Current work

Following a rather quiet period –the worrying demon of life as a freelancer– I now find myself with more than enough to do. Like buses, jobs seem to either all turn up together, or not at all. My current assignments are recording an audiobook on the media in Italy, doing voicework for a children's audiobook and now returning to the Norwegian opera to do some more coaching for Peter Grimes –which is being presented next month with quite a few changes of cast. It is especially nice to be back at the opera, and always good to go back and work on something for a second time –one brings so much more insight and knowledge to the piece. And as there are so many wonderful singers there who know Italian backwards I am craftily hoping I can get them to help me with some of the Italian pronunciation I I have to deal with in the audiobook!

Peter Grimes - Work completed

Tonight is the dress rehearsal of Peter Grimes at the Norwegian National Opera –and my last day of work there for the time being. When it opens on Saturday, I shall be there as a member of the audience, and will be looking forward to seeing the opera –up until now I have primarily been listening to it, or "seeing with my ears" as I like to call it –and primarily the text. Having had the opportunity to work as language coach for the soloists has been a hugely rewarding experience, and I have felt extremely priveleged every time I have stepped into the magical world of this great opera house. I have learned as much as I have taught, both about opera, theatre, Britten, the human voice and the English language. There have been many challenges and some turbulence along the way, but I have heaps and heaps of respect for the people I have been lucky enough to work with and alongside. Opera is a demanding enterprise; a huge collaboration of musical, technical and artistic talents, all working towards the goal of making it as good as it possibly can be. I have played a very small part in this –text in opera will always be subservient to the music, but I would like to think my contribution has helped achieve that goal. Each performer has had different journeys to make in terms of their English –some have hardly needed any work whereas others have had to endure countless adjustments and notes from me -poor things. All have come up good. I am particularly happy to have been able to apply some of the princlples of diction and articulation I learned at drama school –my notes from that time have come in very handy. And the general conclusion we have all come to is that English is a very tricky language to sing!
Peter Grimes will be playing in the autumn too, with quite a few new performers, so somehow I feel I will return...

The website for Peter Grimes at the Norwegian National Opera: Peter Grimes

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!

The Rape of Lucretia - Ready to Go

Tonight is the dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten's opera "The Rape of Lucretia" at the Norwegian National Opera, and the end of my work as vocal coach on that particular piece. Working on a opera for the first time has been one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences I have had in a long time, and over the last couple of months I have turned, gradually, into a total opera geek. Maybe it is the level of talent I have been priveleged enough to work with: singers who amaze me every day, musicians who have allowed me to learn about their world, and skillful people behind the scenes in the VAST maze of the opera house. Maybe it is the music –and Benjamin Britten now really rocks my world. Maybe it is something I have found in myself –opera really does reach you in ways that other forms of entertainment don't. IT is probably a combination of all these things, but also, for me, a renewal of love of and joy in the magical aspect of "theatre" –something I thing it is so important never, never ever to lose. Listening to an orchestra warming or tuning up before a performance, watching the lights change from sunset to night, feeling the expectation at a rehearsal, the excitement when something fresh happens, the hilarity when something goes absurdly wrong: all contribute to what makes being in performing space the best place I know. For this production my job has been to listen, to focus on the words, the sounds, the pronunciation, diction and articulation. That has been the work. All the rest has been pure joy.

"The Rape of Lucretia" opens on Thursday 27th January, and runs through February

A new challenge -opera, and Benjamin Britten!

The other day I was saying to myself, I would like something new and challenging to come along, something I haven't tried before. Well, one must be very careful about what one asks for, because in my experience, one frequently gets it. However I could not have been more surprised than I was when the Norwegian National Opera called and asked whether I was interested in doing English vocal coaching for the cast of their upcoming production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. As it will be sung in English they need somebody to work with the performers on correct pronunciation and understanding of the language in performance, and as it turns out I had been recommended by someone or other -and blessed indeed are those angels who recommend people for things!
So today I visited the vast white opera building that dips into the water by Oslo's harbour and instantly got lost in the maze of corridors, offices, performing spaces, rooms, stores and staircases, and met the artistic people and the head of the opera and the deputy head of the opera, and in a short time I had agreed to "meet the challenge" and laid a plan for how to go about it. A huge score was thrust into my hand, and the weekend will be spent listening to Britten, reading about Britten about Peter Grimes, and about opera in general. In many ways this very different from the theatre, but I am excited about the challenge because opera represents just about the only field of entertainment that I have not been involved in before; that and circus –though I am told that once things get underway this will be quite a circus too...