Penelope Chalmers, raised in Inverness though now resident down south,

is, it should be said, an extremely experienced cover. She has covered

frequently in the big London opera houses for singers such as Maria

Ewing (in Salome) and Gwyneth Jones in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten,

where, at half an hour's notice, she had to fly to Switzerland to take

over the same role in a Geneva production the next night.

Her feelings at being plunged in at the deep end this week she

describes as ''a mixture of fear, elation, and a bit of unreality.'' The

fear is a reaction to the sheer pace of recent events, though, she

points out, she has been called on many times to translate covering into

actual performance. (There are some professional covers who never see

the light of stage.)

But she is also thrilled at the opportunity to take over. ''Very

often, especially in a role like this and at such short notice, they

would fly in somebody who does it all around the world.'' The mountain

to be climbed is performing with the huge orchestra. ''It's like a

monster,'' she said. ''When the final scene starts it's like monsters

rising up in a nightmare and you think, God, I've to get through all of

them; it's just so loud.''

On the character of the teenage Salome herself, consumed eventually by

an uncontrollable lust for John the Baptist, Penelope Chalmers is quite

pragmatic. Salome, she says, is ''definitely a victim; to some extent

you have to feel sorry for her. She's a very disturbed kid whose father

was murdered. She's been very much on her own, she's unloved, her mother

is a bag.

''She sees in John the Baptist something that she really wants, and it

wakens her for the first time. And I suppose you could say that in order

to get it she cuts off his head to spite her face. Salome is not in

control of circumstances; I don't think she starts the opera being a

manic person. She's just very lonely.''

And if that sounds like a social worker talking, that's because it is.

Penelope Chalmers herself has a double life. Her university degree was

in German, following which she did two years' university training in

social work and went on to specialise in fostering and adoption,

particularly of difficult children.

Singing came much later, after recommendations from musical friends

who heard her voice. She enjoys life as a cover, especially with the big

opera houses where ''you get fantastic coaching for nothing.'' And as

for the momentum in her career? ''It's gathering.'' Covent Garden has

asked her to cover Brunnhilde, a new role for her, as is Strauss's

Elektra, another demanding role. And on the same day last week that

Scottish Opera told her she was going on as Salome, they offered her the

cover role as Isolde in Wagner's epic love tale next spring.

''They're all new roles for me; I've got my work cut out to learn that

lot,'' she said. Even still, she manages to practise her other

profession by taking on freelance social work for local authorities in

between singing contracts. ''There's an incredible gulf between the

two,'' she said, ''though being two different people is quite fun.''

Tonight, at breathtakingly short notice in one of the toughest roles

in opera, Penelope Chalmers has to assume an entire thesaurus of

psychological problems and become someone else altogether. One can but

wish her well.

' Her feelings she describes as a mixture of fear, elation, and a bit

of unreality '