Opera Family

This week in Stuttgart we were very fortunate to work with American Mezzo Soprano, Marianne Cornetti. Over three and a half intense days, five of us Opera studio members explored many aspects of being a singer. From stagecraft to audition technique, discussions about agents and career planning, ambitions and goals and also work on vocal technique, a lot was thrown at us and I had a great time. For me, Masterclasses like this, when time and emotion is invested in each student by the Master, are a hugely beneficial time and I hope to make the most of what Marianne told me both now and in the future.

Aside from the Masterclasses, this week I heard from ZAV, the German state agency or jobcentre for singers, who I had auditioned with last Friday in Cologne. I wasn’t in great voice last Friday, still experiencing the bug that has been travelling around the whole of Germany, and I wasn’t overly confident with the outcome. So I was very happy to receive a call from the Munich office inviting me to sing in the final concert in Potsdam on the 29^th of May.  This concert features the best ten singers from the nationwide auditions and will be attended by casting directors and intendant from many of the German Opera houses. I feel very fortunate to have made it through and I look forward to meeting some more new people at the end of May.

Flight 4U9525

I’m not really sure what else to write this week.  The event in the alps, and the extremely sad details which have emerged since, has left a sense of emptiness and confusion for many. For those in the Operatic world, the loss of two of our number on the Germanwings flight is being particularly keenly felt. In a career which relies heavily on air travel, there has been a feeling that it could have been any of us.

I didn’t know either Oleg Bryjak or Maria Radner personally, though did once see Maria perform at Covent Garden in 2012, meeting her briefly afterwards. The Opera family is a poorer place for their loss. It is small consolation that that same family feels tighter knit and more supportive than ever. We are all in this mad world together. May Oleg and Maria, and the 148 others lost Rest in Peace. 

Cars and Cadenzas

On Wednesday evening this week I found myself singing arias and duets amongst a selection of cars, old and new, from a 1922 Model T Ford, the original high production automobile, to the brand new Jaguar F Type sports car.

Ever since I was a young boy I have been ‘into’ cars. Cliché it may be, but cars and football were my things really, and classical music just to throw a left field pass into the mix. Each year I would attend the London Car Show at Earls Court with my father and from about the age of 7 I had a subscription to a weekly car magazine. Then, in my early teens, I decided that the career I wanted was as an Automotive Engineer, I would learn German and go and work for a big car company over here, probably in Stuttgart in fact. It’s a coincidence, therefore, to have found myself in a mixture of the two worlds, cars and opera, this last week.

The occasion was the Opera Studio’s concert for our sponsors, Schwabengarage, the Stuttgart arm of a national car dealership who have been the main sponsor of the Studio for the whole of its existence. The boss happens to be a big Opera fan and agreed to sponsor the creation of the Opera Studio, 6 years ago, so that his towns Opera could be like Zurich and Munich who both already had studios in place.

It was an enjoyable evening, a mixture of Mozart, Verdi, Donizetti, Rossini and Strauss and included some quite interesting costumes for a mini-scene from Cosi Fan Tutte (no pictures I’m afraid). The evening was introduced by Eva Kleinitz, the Director of Opera, who sat on the front row next to both the boss of Schwabengarage and Jossi Wieler, the Intendant here in Stuttgart. It felt a bit like an audition panel, with an additional 200 people and some cars added in for fun.

Interview

The most nerve wracking moment of the evening came when Frau Kleinitz interviewed me, in German. Fortunately I had been warned that we would all be interviewed over the course of the evening and to be prepared to answer a couple of questions, but that didn’t ease my worries and much of the day was spent trying to come up with an intelligent yet easy to remember few sentences about why I had come to Germany for an Opera studio and what I like about Stuttgart.

I think people understood what I said, they laughed at the moments I hoped they would:

‘Ich liebe Bier und Adidas und mein lieblings-tenor ist Fritz Wunderlich’

So I got them on myside before hitting them with the serious sentence, which basically said Germany is hugely important for the operatic world and it is great experience to be in a German Opera studio.

Bye bye Nabucco

It is a great experience, and if you have read all 27 posts I have written so far, you will know that I have been pretty busy for the last 6 months. Saturday, though, was my last performance on the stage here until mid May and the final Nabucco of the season.

I have been suffering a bit with some sort of cough/sore throat that has been going round the whole of Germany apparently, and I wasn’t totally sure I would be able to sing on Saturday night. So unsure was I that I cancelled attending the Six Nations viewing party at a colleagues house in order to conserve some energy.

