So, once more to the ballet.  And to a real appreciation of the other arts and how they focus the mind on aspects of one's own craft which might need more work.  I watched a light descend dramatically low into a stage full of dancers at one point, and thought, gawd, had those been opera singers, two minutes would have sufficed for *someone* to have failed to heed any of the thousand warnings from stage management and been carted off to hospital with a bleeding forehead...

I know I've said it before, but they are so physically AWARE - of course the athleticism and the flexibility is amazingly impressive, but, well, I can't hope to achieve that (it's useful, though, as a comparison for those members of the lay public who believe that "anyone can sing" . . .  yep, most of us can howl happily through a tune in the shower - but those who power through an evening of opera on stage are to the shower-singing what ballet dancers are to those who happily tread all over their partner's feet after a couple of beers in the pub . . .).  The physical hangover of a good evening at the ballet is, for me, at least a couple of days of finding myself balancing on one foot whilst trying to extend the other gracefully (thank goodness for yoga in this respect.  Most of the time, I don't actually fall over.)

Thank you to my dance colleagues who gave so much tonight (whilst I am very aware that what we as opera singers do is generally no picnic in the park, we very seldom sweat so hard that a sudden turn will send an arc of sweat droplets flying from our foreheads and catching the stage lights.  That's, like, proper physical work.)

And then I get to cycle back home past the above panorama.   Yep, my life is good!

Well, yep.  Sometimes a day doesn't turn out quite how you expected.  I was singing the modern (Henze) role again this evening, my first outing as the Kurfürstin for... argh, nearly three months!! At times the system here feels absolutely crazy - six weeks of intensive rehearsals, then the premiere, a second performance a few days later - then a seemingly totally random series of dates, often separated by ridiculous blocks of time.  In this case it was made worse in that I started off being a rehearsal cover, then jumped in for the second performance, and then today's was a scheduled performance in my own right.  Still, as I said.  Nearly three months separated the last time I sang this from today.

So, reasonably enough, I was a little nervous about how this evening would go.  I had time to prepare and had sung through the role a few times, and had even got as far as watching the DVD twice (at least the dress rehearsal is recorded here, just for internal use, so that, should any roles need to be sung by someone jumping in at the last minute, they can see what they're meant to do when.  This probably works better when you are totally focused on your character because, for example, you have to sing it in a few hours and haven't a clue what the production is like;  I found my attention wandering horribly because I kept seeing bits I hadn't really seen from the front before and forgetting to watch my character closely.)

Which meant that I bowled up to the evening not 100% certain of being in charge of myself.  I was lucky enough to have had a refresher rehearsal earlier in the day, with others in  the cast, but still... for me, a lot of the memory problems in this piece are to do with counting rather than words or notes - I don't see WHY I should hold this particular note for four bars or six or whatever, so I have to remember to count them off rather than FEEL them,  Which, for me, is something that doesn't necessarily come naturally (yes, I know.  Those who know me personally will be laughing their heads off about that.  In other walks of life I have been known to be an OCD mathematical perfectionist.  Just not in singing mode!!).  And my brain "helped" by for insane little reasons of its own going through Act III of Tosca note by note, chord by chord.  Thank you, brain.  NOT.

So as the curtain went up I was having to breathe in a mindful manner in order not to panic.  

And then all the learning I'd so conscientiously gone through kicked in, and I SAW the pages in front of me, and I loved the prompter for saying what I knew came next but just reassured me I was in the right place...

Yep.  One of those evenings where everything comes together, and everyone grins at each other afterwards.  One of those.  I'm SO privileged to find myself in the middle of even one of those in my life.  

Happy!!!

© Martina Pipprich

So here I am as my first old lady!  This (me as Filipyevna in Eugene Onegin at Staatstheater Mainz) was taken from the programme, which is first circulated at the premiere - boy was I glad not to have looked at the photos until my singing was done!  I have written before about the strangeness of trying to appear old, in a world where youth and vitality are paramount.  It's a bit of a blow to the old vanity, however, to see concrete proof that I succeeded.  Here especially it is evident that the deliberate sagging of my facial muscles (except when I was actually singing) was effective.  Of course, this was the effect I was aiming at; as an artist, I am proud of what I have achieved with this character.  I dedicated my performance at the première to the memory of my dear friend and mentor Philip Langridge; he spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince me to let my barriers down; last Saturday, for the first time, I allowed the public to see my true vulnerability; old, increasingly lost, physically slower and weaker, the life energy not burning as strongly as before...   I am immeasurably grateful to the (wonderful) director for letting me explore this to the limits yet recognising that it cost me a lot to rein in my vitality.

