Christmas Time!

For as long as I can remember, singing at Christmas has been a major part of my life. 

As a choirboy at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, the Christmas singing felt endless. From Advent sunday, a spectacular service attended by 2'000 people, to Christmas day, we would be singing in services, at concerts and at Christmas events around London every day. It was a highlight of my year, the annual Messiah, the annual Britten Ceremony of Carols, the annual Lloyds Carol concert and so on, all coming to a glorious end with Christmas Day evensong (Evening service) which ended with the opening chorus from Bach's Christmas Oratorio.  

In more recent years, December would either be singing at or travelling to carol services/concerts across the UK, numerous performances of Messiah (over 20 one Christmas!!) and trying to keep at arms length any of the colds half of my colleagues would be battling through. 

So you will understand me when I say this year feels a bit odd. 

German Christmas

Not that being in Germany is strange, by now living in Germany feels relatively normal. Singing in the lead up to Christmas and on Christmas day, when we will perform Ariadne auf Naxos,isn't odd either. 

It is what I am singing that is strange. I haven't sung Hark the Herald once this year, or Away in a Manger or, in fact, any carols. 

Earlier this week I sang Bach Magnificat for the Robert Bosch choir and Orchestra Christmas concert. An enjoyable evening which featured some of the slowest tempi I have ever experienced with Bach, helped in no small way by the Orchestra featuring three Double Basses. In addition to the Bach, the orchestra performed a few orchestral works by Vivaldi and then everyone, including childrens choir and the audience, sang some German Christmas carols. 

With the soloists sat almost on top of the front row of audience, I didn't attempt to sing the carols. Partly because I would have been guessing the tune and also because, where as guessing the tune might be OK, the idea of sight reading German text within ear shot of a few hundred Germans terrified me. 

Aside from this Christmas concert, the pattern of daily life continues like normal. The Opera house will only be closed for a couple of days between now and the beginning of January and the only sign of anything Christmas-y was the Opera studio Christmas get together yesterday afternoon, as hosted by Bettina Giese. Otherwise I have been having coachings as normal and more performances of the Mussorgsky and Strauss. 

Decorations

One aspect of being a choirboy at Christmas that I remember very fondly were the decorations. As we all lived at the school, it being a boarding school, each dormitory would compete in having the best Christmas decorations. It was quite astonishing sometimes, the amount of money some people had spent on tinsle was crazy. It meant, though, that while we were working hard singing all hours of the day we would get 'home' and be able to act like kids again.

This year, with the room in my WG (flat share), I came quite late to the decoration party but did buy a little tree and some candles which are lighting up the corner of my room. 

The Germans are very keen on the Christmas look too, with the stairwell of my block of flats having been decorated by someone and every other stall at the market selling various styles of Christmas decorations.

Family

Over the next week we have the final two performances of Khovanshchina and one more Ariadne, on Christmas day itself. 

Very happily, my wife and her parents arrive on Sunday and will attend the final Khovanshchina and the Christmas day show. If I wasn't sharing the week with my wife I think the idea of Christmas here would not have been such an attractive one. 

Then on the 27th we all go back to the UK, where I will be for 5 days in which I will see my whole family, including my sister who lives in Japan. I will have a singing lesson, catch up with some friends and have a few meetings and then fly back to Stuttgart to start work again on the 2nd of January.

Happy Christmas

I won't be blogging next friday, the 26th, but will instead next great you on the 2nd of January. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, whatever you are doing. 

Thank you all for keeping with me on this Opera Studio journey, thank you for those that continue to contact me directly and offer support or ask questions. 

All the best,  Bis Bald!!

Tom 

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Songbird

However tempting it might be to write a blog about 'Songbird', the less well known, and underrated, Oasis single from 2002, I'm not sure I am quite ready to go so far off track. In fact 'Songbird' refers to a recurring theme in this, my 14th week in Stuttgart.

Still here

In a week that only featured two performances and no official coaching sessions at all, I was glad for an informative audition, on Friday morning, and a weekend of masterclasses. I was also delighted to have my parents here, to be able to show them a bit of Stuttgart and my life in Germany and be able to spend some time with non-opera folk.

I guess the nature of moving to a new country to work is that one tends to immerse yourself in your work and also to socialise almost exclusively with colleagues. Many of my good friends in the UK are also singers or other sorts of musicians, so I am used to socialising with Music folk. The difference is that in the UK I also have non-music friends and non-opera friends. With absolutely no slight on my friends here, I really appreciated talking about life outside of Stuttgart and Opera with my parents. 

God has ---- in your throat

The audition last Friday morning, not long after I published last weeks masterpiece (!?), was to Georg Fritzsch, the conductor of our production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Due in part to the fact that I only sing NINE words in Ariadne, I was aware that Georg didn't really know my voice before hand. Also listening was Bettina Giese, the head of the Opera Studio here. 