The show was fine, I didn’t sing in the big ensembles in order to protect my few solo lines. Frustratingly the bug has stuck around and I cancelled my rehearsal on Monday, just about got through singing in the concert on Wednesday night and considered cancelling todays audition.

ZAV

In the end, I figured it would be ok to audition, the sore throat is almost gone and I am confident enough with my technique these days that things will work when I am not 100% (when is one ever 100%).

The audition in question was for ZAV, the state agency here in Germany. A sort of job centre for singers, who I sang for initially in Munich a few weeks ago. Todays audition was in front of representatives from all of the ZAV offices around Germany who deal with Opera and, if they liked me enough, may lead to me singing in a showcase concert in Berlin in May. Either way, I am now on there books and my details may be passed on to one or many of the Opera houses here in Germany.

The audition took place in Cologne, a city I had never previously visited and one where a friend of mine, Aoife Miskelly, is in the Opera House ensemble. Aoife and I did the Magic Flute together both at the Royal Academy of Music (Pamina to my Tamino) and in the Bath Festival (Pamina to my yankee Monostotos), and she has been in Cologne for three years now, through Opera studio to Fest contract. She very kindly let me stay on her sofa bed, even though she left for Ireland a few hours after I got there, and it was nice to meet her flatmate, a German/Brazilian Doctor who speaks English with a soft Irish/German accent and whose boyfriend, I discovered, works in logistics for Adidas and might be able to give me a tour of the Adidas centre near Nuremburg!!!!

The other Pamina to my Tamino in the Royal Academy of Music’s Magic Flute was Sonia Grane (as pictured with me below), a portugese Soprano now in Opera Studio in Berlin. Coincidentally she was also auditioning in Cologne today and we grabbed lunch before going our separate ways.

Audition wise, they rushed me in when I got there, an hour before my allotted time with no time for me to warm up, which was a shame. I sang the aria they had suggested in the Munich audition, Questa O Quella from Rigoletto, first (the pianist not quite understanding what I had told him about the cadenza at the end), then Nemorino’s aria from L’elisir D’amore and a beautiful Gluck aria from Iphigenie et Tauride. It was fine, my voice felt like I had had a cough for the past week, not surprisingly, but all the notes came out which is a start. We shall see what happens…..

Next year

For once I didn’t feel a lot of pressure for the audition, in part because I knew I had been unwell, but mostly because I have, in the last week, been offered 7 months worth of Opera contract for next season as a guest in an Opera house. I won’t say anymore at the moment, nothing has been signed and we are just discussing a few details, but I am delighted to be able to look forward to some work next season.

The offer lightens the pressure of other auditions I have, and also gives me a strong hand for when I am talking to people who are considering representing me as my Artist Manger/Agent. The offer also allows me to spend more time in the UK with my wife, family and friends. Something I feel this year will have lacked!!

So its all good!!

What next

Happily I have a free weekend, one in which I can finally get rid of this bug hopefully. Then next week the Opera Studio has a Masterclass for three days and on Friday I fly back to the UK for a concert on Saturday in Burford.

Someone suggested that ’50 Shades of Grey’ could be a title for a tourist guide to Stuttgart, given the general colour of the architecture here. This is changing though, as the weather improves and it has been lovely this week, ideal for some running in the parks, which I must do soon.

Thank you for reading. Until next time!!

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Springtime for Elwin in Stuttgart

Having returned to Stuttgart last Thursday in order to sing Abdallo in our 8^th performance of Nabucco, it was good to meet our new title character, 5 minutes before the curtain came up. In this particular run of Nabucco every character except two, mine and mezzo Fenena, have been double or triple cast. In fact I am never totally sure which singers I will be about to meet on stage which adds a bit of excitement to the evening. This is not unique to Nabucco. As anyone will see when they look at Opera company websites, roles are often double or triple cast over a production run, not just in Ensemble houses like Stuttgart.

Saturday’s performance was an eventful one with three members of the audience being taken ill, and the commotion of the third illness causing the show to finish early, about ten pages before the end and with no applause. It was a very strange feeling on the stage itself, as we saw people leaving their seats, doors opening, Doctors rushing in and then the orchestra stopping, the curtain closing and the stage clearing, no one really sure what had happened. Happily, we were told, the three audience members are all now ok.

