Like most people who have been through the UK education system, I love a structured year plan. Also as a massive sports fan, this year plan tended to be based on which sport we were playing that term. Rugby in the Autumn, Football in the Spring, Cricket in the Summer. Long break in the summer and back to School on the 1st of September.
I am also quite a fan of milestones. This week is 18 months since my first tentative singing lesson after 4 months with no voice, the theme of blog episode one if you are interested.
In terms of my year in Stuttgart, this week marks the end of Rugby and beginning of the Football term, the end of the beginning.
The Beginning
This beginning in Stuttgart has been a great learning experience. Performing roles in 4 operas, in three different languages, with 25 performances on the Oper Stuttgart stage, has been exactly what I hoped for and expected in being a member of an Opera Studio/Young Artist Programme. Meeting and singing with long time professionals, picking their brains and seeing how they work has all added to the learning experience.
Moving away from the UK has also been a learning curve. Learning when to smile and nod and when to run away from a conversation. Learning how quickly one must be ready to pack your bag at a supermarket because German till lady waiteth for no man! Getting used to shops being closed on a Sunday and to public transport being cheap-ish and not overcrowded.
Stage 2
So what is the next stage in Stuttgart for me.
The way the roles have fallen across the year for me, with much of the work focused between September and January, means that from now to when I finish in July my work pattern and focus will change quite a lot. Aside from the tiny role at the beginning on Jommelli's 'Il Vologeso' that I am currently rehearsing, and performances of Nabucco, the only other operas I will be working on are two that I am understudying in, with no guaranteed performances of either.
These operas, and roles, are Borsa in Verdi's Rigoletto, a secondary role which is good for a young tenor to do, a soft introduction into the world of Verdi, and Ferrando in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, which I am really excited about.
Ferrando is a role that I have always felt attached to. I first sang it, in English, in a church in Cambridge with Shadwell Opera. This was Shadwell Opera's first production and one of my first experiences of singing in Opera, I had a great time. Then in November 2009, now a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, I was given a section from Act 1 to sing in a set of Opera scenes. I was fortunate enough to be learning with Ryland Davies at the time, Ryland being a great Mozartian tenor in his day and having recorded Ferrando with Solti and the Royal Opera House in the late 1970's he was the ideal person to be learning the role with.
Next, in May 2011, I took part in a great course with Jackdaws, a Musical education trust down in Somerset, in which we put on Cosi Fan Tutte in about a week, again in English, including working with local school children. I will never forget going into a school for children with severe learning difficulties and being asked to sing Ferrando's aria to them. Their reactions were amazing, they were truly spell bound by the music and the sound of a live operatic voice.
Then in April 2014 I was invited to be one of the 6 singers on the Solti Accademia course for repetiteurs in Venice, during which we worked on and performed the Act 1 finale from Cosi, including a number of sessions on it with Richard Bonynge,
So you can see how Ferrando and Cosi has always been a thread through my early Operatic life. This meant that when I saw Cosi down on the season list for Stuttgart this year, I was particularly keen to make sure I was involved, and am delighted to be understudying it.
Different challenge
As I enter stage 2 of the year I am aware that the challenges will be quite different to the early ones.
With the roles to date, I have never had to sing for more than 10 minutes in an evening, I have rarely been central to plot developments and rarely had music challenging enough vocally to be a worry.
The learning aspects of the small roles are good in many ways, in getting you onto the stage, developing stage craft, trying to make an impact with each small line you have to do. What they don't do, though, is help you develop the stamina for a bigger role, like Ferrando.
In stark contrast to the smaller roles, Ferrando feels a bit like he is singing all the time and instead of making a mark with every line you have, the challenge becomes the managing of resources. Knowing that in 45 minutes you have an aria, in 90 minutes you have a long duet, that each finale seems to go on forever and so on. If I were singing the role properly, and not the understudy, I would get to sing it in during rehearsals, getting used to the pace of the evening over 6 weeks and knowing how far I can take myself. As the understudy I will need to do this work in a practise room on my own.
I also have the challenge of memorising 3 hours of Italian words, fitting them to music I have previously memorised with English words attached. I would be a fool to underestimate how difficult this process will be particularly, again, since I am the understudy and so I won't have the help of constant repetition with the other voices. Instead I will be in a practise room, on my own.
Fortunately, since most of my other roles are finished, I have the time and space to really immerse myself into learning Ferrando and so when rehearsals start, in April, I will be ready to jump in at any moment.
This week
The beginning of this week we had the opening night of Nabucco, having had about 4 days of rehearsals in total as I mentioned last week. Being my fourth opening night of the season, my sense of excitement and nervous energy was not as much as in the past. This was probably not helped by the short rehearsal process. I think I did an ok job though, and the audience were once again very appreciative.
On Tuesday we had the Opera Studio concert in the MusikHalle in Ludwigsburg, 15 mins outside of Stuttgart. This was a great occasion and the only time over the year that the six of us will have performed together.
Billed as a 300th birthday celebration of Jommelli, who lived and worked in Ludwigsburg, the first half was packed with music from 'Il Vologeso', which we are doing at Oper Stuttgart in February. We also peformed a sextet from Cosi, the finale of Don Pasquale and various arias/duets by Rossini and Donizetti.
I was lucky enough to be singing Edgardo and Lucia's duet from act 1 of Lucia di Lammermoor, followed immediately by Edgardo's challenging recit. and aria from the end of the opera. As I have mentioned before, the small roles of the first few months don't really prepare you to have the stamina for a long night of singing and I was aware that these 20 minutes of Donizetti were going to be quite a challenge. I am a big fan of this music and often listen to great singers singing it, in-particular Pavarotti and Sutherland. They both sound so at ease singing it and I found it a big challenge to stay calm enough to maintain the sense of Bel Canto, and not Can Belto!! In a practise room and in my singing lessons this music is always a joy to sing, but I know myself and my past tendency to want to impress in performance, to tense up and to make such music a battle instead. Happily, on this occasion, I had a great time singing it. It wasn't as easy as in a lesson, and I was excitedly nervous, but I feel we gave a good account of the music and that I am genuinely an Edgardo, as opposed to just singing this music in a one off concert. The experience will I'm sure help me when I perform the whole role one day.
The audience were very appreciative of our concert, and we were hosted at a local Italian restaurant afterwards. This was followed by a couple of drinks in the middle of Stuttgart with just the six of us from the studio. Again, this was the first time all of six of us had been together properly, it made for a lovely evening.
Away from the opera
Away from the stage, I decided to take my German studies to the next level and went to see the quintessentially English film, Paddington, at the cinema..... in German..... Happily I understood more than I thought I would. Some of this language is obviously filtering through.
I continue to try and eat healthily and exercise, though the concert on Tuesday put a delay to my exercising too heavily earlier in the week.
Next
Tonight we have the penultimate performance of Ariadne, with the last one on Tuesday next week. We also have a couple of Nabucco performances over the week. These performances aside I will mostly be spending time learning Ferrando and trying to run through the big park without stopping.
Hope you all have a good week,
Until next time,,,,,
Tom
ps. Health check, slower progress this week. Down to 97% of weight from 97.5% last week, Must do better....
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