Friday 27 February 2015

Definitely, or not.

I am writing this weeks blog from my living room, 20km north of London, in England where I arrived sometime yesterday afternoon. Apart from the days after Christmas, this is the longest break with no performances (9 days) I have had in Stuttgart so I am making the most of that time to catch up on singing lessons, coachings, time with family and friends and generally enjoy being home for a bit. I am also taking part in a competition, meeting up with some of the generous people who have supported me financially in the last 18 months, and singing the arias in Bach’s John Passion at St. Alban’s Abbey. In fact I am surprised I have time to write this given how much I have packed in to the 7 days.

Matter of factual opinion

Following last week’s informative audition in Stuttgart and the advice of what to start auditions with, what to and what NOT to offer, I was glad to have the chance to sing to another panel on Monday. This time the panel were in Munich and were representatives of ‘ZAV’, the state agency in Germany and a sort of Job centre for singers who are looking to fill gaps in the following season.

ZAV offer a few days of auditions throughout the country and then, if you get through the initial round, there is a bigger audition at which lots of representatives from ZAV and various Opera Companies hear you, with the potential of work being offered to anyone that catches their ear.

So as per the agent last weeks instructions, I started my audition with Mozart’s Ich Baue Ganz from Die Entfuhrung. An aria I have auditioned with regularly for about 5 years and one that got me a place in Opera school in London, the chorus of Glyndebourne and my place at Oper Stuttgart. It is a faithful friend. The second aria, chosen by them, was Il Duca’s Questa O Quella from Rigoletto, an aria that the lady last week thought I shouldn’t open with and should possibly drop all together at this stage.

After singing the two arias I was invited to discuss them with the panel, who very directly told me to drop the Mozart and open with the Rigoletto aria, completely the opposite view to last week. I could only laugh. They gave their reasons, I agreed with them, I was a bit tired from the performance the previous night and then getting an early-ish train to Munich, which I ended up falling asleep on – not so ideal preparation for an audition – so that probably didn’t aid the Mozart but hey. The panel told me they wanted to invite me to the next stage, in Cologne in March, and asked me to have a ten minute rest before singing two more arias to them in order for them to decide what I should offer in March.


Tour

I am obviously delighted that I have reached the next stage of the auditions and, after singing the main arias for both Nemorino and Tamino to the panel, with very positive responses, their preferred programme for the audition is established.

It will be great to visit Cologne. I have only ever sung about it in Schumann’s Dichetrliebe. I have a friend in the ensemble of the opera there and I look forward to catching up with her briefly.

Six months into living in Stuttgart and I have also been to Frankfurt, Munich, Hannover and Zurich, with Cologne to come. It is great to be able to visit these places, if briefly, and I look forward to hopefully visiting more over the next few months. Having said that, it isn’t cheap, all this travel and although we are given some money for the work we do in Stuttgart, it isn’t very much at all and doesn’t stretch to cover 100+ EURO train tickets or flights back here.


Support

If it weren’t for the support I have sought and received, I wouldn’t be able to afford this year in Stuttgart. I am hugely grateful to those people who have supported me and am looking forward to catching up with a few of them while I am back in the UK.

As I wrote in my many letters, sent far and wide last year to whoever I hoped might consider supporting me, the arts has always relied on the generosity of others and in the UK this is more true than it has been for many years. I’m not sure the Germans realise how good they have it with state funding.

Not having state funding, though, shouldn’t be an excuse to stop. If I stopped at the first point of needing to raise money on this Operatic path then I wouldn’t have got through the door at Music college in 2009. In fact, in these 6 years of  Postgraduate study, singing lessons, Opera studio time, I have had to, and successfully, raised the best part of £60’000 to enable my career. That is no small sum, but I am not a specialist fundraiser, far from it. I just had a goal and went about doing as much as I could to raise the necessary funds be it through fundraising concerts, various jobs, writing letters to hundreds of different people and so on. That I had almost no replies to the letters and when I did most of them were rejections didn’t stop me. What it does do is make me appreciate more the support I do receive and gives me more inspiration to continue and try to make it.


What else

Aside from the audition, we had the third and final Vologeso performance of this block. It comes back in May for another 6 performances. There was also Nabucco performances 6 and 7, three more to go of those.

Half of the opera studio are in Belgium performing Jakob Lenz in Brussels, but I managed to catch Karin, the Mezzo in the studio, in Janacek’s Jenufa. A heart breaking opera, it was great to watch this bleak production by Calixo Bieto and in particular great to catch Rebecca Von Lipinski, an English lady in the Ensemble, who was amazing as the title role.

Away from the theatre I got to play football twice this week. Once in a 6 a side game and then on Tuesday in a 3 aside game, a game in which I threatened to upset one particular local with my enthusiastic defending. He wasn’t very impressed and got quite upset, either because I won the ball or because shoulder barges aren’t so popular in German football.

England

As I mentioned, I am now in England. Today I have a rehearsal with the pianist for my competition next week, followed by a singing lesson with Gary Coward, probably well over due!!

Having spent weeks ignoring everyone speaking around me since I don’t understand most of the language, I find myself catching conversations and being surprised they are in English. I have said ‘danke’ a few times to people and I assumed my train was going to be on time yesterday. Joking aside, its lovely to be back for a few days however busy they will be.

I’ll tell you all about it next week.


Till then.



Read about me: www.thomaselwin.com

1 comment:

  1. It's Rebecca Von Lipinski, not Lapinski!!

    ReplyDelete