This is not her, she says. “Although I am big-busted,” she adds as an afterthought. Milne gives a big Aberdonian laugh and says how much she loves confounding expectations. “When people are told what I do they say: ‘But you’re so ordinary.’”
She may not have the airs and graces of an archetypal diva, but in the view of the organisers of the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) she undoubtedly has the talent.
“There is a silvery quality about her voice,” says James Waters, the EIF’s associate director. “There are voices you can sit and listen to and think: ‘This is beautiful singing.’ And there are voices — and I know this sounds a bit schmaltzy — that go straight for your heart.”
It was this quality and her “shrewd musicality” that prompted the EIF to suggest her for the most high-profile concert in this year’s festival — Mahler’s 4th symphony with Sir Simon Rattle and one of the world’s best orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic. The Usher Hall concert on August 31 was an instant sell-out and expectations are high.
“One of the things the festival has tried to do is provide the best possible platform for the very best Scottish performers,” says Waters. “The idea came from here, but was accepted immediately by Berlin, which shows the level she is now operating at.
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“To work with, the Berlin Philharmonic at the EIF is as good as it gets for any artist. Here we have a terrific Scottish artist performing with the very best, because she’s one of the very best.”
Milne’s work has taken her from Scottish Opera to two stints at The Met in New York via Salzburg, Stuttgart, Dallas, Glyndebourne and the English National Opera. She is a top-rank Scottish musical export and was last year made an MBE in the Queen’s birthday honours.
Regardless of this glory, she will approach the concert in a state of trembling fear and nauseous anxiety. She knows what she will be like in the 24 hours before the performance.
“I can’t really sleep the night before a show. I feel a bit sick, a bit grumbly. On the day I get quite restless and whoever I’m with usually ends up in an argument with me.”
She has described her pre- concert mood as “like having PMT — everyone should steer clear of me”. As the time ticks by, other symptoms surface. “Directly beforehand you can feel your body physically starting to shake, and the adrenaline starts to kick in.”
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Milne admits this harrowing pre-concert suffering is getting worse as she grows older. “Every year and every job that passes I get more and more nervous,” she says.
“You would think that with experience comes ease, but unfortunately what happens is that with experience and becoming better known comes responsibility — you are aware the distance to tumble is far greater.
“At the beginning of your career you have no fear because you are nobody,” she says. But as she has grown in experience so she has taken on more difficult tasks. She says the pressure can be intense.
The man Milne has to thank for her big break is not someone usually associated with the world of opera. Most sincerely folks, that man is Hughie Green. She was a 14-year-old in 1985 when she won a junior talent contest called Stars of Tomorrow, organised by a local Aberdeen newspaper and hosted by the presenter of Opportunity Knocks. She was up against acts that included a barber shop quartet and a tap dancer and her songs included that sentimental Scots classic My Ain Folk. “It was so cheesy,” she says with some embarrassment, recalling that she almost fainted before going on stage and Green had to fetch her a glass of water.
The family lived in the Ferryhill area of Aberdeen. Her father was an engineer in a paper mill, her mother a secretary in an oil company, and back then music meant the Beatles, the Stones and Jimi Hendrix. But there was something in the quality of her voice that marked her out for a different musical path.
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She went to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow where she was recognised as a “star of tomorrow” and she soon became a Scottish Opera favourite.
Milne seems unaffected by a career in the world’s most celebrated opera houses and concert halls, and her Aberdeen accent is still intact. The caricature of the diva is one she is used to. Lisa Milne, hand on heart, can you say you have never acted like a diva? “Yes, I think so,” she says with certainty. “There’s no excuse for bad behaviour, I can’t tolerate singers who are badly behaved.
“The notion of a diva is quite unfair. Ultimately you are the person up front, delivering the goods on the night. So if something keeps breaking on stage, or a costume keeps malfunctioning or whatever, people can start to get quite stressed.
“If someone then turns around and says, ‘This is the third time this has happened, can someone get this sorted?’ then that’s what needs to be done. If they get grumpy about it they’re divas, rather than just being professional. We all want to do our job well and that can sometimes be misrepresented.”
Milne has worked with Rattle before. “Apart from anything else his charisma is just incredible — he’s a ball of energy and you feed off that when you’re working with him,” she says.
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“The best way to describe it is that he brings more out of me, which is probably the best thing any great conductor can do. They make you more relaxed, so you trust your own ability. He makes you feel anything is possible and that you can take risks. He nurtures things out of you so you’re more able to be you.”
Already, Milne is looking forward to next year’s festival, when she will sing in James MacMillan’s eagerly-awaited new opera, which takes as its theme tribal rivalries — an interesting subject given the composer’s controversial views on Scotland’s sectarian divide.
“As soon as I was told it was an opera by James MacMillan it was a case of, ‘yes, I’m in’. To be quite honest, the topic and subject matter were irrelevant.
“For me as a Scot, to be involved in a new opera by a Scottish composer is like a dream come true. I’m sure it will be quite controversial and I can’t wait to get my teeth into it.”
Before that, however, there is the small matter of the Usher Hall, Rattle and an audience of some of the most discerning critics in the world of classical music.
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If Milne is ever going to get over her nerves, one suspects this is not going to be that time.
Lisa Milne with the Berliner Philharmonic, Aug 31, Usher Hall