Opera update

Sadly I have not been very good at updating this blog over the last couple of months, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this is due to not having done anything worth mentioning. However, the opposite is closer to the truth –I have had too much to do to find the time to write here. I shall from now on though try to post an update once a week, even it is only a few lines.
I am glad to say that the work I put into "The Rape of Lucretia" was well received and the opera itself a great success. I was very happy when I attended the last performance in Oslo and heard that all the coaching I had done with the soloists had worked so well, and I was very proud of them. The whole experience of working with the opera has been enormously educative and enlightening, and made my present work on the next opera much easier. "Peter Grimes" is a vast enterprise compared to the chamber intimacy of "Lucretia" –majestic, daunting and tremendous. My focus is primarily on the libretto by Montagu Slater, but I cannot help but be affected and moved by the magnificent music of Benjamin Britten –even when played in bits and pieces on a piano in a rehearsal room –it is constantly surprising, playful, alarming, rich and atmospheric –and above all exciting. I have had the great pleasure of giving some language instruction to the 50 or so strong opera chorus, and found that rather challenging, but mostly I am working with the soloists individually, ironing out any vocal anomalies when it comes to vowels or providing alternatives. Once you get down to very close analysis of the sounds of a language you discover all sorts of issues about how a particular word should sound in a particular context -and in many cases there is no one correct answer. The singers I am working with are however all so professional and quick at following suggestions that I feel confident everything will sound excellent when the opera opens –still a couple of months away!