That, however, was ON stage.  Offstage, my vanity is evidently unquenchable!  My need to appear as glamorous as possible increased exponentially as my portrayal of age and uncertainty grew.  This short recording is set to a photo taken of me at the première party - the irrepressible beat of the Brazilian music a counterpoint to the Russian-ness all around.  I was rather gratified that the tenor reported his family failed completely to recognise me, the difference was so great...

I'm looking forward to further performances.  The production is fabulous, and my colleagues absolutely top-notch; without their support I doubt I could have let go so completely.   Here's to life not daring to imitate art for at least a few more decades, though!!

Once again, deep in the mire that the Germans call Endproben.  Those sticky, uncomfortable times before the première, when everyone is tired and emotional and could probably benefit from a week in bed but hey the orchestra (heavily unionised) is called for these rehearsals and so you just have to turn up and either repeat the same scene until you're hoarse, or wait endlessly and fruitlessly to be called...

These orchestral rehearsals, for me at least, are about calculating to a decimal point just how far in advance I should anticipate the conductor's beat.  (Now you see, those who consider singers stupid probably don't know about this sort of thing.)  All to do with physics.  The sound travels out from the orchestra to the public.  It travels at the same rate back to us singers.  Therefore if we wait until we hear the music from the orchestra, the public is going to hear our voice as late, compared to them.  The phenomenon gets worse the further back on stage you are, so there's a lot of thinking, hmm, moving back as I go here, must anticipate the beat earlier and earlier as I walk...  It's a particularly difficult aspect of staging for me, as it's pretty counter-intuitive.  You want, as a musician, to sing WITH the orchestra! 

Add to that occasionally-open side stages, meaning that any singing in that direction at certain times in the production is severely counter-indicated (i.e. all your colleagues say your voice is completely lost if you look left at a certain time).

And the beauty of the props or costume department substituting something totally unfamiliar at the last moment, probably without telling you.  I survived a new main prop - my samovar (sturdy Russian tea-making equipment) fairly unscathed, and even managed to maintain a freeze despite a colleague frustratedly ripping off her shoes in my ear, and throwing them, one by one, over the stage; was however despite everything proud of a conversation with the props department about sticking this new samovar together (I knew they were going to do it, there were a LOT of ribber bands around) where I actually managed to convey my wants / needs in succinct sentences, conveying (hopefully!) the fact that if they get the angle wrong, the spout of the kettle will probably end up embedded in my larynx at some point,

Not to mention the bittersweet loss of the spontaneity of rehearsals.  This is when a production is coalescing; solidifying.  From now on we are performers, but the playful, joyfully free, creative aspect is of necessity curtailed.  Every performance will feel different, of course.  However this loop back in time and memory will always take place on THIS harmonic shift; the envelope will be placed in her hand on precisely *this* chord.  Satisfying to have worked out the ways to get there at the right moment;  sighing for the time when this was all to play for and meant the world. 

Nitpicking is of course necessary at this point.  Doesn't mean we have to like it :-)

All aspects colliding at present.  Which is probably just as it should be at the point of the piano dress.  (First time out with make-up, original costume, lighting (of sorts), technical wizardry, so those are basically the focal points, rather than our singing or the music - hence no orchestra, just piano accompaniment.)

First time in my life I have *fought* to appear unattractive!  Or at least older.  The costume designer (who is also in charge of the make-up concept) was supremely helpful throughout costume fittings.  Her ideas are fabulous; nothing outré, everything suited to both the character involved and the overall concept.  She was fabulous (although maybe slightly bemused) when I wanted rid of a belt because I needed to get rid of my waist as an older woman; accommodated my barefoot ghost-wanderings (did I mention I'm fairly hard to kill here?) and wandered dangerously near obsessive territory when waxing lyrical about Granny shoes purchased unworn in Basel after a gap of nearly sixty years.  (Myself, I can see why they were unworn.  I think costume designers have a different take on fashion.)

Anyway she wanted minimal/nude make-up for us all, and... well.  I didn't.  I have worked hard to bend my body into an older, less sure frame for this; we collaborated upon clothes which hid my figure and projected an unfashionable image; for myself (in all my insecurity) I needed a slightly altered face from which to face the world in this persona.  I shamelessly played the "oh lord if you don't give me decent make-up you're basically telling me that I look about 70 au naturel" card, and in the end, I got my wrinkles.  Subtle, yes, of course, but... hooray.

Which is veeeery weird, because there was me arguing passionately AGAINST looking good.  How does that even happen in real life??   Interesting, though.