Back again

The next morning, Sunday, I flew back again to London for a Messiah at the Leith Hill Music Festival. What with my inability to sleep quickly after a performance and the need to get up early for the flight, I was quite tired and being woken up by the air hostess, asking me if I wanted a drink, didn’t improve things.

The Leith Hill Music Festival was founded by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 110 years ago, and takes place at Dorking Halls, Dorking, Surrey. I actually went to school a few miles from Dorking in Leatherhead and it was nice to be back in the area. 

If anyone has ever tried getting public transport from London Heathrow to Dorking on a Sunday I empathise. The journey which by car would take 45 minutes took me just under 3 hours, but I was given a warm welcome when I eventually arrived at Dorking Halls and had a great evening singing Messiah to an audience which included a friend and supporter, my singing teacher and my old German Teacher from School, a man who never had much of a sense of humour and failed to see the irony of me living and working in Germany having been so average at the language as a 14/15 year old.

It was good to perform with some friends and colleagues too. Brian Kay, the conductor, former Kings Singer, radio presenter and many other things, first booked me to sing with him about three years ago and I have since sung for him on five occasions. Such faith in my singing makes for a relaxed and enjoyable time and I look forward to being back to sing for Brian at the beginning of April. It was also nice to sing next to Marcus Farnsworth, the English Baritone. I have known Marcus for 9 years, since I was a undergraduate in London and he was studying in Manchester, we haven’t sung a lot together but we both came from choral backgrounds, went through the Royal Academy’s masters and then Opera courses and are now working as Opera singers. It was very nice to catch up.

And back to Stuttgart

Just 28 hours in London, having seen my wife for about 45 minutes, and I was back at Heathrow flying back to Stuttgart in order to be there for Nabucco no. 9 on Tuesday.

Before Nabucco, I had an hour in the recording studio at the Stuttgart Music Conservatoire, across the road from the Opera House. This had been arranged for a few months and I recorded two arias, quickly, before rushing back to the Opera house for Nabucco. I have recorded quite a lot in my singing life, at least 30 different CD’s as a choral singer, both as a boy and a tenor. I haven’t recorded a lot as a soloist and it is quite brutal listening back to yourself sometimes. People often say they learn a lot from the recording process and using my critical ears to asses my own singing, albeit singing when I was not in the best of voices, was hard at first. I wasn’t exactly expecting to sound like Fritz Wunderlich as I listened back, but maybe a bit more like him would have been nice.

Sure enough, on Wednesday, after a few days of travelling and performing a lot and sleeping little, I woke up with a sore throat and cancelled the only coaching I had that day.

Know your body

As you may have picked up by now, if you have been following my whole blog, singers need to be aware of their own bodies and health. In fact we are often super aware of every little change in sensation to do with our voices. I knew the sore throat was coming on Tuesday, I know full well that lack of sleep is a voice killer and I just wanted to get through Nabucco and then use the next few days catching up. Happily, taking Wednesday to recuperate worked a treat and yesterday I was back at the Opera house rehearsing for the Opera Studio concert in a car dealership (I will explain next week).

I am proud to have reached the middle of March having performed 37 nights on the Stuttgart stage and only missed two rehearsals due to illness in that whole time. Particularly following the disaster of the summer of 2013, I know how careful one has to be and so, touch wood, hopefully I will go the rest of the season, only 7 more performances, with the same record.

Next

This coming week we have the last Nabucco of the run followed by the Opera studio concert on Wednesday and an audition in Cologne on Friday, where I will be meeting up with another friend and colleague.

There continue to be a few developments regarding my 2015/16 season and I look forward to sharing those with you when they are more concrete.

In the meantime, I am going to go and enjoy the sun. Spring had truly sprung in Stuttgart.

Until next week,

Bye. 

Back Home.

For much of the last week I was either at home in Wheathampstead, a village just north of London, or rushing around London trying to fit in as much as I could during my brief visit.

I do love London and, having had a relatively nomadic life for most of the last 21 years, it really is my home. London is where my musical routes are embedded, the seed being firmly planted and nurtured when I was a choirboy at St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1993 to 1999. It is where my football team are, Come on you Irons!!, and where my family and ancestors have lived for most of the last 200 years.

As a Classical musician in 2015, London is an amazing place. Despite all manner of odds stacked against it, there is so much happening all the time. In addition to the big guns of ROH and ENO, the Opera scene is thriving with medium and small companies, professional and amateur, putting on new productions week after week in venues from small theatres, to pubs, to the spaces underneath railway arches and so on. And despite what some newspaper critics will have us think, people are turning up and enjoying it, and engaging in the art form, a thriving art form. Imagine how much more thriving it would be if there was the sort of state funding that the Germans enjoy…..

