Final Stretch

With Easter now a chocolatey memory I am now moving into phase three of the Opera Studio year, the final furlong. 

I find splitting the year up into sections a useful exercise which can help maintain ones focuses and keep one sane! In the same way, I try to give myself the structure of a '9 - 5' job when I am not in official rehearsals/travelling. With this structure I can have time off during the day without feeling guilty that I am not working. It also helps prevent the classic self employed mistake of being 'on' all the time, dealing with emails, learning music etc. at any and every time of the day. 

Having had nothing official at the Opera house for the last week, this 9 - 5 structure has been put into good use and for once I feel on top of the upcoming projects. This includes tonights concert at the Leith Hill Music Festival in which I am singing in Lobgesang, or Hymn of Praise, by Mendelssohn, a new piece for me. 

Recordings or not

For the first time in a long time the Lobgesang is a genuinely new piece for me to learn, not one I have ever seen or heard before. Having been involved in professional music making for 16 of my 28 years, and many of those spent singing Choral music, this is quite refreshing and gave me the opportunity to get to know the piece on my own merits.

In doing this I decided to NOT listen to any recordings until a day or so before the concert, to try and get as much as possible from the score itself and hopefully for the interpretation to be a mixture of mine and Mendelssohn's, not a copying of some recording. 

Don't get me wrong, recordings are great. I love listening to the 15 different versions of 'Che Gelida' I have on my iPod and to the three different versions of Rigoletto I have. I am, though, very aware that when I try to sing bits from Rigoletto or Che Gelida at all, many of my musical decisions are already affected by what I have heard and not necessarily what Verdi or Puccini wrote in the score. 

Beyond what is written in the score there are performance traditions, take the high C in Che Gelida that never lasts the single quaver (1/8th note) that the ossia suggests and then the end of La Donna e Mobile doesn't even suggest a High B in the score, that is saved for later.

Often, though, the traditions we know are so ingrained, as are the recordings we religiously follow, that any change in performance practice or different musical decisions are difficult to take. 

The German way

I found this very much the case in the Bach Matthew Passion I sang last friday. A few aspects of the score had been interpreted in a different way to that I am used to, the Evangelist sang every possible appoggiatura in a way that I have never done myself, and in one particular movement the conductor had decided on semi-quaver grace notes instead of the quaver grace notes I am both used to and was expecting. Did I not totally agree with these because I am conditioned to expect something else or because what I usually hear is better? 

I guess this comes down to trying to have 'new ears' and an open mind to interpretations. Not just musical decisions and interpretations but also decisions of casting and production choices. This is particularly true in German Opera at the moment. The age of the 'Regie' theatre, often summarised by its critics as being productions with little or nothing to do with the actual story being told, challenges an audience to accept Operas without powdered wigs and tights, excuse the cliche. 

Tenor challenge

As a singer I wonder, looking to the future, how much I myself can challenge traditions and preconceived ideas myself. I have already been told by one agent in Germany that, though my voice is right for the repertoire, I should stay away from Bel Canto music because I am not South American, Italian or Spanish and they are the only guys who get booked for that stuff. 

One agent suggested I don't offer Bach in Germany because no one books an English tenor to sing German music. 

Someone else suggested I offer only a mixture of Britten and Handel, as I am an English tenor. Lazy advice if you ask me.

Do I follow all this advice and limit my artistic output? Or do I follow my dream of performing Rodolfo in La Boheme and iL Duca in Rigoletto one day as well as Gerontius and Peter Grimes?

I think, if you have read this blog for the last 8 months you will know the answer!

The Week

As mentioned, this week started with Bach in Germany. A lovely concert after which the conductor expressed a strong desire to work with me again, which is nice. 

I then had five days pretty much to myself, learning music, practising, going to the cinema, and exercising, before flying back to the UK on Wednesday night for today's concert. 

Not much to report then really! 

Tonight's concert is important in many ways, I have some people in to hear me, some people I am particularly keen to impress. So wish me luck....

Until next time!

Tom