Are you watching closely?

Following last week’s excitement I have returned to the back of the rehearsal room, watching eagerly as Stuttgart’s new Cosi Fan Tutte develops. Thankfully the main cast Tenor has recovered and is back staging this rather challenging and thought provoking new production.

Now fully aware of the possibility of having to jump in in the future, my seated view has become a little work station. Music stand, notebook, score, pens, pencils, all set up to write down everything I see my character doing on the rehearsal stage. Using my prep school handwriting and occasionally longwinded shorthand, every little move that Ferrando makes goes down in the notebook with bar or word references.

Eg: b. 22 Fer. DSL 2 DSR nxt 2 Fior. face chair cab. hpy.

Which translated means:

Ferrando: bar 22. down stage left to down stage right, facing the chair and cabinet, looking happy.

This sort of thing may be totally useless for some, but for me gives some sort of framework from which to run the scene on my own should I need to. It is, of course, totally different watching it happen and then being on the stage itself so if I ever have to jump in again, I will take my notebook onto the set, before the rehearsal, and run through each scene. Particularly in a piece like Cosi which relies heavily on all six main characters being totally confident of what and where they are doing things, I would need to feel at home on the set.

Theatre in Opera

Watching the rehearsals develop this week has been very interesting, particularly with our Director having mostly worked in Schauspiel, or straight Theatre.

Away from the cliché that Opera singers can’t act, it’s not true at all, we can, there are surely a number of different challenges that face a Theatre director when jumping across the art forms. A need for the understanding of the music is one quite obvious one, the challenges of long arias, often with only two or three sentences over five minutes. The consideration for the singers ability to sing the lines from whatever position they have ended up in. The problems of being able to see the conductor, hear the orchestra, hear your colleagues in duets and so on. Just a few of the logistical challenges.

Working with Directors who are new to opera presents challenges to the singers too. I’d be interested to discuss this with my colleagues in Cosi as the production develops and will no doubt consider mentioning it further on here. One thing I would say is that it is up to us singers to try our best in getting across the message the director would like us to portray in whatever way they might have asked. Something Marianne Cornetti said in the Masterclass with us the other week is that she will ‘try anything a Director asks at least once’, but that if singing a six minute long aria whilst hanging upside down by ones feet proves too difficult it is also important to say that.

At the end of week two of production rehearsals, singer sickness aside, the show is developing nicely. There are many discussions about what direction the story is heading and a lot of what the director is asking in terms of character development, in particular for the four lovers, is different to any other Cosi I have seen before. That’s probably as much as I am should say without giving the game away before the Premiere at the end of May.

Supportive Stuttgart

I am delighted to have, earlier this week, signed a contract to return to Oper Stuttgart next season as a guest artist in at least three operas (the fourth is tbc.) The contract means I will be in Stuttgart for about six months of the season, performing some nice small/medium roles and allowing for space in my schedule to work on other projects. The next generation in every field needs to be nurtured and developed and I feel lucky to have Stuttgart on my side at this important stage in my career.

Life

As I have mentioned on here before, the decision to move away for a year has been a challenging one in terms of missing family and friends. The new contract means I will be back in the UK a lot more during the 2015/16 season than the current one. I should also be able to attend a few UK events, like the Rugby World Cup final and, hopefully, Jonas Kaufmann at the Last Night of the Proms. The life/work balance should be much improved.

Speaking of which, I am back home this weekend, the last chance to be back before July so am fitting in a couple of singing related appointments as ever, but most importantly am celebrating my third wedding anniversary.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Until next week,

Tom  

ps. Prize for anyone who can name the film I have quoted this week.....

Cover Up!

I started the week back in England to perform a concert, at the Leith Hill Festival, and also to celebrate my wife’s Birthday. I have ended the week covering Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte rehearsals here in Stuttgart.

Life

Being away from family and friends is part of the job of an Opera singer. As I have said to people who ask why I can’t work at home, there isn’t an Opera house in Hertfordshire, to my knowledge, opera houses aren’t going to move for me!

It is, though, an aspect of the job that I realised would be difficult, particularly this year with such a defined long time away.