As ever, there were positives and negatives. The never ending journey of trying to be the best I can continues and so inevitably there are aspects of the audition that I am frustrated by. It annoys me that I never sing my best in these situations and it upsets me that my breathing apparatus seems to disappear almost immediately as soon as I walk in the room. My breathing/support in auditions has improved over time but on Friday it wasn't where it is normally in non-audition situations. It is almost as if the work I do in a practise room on such things is irrelevant. Of course, it isn't irrelevant, it can just feel like that.

To Georg I sang a long Mozart aria from Die Entfuhrung, this is an aria I have auditioned with about 20 times, a stunning Gluck aria called 'unis des la plus tendre' which I have never auditioned with, and the Duke's first aria from Rigoletto. I won't turn you all off with the minute details of the performance, it already bores me in my head most of the time. What made this a great audition, though, was the time immediately after I sang. Georg took the time and care to work with me, briefly, on one of two specifics and then he invited me to have a chat.

The chat I had with Herr Fritzsch was extremely useful. In the same way as in January when Bettina Giese rang me to discuss my Opera Studio audition, I was extremely grateful for his honest feedback and to have the chance to discuss things with him. 

He was pretty brutal about my Mozart, it being an aria in German that has only three sentences that repeat for 6 minutes, Georg felt I was lacking in German nuance. He suggested I sang Tamino's aria, from Magic Flute, instead at future auditions as I am 'a great Tamino'. He was very complementary about the singing of the Gluck, though wanted me to fight for the character more and to enjoy the beauty of the music. The Rigoletto aria he felt was very interesting, a future role for me but not to audition with it yet and that it didn't sound grounded enough (that wretched support failing me!)

After rushing through the assessment of each aria he then spoke to me quite seriously. He said it all sounded too easy, as if I could always do it and have never had to fight for it. It didn't feel like that as the singer and for me, someone who had spent 4 long months in 2013 with almost no voice, who has spent the last year working hard to rebuild my voice and confidence as well as trying to make ends meet, it was a funny thing to hear. It almost made me laugh, and I explained why to Georg. Happily he said that he could hear nothing that might remind a listener of my past vocal problems. He said that I needn't worry about the voice anymore, those things are in the past and now I can engage and invest more in the performance. Useful feedback.

One odd thing he said to me was that 'God has shit in your throat' (excuse the language). An odd expression that I initially thought was an insult but is actually a German expression used as a compliment, suggesting that someone has a very beautiful voice. I now know that for the future....

Masterclass

I was very happy to follow up this informative audition experience with, on saturday and sunday, a Masterclass with Jane Thorner, who we had worked with back in September. 

Having previously worked with Jane, I felt at ease immediately and able to ask for help in specific areas. In particular I asked to work on trying to irradicate the negative affect auditions have on my support and therefore voice. The work we did was very useful, Jane is very positive and had really noticed an improvement in the 10 weeks since our last sessions. She is quite a good people reader and I feel like I was definitely singing better at the end of our sessions compared to the beginning.

One simple thing Jane did with me was to get me to perform each aria as a lively childrens story, to read the text in different ways and then to maintain the energy into the singing of it. I sometimes find that when I sing an aria, when I am wanting to impress people, to show how good I am and trying to convince people to give me the gig, I actually stop expressing. It can become unattractive to be told to like something, whereas when one relaxes, frees up and communicates positively everything is easy and more attractive to the listener. Obviously you need to have the voice there to be able to sing this music, that is a given, but as soon as the decisions you are making are positive ones the voice follows suite. This is what Jane suggested, and it worked for me then, and has done all week. 

I found this particularly difficult when I was singing an aria from Lucia di Lammermoor, when Edgardo has lost Lucia and is feeling sorry for himself. The part of my brain that was telling me to stay to true to the sad and angry aspect of the story telling was in fact acting as a block to the expression. As apposed to being like Eeyore in such situations, what everyone really wants to listen to, really is effected by emotionally and physically, is a songbird. A voice full of sparkle and life, positive in its expression, whether that be positively sad, positively angry, positively joyful, positively questioning. Positive decision making. 

Such a small change and realisation, or re-realisation, will have hugely positive results on my future auditions and performances I think. I am sure I have been told to do it in the past, in someway, but, partly because I had quite a long time one to one with Jane, this time I really feel it has made a mark. Maybe I just need to quote the Joker from Batman: The Dark Knight before each performance: 'Why So Serious?'

We'll see if that works....

Busy busy Stuttgart

As with previous weeks, Stuttgart is very busy with the Christmas market. If anything, it is much busier than before, I don't know where all these people have come from and I am looking forward to January when Stuttgart returns to feeling like a small, friendly city again. 