Great support

Without the funding structures that the Germans have in place, it is down to the individual company and artist to find the desired funding. As I mentioned last week, I have had to raise a not-insignificant sum to enable my attempt at a career in opera, and this last week gave me a chance to meet one couple who have supported me over the last year.

This particular pair are a lovely couple in their 80’s, who live in North London, and have been in the same house for the last 54 years. I stumbled upon their names when I was looking for funding last April, and wrote them a letter, telling them a bit about myself, what I have done, where I was going, how much money I was looking for. It was a bit of a stab in the dark, I had never met them before and I only knew that they had, at one point, supported the Opera in Covent Garden. Luckily for me they were interested by my letter, ‘it had a spark’ so they told me, and after a few phone calls to discuss things, they gave me some money that enabled me to attend the Solti Accademia Bel Canto course last summer.

Realising how important supporters are to a career in the arts, I spent the next few months sending updates about the course and the next stages of my career, and then a Happy New Year/Christmas message. Looking after the relationship and hoping to help them realise how grateful I am for their support. When I realised I would be in the UK for a week I thought it was very important to finally meet them. With the meeting arranged a few weeks ago, I headed up to their nearest tube station around 2pm on Monday where I was met by a short, elderly gentleman, wearing a large Cossack hat and with Verdi blasting out from his car speakers. Within a few minutes the conversation was flowing and I was amazed to learn how much of an Opera loving couple I had come to meet.

Mr kind supporter, I won’t tell you their names if you don’t mind, first attended an Opera in 1947, Carmen at the newly formed Covent Garden Opera company. Since then he has seen over 500 different operas, all over the world, from Sante Fe to Munich, Verona, Madrid, Stuttgart and so on. They have kept records of every show they have attended in that time, which included more than 30 Rigoletto’s, 9 different Performances of Britten’s Gloriana and 47 visits to see Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte! Even more remarkably, he has been to at least one performance of every single production at Covent Garden since that Carmen in 1947, that’s every single production at Covent Garden over 68 years. To think of some of the great singers they have seen, just the list of Tenors is impressive enough, Vickers, Gedda, Kraus, Bjorling, Di Stefano, Pavarotti, Wunderlich (they saw Wunderlich!!! Oh to have heard Wunderlich live!) and so on.

Here I was, having tea with Opera going royalty and all they wanted to really talk about was me, what I liked, what I was doing, what my wife did, how is Stuttgart, how can they help me in the future etc. It was very humbling to be treated in such a way and I left there, rushing to the next meeting of the day, with a reaffirmed sense of value in my Operatic journey. (That sounds ridiculously pompous, sorry)

Attending

One aspect I have enjoyed being in Stuttgart is that I get a free ticket to every show I am not in. This means I have seen 6 new Operas this season already, including last weeks harrowing Jenufa.

Whilst I was in London I was happy to be able to drop in two rehearsals of Royal Academy Opera’s new ‘Rakes Progress’, conducted by Jane Glover and in another great production by John Ramster. Sadly I can’t make any of the actual performances, but I would recommend them to any of you that might be able to go.

I also caught a lovely concert in St. George’s, Hanover Square. This was an hour long lunchtime event featuring Handel, Bach and Pergolesi and performed by a two singers and a baroque ensemble including a good friend of mine, Oliver-John Ruthven. It was a particularly enjoyable hour as it came after a competition first round, which I sang that morning, and it was great to be able to fit in seeing friends perform during my brief visit.

What else

The rest of my week included two singing lessons, much needed with the wonderful Gary Coward, some coachings and meetings with friends and colleagues. A last minute Bach John Passion at St. Albans Abbey, a lovely concert which happened to be attended by some friends from Uni, who it was great to see, and my understanding parents who I had had to rearrange meeting due to the concert.

I also got to actually see my wife for a few days, which is a bit of a novelty.

And now

Now I am back in Stuttgart, ready to play football this afternoon and sing Nabucco performance number 8 tomorrow, before flying BACK to the UK for a Messiah in Dorking on Sunday…..

The next few weeks includes the last few Nabucco shows, some auditions and concerts, here and in England. Better make the most of my day off!

Until next week,

Bye!

Ps: No idea about health this week, no time to exercise, plenty of time to grab unhealthy food…. Must do better!

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