I decided before I came to Stuttgart that I would go home when I can, if possible, and would try to fit ‘life’ time around any work I got in England, as to soften the financial blow of travelling. Happily this concert came through and meant I could fit in a few days to celebrate the birthday, see friends and family. It also allowed me to have a singing lesson and doubled up as an opportunity for an agent to hear me.

Agents

The getting of an agent/artist manager has been in my thoughts for most of the last 5 years. A few friends of mine have been represented by good agencies since they were in music college and there has often been a sense that not having the agent might be holding me back. This year in Stuttgart has been a good tonic to that thought, with audition opportunities and work coming my way without an agency signed up to my cause. I do, though, feel that now is an ideal time to be starting career development planning with an artist manager, so I was particularly happy to be able to have such a person in the audience of last Fridays concert, and have since had good feedback and the initial signs of a developing relationship have emerged.

Of course this may lead to nothing….. But it’s a good start.

Cosi Fan Tutte

Back I went to Stuttgart on Sunday and on Monday I attended another conzeptiongesprach, which in the UK would be known as the model showing but is in fact a bit more than that. Here in Stuttgart we start with all the main people involved being introduced, then the Dramaturge introduces the opera and concept, then the Director speaks more about the concept followed by the designer and then costume designer introducing their designs. (All in German)

 As I have mentioned before, I am covering Ferrando, the only tenor part in the opera. Initially it was decided that three of us opera studio members would be Musical covers, with this being a new production and there being an importance placed on the main 6 singers creating the piece together. This would mean singing from the side of the stage, with a score, whilst the main singer acted the role. Like many well thought out plans, things have changed quickly. By Tuesday one of the main cast was unwell and at home, so her musical cover was asked to rehearse the scenes, by Wednesday evening a second cast member was unwell and a second cover was asked to sing in a rehearsal. Then yesterday morning, 45 minutes before the rehearsal was to start, I was called to step in for the next three days of rehearsal. Fortunately I am relatively well prepared, but I had been given the morning off and was tired and not really mentally ready to sing and stage Ferrando…..

I very much wish my colleagues a speedy recovery….. but the last two days, as Ferrando in rehearsals, including singing the act 1 aria ‘Un aura amorosa’ 5 times this morning, have been two of the best days since I arrived in Stuttgart. Having the chance to rehearse a role I love, a role I know well and a role I feel I can bring a lot to has been really great. Of course I wish my tenor colleague no harm, far from it, I very much like his singing and will no doubt enjoy watching him as Ferrando, but I will be ready to step in if I am ever needed, and will enjoy and thrive in it if I am.

Next

The next week has Cosi written all over it. The change in status from Musical to Scenic cover means I will be spending my Sunday making sure I have everything memorised.

At the end of the week I return to London, not for singing but wedding anniversary reasons.

Now, I sleep…. Its been a tiring couple of days!

Until next time!

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 

Bach again

As a choirboy at St. Paul’s Cathedral I used to love this time of year. Lent/Holy Week and Easter could always be relied upon to provide many musical highlights. I will never forget singing Lotti’s stunning ‘crucifixus’ to a  packed cathedral each Good Friday, the low late-winter sun usually streaming through the West end window and creating a quite remarkable atmosphere.

More recently, the run up to Easter has been associated with numerous performances of Bach’s Passions, with a realisation that I could sing Bach relatively well opening myself up to an almost guaranteed set of concerts each March. The involvement in the Bach passions can vary significantly from concert to concert for the Tenor. Evangelist one night, Arias only another night, both Evangelist and Arias or only Tenor 2 aria (for the Matthew Passion), so many combinations one could become confused…..

Bach at Home

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to fit any Passions in this year, with my living in Germany but, just before I moved here, I was booked to sing one aria and recit. in the Matthew Passion on Good Friday (today), up in Bad Canstatt, about 7 minutes U Bahn ride from my flat.

Singing Bach in German brings its own challenges. Inevitably, any German pronunciation that I have been confident of for years suddenly seems unsure. In order to counter this I prepared my two numbers with some German colleagues and so, by Wednesday morning, I was confident with what I could bring to the rehearsal yesterday.

I was booked for this concert, before I moved to Germany, through an agent I had contacted on the advice of some UK based singer friends. Having introduced myself by email to the agent, they expressed an interest in me, particularly since I was going to be in Stuttgart where they are based, and coincidentally they were looking for a Stuttgart based tenor for a Matthew Passion.

