Possento Spirito

18 January 2007

How many days have we been rehearsing, anyway?  I probably shouldn’t be asking you this question, dear blogreader, as I’ve hardly been keeping you up to date with the latest minute-by-minute developments in a certain rehearsal room in Leeds, now have I?  I flew here from NYC less than two weeks ago, but it feels like much longer.  Directing a show can seem like diving into deep water and not coming up for air for weeks.  But there’s no easier way to do it.  Like Orfeo, you gotta go to the deepest, darkest places if you wanna come up with the precious Plutonium that lies hidden at the bottom.  This is definitely one of those snorkeling kind of shows, with the extra added challenge of this production being such an ensemble piece.  The thirteen singers are on stage for the whole evening, singing in the choral passages in addition to their solos.  This means that, much of the time, I am fielding all of these different energies, working to keep them involved and interested, trying to be open to their moods, points of view and  feelings about a scene.  It’s quite a different challenge from directing a piece of cake like “Tristan”, for example, where a normal rehearsal day will involve dealing with, at most, a handful of singers.  Focus and concentration become much more of an issue.  But forgive me for venting like this – it’s been an exhilarating week or so, lots of trying-things-then-rejecting them-then thinking-it-all-through-yet-again-and-trying-something-utterly-different.  The shape of the first two acts has emerged pretty clearly, the vocabulary of the production seems to be making sense and the cast continues to rise to the challenges thrown in their paths by yours truly…
(Me during rehearsals. Photo by Brian Slater)

By the way, did I mention that  Paul Nilon sprained his ankle last Wednesday?   Actually, I don’t think I’ve mentioned Paul at all in this blog yet.  Odd that, ‘cause he’s playing Orfeo. Is this a thorough and informative blog or what? Anyway, Paul was clambering about on top of a lot of chairs and sofas which had been pushed together in the middle of the room to create an Arcadian landscape in which Orfeo and the three shepherds cavort before the Messaggiera shows up to deliver the first singing telegram in operatic history (“Your wife is dead…”).   A misstep, a cry of pain, a weird moment when Paul turned green then nearly passed out, an ice pack, Paul quickly hustled from the rehearsal room to the hospital. The next day, I re-worked that Arcadian scene, not because the Opera North Safety Committee strong-armed me or anything.  No, it was purely for aesthetic reasons, one of those tried-then-rejected things I mentioned earlier. A brainstorming session with set-designer Paul, costume designer Doey,  choreographer Claire,  and assistant director Mark (Hathaway, that is) yielded a simpler, more direct and drier solution to that scene.  OK, and safer too.

Don’t worry, you blog-reading fans of Paul Nilon.  He returned to the rehearsal room yesterday, eager to confront Act Three and the enormously difficult virtuosic set-piece “Possente spirito”, in which Orfeo attempts to charm Caronte, the Ship’s Captain from Hell, into ferrying him to the Other Side.  Up to this point Orfeo has seemed like something of a secondary character, singing a few brief soundbites but hovering around the periphery of the action. In an instant, Monteverdi brings him center stage and presents the audience with the paradoxical image of an artist who, in his attempt to create a work of art which will perform the impossible task of raising the dead, is suddenly vividly alive, wrestling with his demons, facing up to his fears and insecurities and throwing out a challenge to his critics and enemies.  I’ve only had the pleasure of collaborating with the extraordinary Paul Nilon once before, in Bizet’s “Djamileh”, another of those Little Greats, but I’ve admired him in a number of shows over the years, especially the ones staged by that crazy American director, you know, what’s his name?  Oh yeah, David Alden.  Paul is a uniquely gifted guy who takes his work very seriously.  His obsessive commitment to his craft is pretty Orphic.  He can definitely relate to a character facing up to his demons through the mastery of ten minutes of perilously difficult music.  He told us the story of his first audition, at the age of twenty-two, when he sang for Hans Hotter, hoping to be admitted to a master class he was teaching.  He channeled back to the moment when, after mangling “Il Mio Tesoro”, he observed, all too clearly, Hotter’s disgusted and dismissive reaction.   Vulnerable and exposed, the devastated look on Paul’s face seemed as good a point of departure as any for our work on “Possente Spirito”. 

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