Opera North: The Orfeo Blog

In bocca al lupo

And for my final entry while in Leeds I'd like to pass over to Rosalba Lo Duca, our language coach who has sat patiently in every rehearsal and guided us all in  beautiful Italian.

16 February 2007

I would like to take the opportunity offered by this Blog to thank the entire cast, music staff and production team, for these very magic weeks. I truly have enjoyed every moment of our work together; it has been such an exhilarating time!

To all the cast I’d like to say how amazed I am with your patience, effort, dedication and commitment in working so hard to sing correct Italian.

It has been a joy to help you in the process and I am delighted by the big improvements and results achieved by all of you. Orfeo presents us with quite a challenging poetry form, which requires clear articulated diction, and subtle interpretation of the strong range of the passionate emotions depicted.

So BRAVO to all of you for standing up to it 100%.

To the music staff I express my deepest admiration for the accurate and passionate work.

I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed listening to the friendly music-debates you three have had in these weeks.

I have learned so much again!

I express my gratitude for the open-minded collaboration shown in what have been my requests and suggestions, which Rob has described as firm, but fair

Last but not least, my congratulations to the entire production team for the absolutely ¡Capolavoro¡¨ achieved. I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to share every bit of the working progress and to have witnessed from day one the development of this extraordinary production. The team that our director cleverly chose has shown an incredible unison in the transmission of his ideas and capacity of clearly transferring them to our eyes in the form of choreography, costumes, scenery and lighting.

Thank you Chris for providing our minds with a space where we can let go of long conditioned knowledge and move to that place of consciousness where we see without seeing and listen without listening.

To all of you from the bottom of my heart IN BOCCA

AL

LUPO ¡KE CHE CREPI!!!!!!!!!

TOI TOI TOI TOI

Big love

Ro.

Exhilaration after the Dress

15 February 2007

It’s the day before our opening.  I’m spending a quiet day a couple of hours away from Leeds in a bucolic valley near Whitby, on the coast.  It’s the country retreat of Sue Willmington, the brilliant costume designer who did the clothes for some of the Eight Little Greats and my recent ENO “Makropulos Case”. We took a walk down the hill this morning, greeted the neighbours’ very pregnant goats and had a fabulous lunch in a tiny pub in the tiny town of Goldsborough. And now a bit of blogging.  I’m in a good mood ‘cause the final Dress Rehearsal yesterday was a pretty gratifying experience.

The show came back into focus for the first time since the final run-throughs in the rehearsal room a couple of weeks back.  Since then, in the sessions involving putting the show on stage, lighting it and adding the band into the mix, the cast has naturally backed off from throwing themselves into it with total abandon.  And this show only works when they do just that.  It’s a tricky production for the performers, very exposed and stripped-down.  It’s not driven by a lot of vivid moves, scenic transformations and dramatic shifts in lighting.  It casts a cold, detached light on the Orpheus story.  It constantly throws out road-blocks in the way of both the cast’s and the audience’s path towards identifying emotionally with what’s going on. It doesn’t wallow in feeling but, hopefully, earns it the hard way.

Yesterday the (admittedly!) invited audience followed it with great concentration.  The performers again became those people at that party, not trying to portray the events but finding themselves in the middle of them.  At the note session after the rehearsal, we all felt the same exhilaration.   It was, for me anyway, a pretty great feeling.

Notes from a counter-tenor

Today, dear readers, I thought you might be interested to hear some thoughts from a different perspective. May I introduce to you a very talented young man, James Laing, who is our counter-tenor.

2nd February 2007

Well, much like our illustrious director, this will be my first time attempting to 'blog' and I'm actually rather nervous about it. What if I say something that he doesn't agree with? What if my spelling sucks and my sentences don’t string together coherently? What if.......oh well I can’t dwell on these things now because we're about to start the first of Stage and Piano rehearsals (the first time we go on stage) and there ain’t no going back over things!

It's been a pretty hectic rehearsal period for me. I started out staying with an old school friend’s parents (who were extraordinarily kind) and have just, last week, moved into a bungaloid in Ripon with my wife, Annie, and dog, Macey. There are boxes everywhere and it's all a bit crazy but it seems every time I come home something else has found a place (thanks Annie) and it feels more like home. Because I'm going to be based at Opera North for a while we thought it best to base ourselves up in Yorkshire so we are renting whilst looking for the perfect familial home with a couple of acres, so if you happen to know somewhere.........

 

(James,left, with Nicholas Sharrat, one of the two tenors. Photo: Brian Slater.)

Enough of the home life, you really want to hear about the show, and what a show it's going to be. Up until last week I think we'd all found it quite tough. I try not to think about what my character is going to be like before we start, because generally it's always different from the director’s vision, but I thought I was safe thinking that I would be a "Shepherd" buddy of Orfeo as in the score. In actual fact I'm an ego driven pop artist who's rather jealous of Orfeo's greatness....quite a change. Now that we are doing run-throughs it's all becoming clearer, and it means that our characters can develop that little bit more.

The hardest thing about rehearsing a show is the fact that it can all get rather bitty. You rehearse one thing, leaving you in one particular frame of mind which you then take to the next scene, except that when you next come back to the original scene something has happened later on that means that your character wouldn't necessarily have acted as you'd originally done it so you have to put your brain into a different mental state! It's all part of finding the best way to tell the story though and it gives your character real depth.

I suppose I ought to mention our director, Chris. He's been totally fantastic so far (until he changes the whole show next week) and I don’t envy him having to deal with 13 principals who are onstage for the whole show, especially ones with egos like ours! It must be rather distracting trying to fine tune a scene with two or three singers while the rest chat away and do Sudoku - I blame it all on Amy (Freston) who's costume if far too distracting).

 

(James in rehearsal. Photo: Brian Slater.)

Even though the opera world seems so small I only knew three of my colleagues when we first started rehearsing. It's been great getting to know everyone, experiencing how they perform and their work ethic. There's always something to learn. The main exponent of this has to be Paul Nilon who blows me away every time he sings. He's perma focussed, totally in character, gives it everything and then when the break comes he's back to being laid back Mr Smiley.

We had our first rehearsal with the Orchestra today. I always love the moment when, after 4/5 weeks of rehearsing you get to hear how it's actually going to sound, and this show sounds special. I can't believe how amazing Monteverdi's writing is. It's completely out there in terms of rhythm, harmony and texture that I find it hard to believe that it was written 100 years ago let alone 400! The added bonus for me are recorders.....I love recorders.

Before I sing off, err I mean sign off, I ought to mention the music staff of Chris, Rob, Annette and Rosabla who have been a thorn in our sides correcting our Italian, introducing us to feminine cadences and generally messing our heads up with statements like "If it's written as a flat, you actually want to be sharp on it and vice versa".....crazy! Basically they've collectively made us work our socks off, which I'm sure, dear reader, you will appreciate in two weeks time!

See you then,

James