I got permission from the Opera house to take the engagement and received the contract when I arrived in Stuttgart in September. All clear, so I thought. Rehearsal for soloists on Thursday, concert Friday. I filled in the right form to get absence from the Opera house for the Thursday rehearsal and had, for the last six months, been looking forward to 2.30 on the 2^nd of April when I would get to rehearse some Bach with a great orchestra.

A few weeks ago I received the detailed rehearsal schedule and noted my Thursday rehearsal time, Thursday being the day I was contracted to rehearse, and noted that the only Tenor numbers listed were ‘O Schmerz’ and ‘Ich will bei meinem Jesu’, both accompanied by the choir. These are two of my favourite bits from the Passion so, despite only singing those two numbers out of a 3 hour evening, I was happy.

Come Wednesday and I am sitting in Starbucks following a great coaching on Cosi Fan Tutte at the Opera House. My internet is currently down so I was joining the crowds of slow drinkers making the most of the free internet when I received a call:

                ‘where are you? You have a rehearsal, why are you not there?’

I was confused, inevitably. I said I was rehearsing tomorrow, it is on the rehearsal breakdown.

                ‘They are expecting you an hour ago!’

I was told, as I wracked my brain for an explanation as to why I had made this mistake or whether, in fact, it was some cruel April fool on the part of the agency.

It wasn’t an April fool. I was the fool. I had in fact been hired to sing the other Tenor aria and recit, ‘Mein Jesus Schweigt’ and ‘Geduld’, though this was not specified on my contract and the rehearsal had been scheduled for the Wednesday afternoon when I was not called. I rushed to Bad Canstatt frustrated and mildly upset. I am never late, never out of line, always as professional as possible and now I was rocking up 75 minutes late to a rehearsal with a man I wasn’t entirely sure I could explain this all to. I also hadn’t prepared the aria I was going to be singing….. nightmare!

I won’t bore you with the minutiae of the following 36 hours, but happily it was all explained. The misunderstanding between the three parties was understood and time was found for me to rehearse the aria and receive a few tips on my German pronunciation. I also got the chance to hear some of the other soloists rehearse, including the Evangelist who is German himself. For a non-German speaking Tenor to hear a native singing this part is a great chance to learn and reassess some of the decisions I have made when singing it myself.

Back at home

Last weekend I returned to the UK for a couple of days to sing for the Burford Singers, a choir I have sung for on three occasions now. The music this time was ‘spring’ from Haydn’s ‘The Seasons’, and ‘Requiem’ by the English composer Bob Chilcott, two pieces I hadn’t performed before and both of which I very much enjoyed singing. Bob Chilcott was actually conducting the concert, as a guest during the usual conductors one term sabbatical, so there was added pressure to sing it all right!

I was struck, once again, by the stark contrast in concert routines between the UK and Germany. Take the Matthew Passion over here, with almost 14 hours of rehearsals scheduled for the two days leading up to the concert today and much time allocated to each number to really rehearse it. Where as in Burford I turned up at 2.30 for the three hour rehearsal during which there was only just enough time to run some numbers twice with minimal time to go into much detail. Much of the difference is down to necessity, there has never been the money in the UK to be able to have lots of rehearsals whereas in Germany there has and still is the funding for this. The English side of me finds some German rehearsals slow and, ironically, inefficient yet found the UK rehearsal last weekend a bit too short particularly as it was the first time performing both pieces. Maybe there is a middle way.

Back at the Opera

Since I am not directly involved in any productions at the moment, neither Rigoletto or Cosi (both of which I cover in) not starting rehearsals for a few weeks, I have only had a few coachings. Both of these were some of the best coaching sessions I have had in Stuttgart, partly I think due to me now being back in good voice, partly due to the work I did with Marianne Cornetti last week which has helped a few arias I was getting stuck in, and partly because the coachings were on Ferrando from Cosi, and I just love the role so much. A few more weeks of coachings on Ferrando and I won’t complain!

Back on holiday

The Easter weekend brings a national holiday in Germany and with no internet I may well rely on DVD’s to fill the time between exercising/learning music and trying hard not to buy every discounted Easter egg and trying to eat them in record time….

I hope you all have a great Easter, until next time.

Tom

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.