The cold weather, and prospect of it being such for a few months to come, persuaded me to buy a few new sporting clothes. As I have mentioned before, I am a bit of a sporting garment geek, specifically football boots, so I enjoyed exploring the winter running gear options. I ended up with some quite revealing Adidas ClimaHeat running tights and an Adidas hoodie, with those thumb holes in the sleeve. And oddly enough I have been on three runs already in the gear, and feeling much better for it. The health drive continues....

This coming week I have a few more performances of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, two concerts of Bach in the middle of Stuttgart and plenty of time to continue learning music for January's productions and concerts. Then it'll almost be Christmas, I can't wait.

#Carols4Cancer

With Christmas in mind, and in particular carol singing, I am keen to share with you the Tenor, David Webb's. charitable initiative #Carols4Cancer. https://www.justgiving.com/carols4cancer/ If you search YouTube or Twitter you will find videos, mostly of David, singing a different carol each day leading up to Christmas and in turn trying to raise money for Cancer research.

David is a young British Tenor who I have met a few times in London. He was a couple of years ahead of me in the London music college scene and this year has been performing with, among others, Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Opera. This fun and thoughtful charitable initiative is a great idea and maybe some of you will post videos and/or consider donating to the cause.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a lovely week.

Tom 

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Star struck

By this time, week 13, of my journey in Stuttgart you may have thought that things would become repetitive and dull. And in truth, it is sometimes a challenge to inspire oneself when you are only singing one line in an Opera and the auditorium is only half full on a cold and wet Tuesday evening. 

At this early stage in my career, though, with the apprenticeship-like nature of an Opera Studio limiting the size of roles ON stage, I really enjoy the process of working OFF stage. Of being in a practice room and learning a new role, or doing exercises to improve my technique, of working on characters and interpretation and of memorizing....... actually that is a lie. I hate memorizing. Memorizing music, I find, can be one of the most frustrating and time consuming of tasks. But we have to do it.

January Concert

This week I have spent much of my time memorizing the music for an Opera Studio concert in January, which takes place in the beautiful town of Ludwigsburg. Excitingly I will be singing Edgardo's duet with Lucia from Lucia di Lammermoor, and then his aria from the end of the opera. I feel more and more like this repertoire and my voice were made for each other so to get chances to perform some of it will be great. 

The programme inevitably took a long time to put together. With all six of us from the studio performing, it is important to get a good balance. It is also important that we all sing music suitable for our voices, and Bettina Giese, the Head of the Opera Studio, took a lot of care considering the music for each of us. This care and consideration is one of the biggest positives about Stuttgart as an opera house. 

As I have mentioned before, the friendliness and support shown to me by everyone in the Opera house has made it a very easy place to feel settled in. In light of this, and if you are considering applying for an Opera studio, I would point you towards the Opera studio web site, with the deadline for applications being the 15th of December: http://www.oper-stuttgart.com/opera/operastudio_1516/

Home time

Despite it being a supportive place to work, the easing up of my schedule had allowed for me to miss home more than I had realised. Having been at boarding school from the age of 7 to 18, I am very much used to being away from home. I have never been away from home for this long in one go, though,  

So when I received my daily plan for Monday, on Saturday afternoon, and saw that I was free all day, I decided to fly home for 48 hours. With the help of a few thousand loyalty points, and having been paid for the Messiah I did the other week, I just about afforded the flights. To be home for a few days was worth every penny. To be able to sit with my wife and relax, have a curry, watch British TV without it buffering every 6 seconds, have a Pret-A-Manger Christmas sandwich, get stuck on a delayed train, was great. I look forward to being back again at the end of December.

Mercedes

On Saturday morning, before I had decided to fly home, I attended the 'Stars and Cars' event at Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart. This yearly celebration of their Motor Sports teams was made all the more special this year due to the success they had had in Formula 1. Both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton were in attendance, as were many thousands of fans.

Having bought a T-Shirt and a cap to remember the day by, and having missed the interviews with Lewis and Nico I'd planned on catching, I decided to head home early. As I wandered towards the nearest U-Bahn I walked past the garages where they were preparing the show cars, including the F1 cars which I stopped to take a picture of. 

Two minutes later, and with me now in prime position at the front of the crowd, both Lewis and Nico turned up and I found myself shaking hands and chatting with Lewis, who also kindly signed my t-shirt. 

For extra proof that I met Lewis, I was unfortunate enough to be caught by the TV cameras and shown on British morning TV, as you can see here. In my defence it was very cold and the grey thing I am holding is the T-Shirt.

Family

Following the excitement of meeting Lewis and then heading home, I am now delighted to have my parents here until Sunday. So please excuse the shorter blog, but I must dash out and show them around town.

Hope you all have a great week.

Tom




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