What I personally also found to be fascinating (in a sort of geeky technical way) was the conductor's comment that when I was right at the back of the stage, I needed to be more before the beat.   I took it on board by basically working out how far back along I was on stage at each point, and relatively when I needed to anticipate the beat because of that.  And people think that opera singers are stupid!  One of those paradoxical things where, if you stop to think and calculate, you often fall off the gate you're sitting upon because the world just got too damned complicated.  But if you just tell yourself, yup, further back means more anticipation of the beat, and allow your body to work it out on its own, it really does.  Wonderful!

There's more.  Of course there's more.  However a morning call tomorrow (first stage rehearsal with orchestra) means that I probably ought to stop now, and pray for a minimum of sleep.

And also for a proper Ending.  I shouldn't laugh, but I was out front for the last scene tonight, and all the repressed emotional fireworks ended up with ... the curtain falling JUST before the final passionate phrase.  Ill-suppressed sniggers all around, the director calling out plaintively that the Oneging had a couple of sentences still in him...

Ah, just for that, accepted with a grin between good colleagues, it's all worthwhile.  Fabulous!

This week  I met the Lord of the Underworld.

Turns out that said lord is a rather portly German with a greying moustache, piercing deepset eyes and a nice line in blue boiler suits.  He welcomed me to his domain with evident relish, exclaiming, aha at last we meet formally, Frau Marriott!! (In this theatre everyone says hello to everyone else, even if they don't know them from Adam.  (Which I bet freaks out a lot of visitors from less friendly parts of Germany and even the world.)  Ergo we'd said hello a few times, but somehow I'd never been to the world underneath the stage.  In fact it took a few panicked moments once the call came to start the rehearsal on the... rats I don't even know what it is in English!! Unterbühne in German - under-stage... before I remembered a narrow door by the side of the stage manager's desk into which one occasionally sees conductors disappearing.  I tentatively opened it, trod carefully down a dark staircase and entered a new world.

My new friend was so proud of his domain.  He explained about there being four separate podia (do I mean podia?  Each is a podium.  Pretty certain I do.  Greek comes to mind.), which can be operated separately or together.  They sink to a depth of two metres and rise even further than that.  He said a lot more technical stuff which I either didn't understand (things to do with cool machines, I think) or which passed me by completely because I was so enthralled with the feeling of being in a different world.  The light was not the same as above, there are gates and rules and occasionally shuddering movement...

And these things are available in theatres such as this, and are not used as much as (in my opinion) they should be.

I have been having an ongoing discussion with a friend of mine about production values, 

stage interpretations which differ from those specified by the composer, the loss of grandeur on the stage etc etc.  It's a good discussion.  There are lots of common points.  We both regret the lack of beauty on today's opera stage.  

And while she openly laments the rich costumes and lush staging of years gone by, for me it's something of a guilty pleasure.  I can, as a performer, see why it might have become too much, in the years of, say, Visconti productions.  Whatever you were trying to express would have been so easily overcome by your beautiful and overwhelming dress and surroundings.  Most of me, artistically speaking, would rather communicate frankly and directly with the audience.  However a little bit of me also yearns to wear a pretty dress.  In this day and age, that's pretty much inadmissible.  Shame!

Because yes, moving away from the sequins and glitter and surface was a good thing; however we have in most cases thrown the baby out with the bathwater.  If the public has NOTHING to focus on but a poor bloody performer in a modern cheap-looking nightie for twenty minutes of Mad Scene, with a background of nothing but scaffolding, have the directors no idea of just how much stress that particular performer is now under?  Alone, they have to provide the interest of the background, the costumes, any other players in the scene.  Been there, done that, had my batteries totally drained.

Some of the most powerful productions I have ever seen have been modern interpretations.  However many have denied the necessity of beauty.  And that, for me, negates their worth as art.  Beauty is powerful in a way we seldom allow nowadays.  A direct line to the soul.  Perhaps the most  beautiful production I ever saw was Strauss's Die Frau ohen Schatten, with stage sets by David Hockney.  Immaterial, non-referential, and totally relevant.

Were there a movement to bring the beauty back into opera in our time, I would gladly join it.  (It's not likely to happen.  We're really a community of cats who walk alone.  Not terribly compatible with political movements.)  Meanwhile. I shall do what I can to push for the shock of beauty in our modern world.  Supporting, of course, this particular production. Which starts in the dark nothingness of my proudly-introduced underworld as a nostalgic song, rising literally to the present as the older generation (myself included) joins in the song...

Whatever I meant to say about the magic of theatre, I shall elaborate upon later.  QUITE enough meandering words to be going along with!

Yesterday I acted my socks off.  Quite literally.

(I do apologise that I am writing again so soon after my previous (probably rather odd-seeming) musically mystical offering, but hey.  How often do you get to spout such a line?  Couldn't resist.)

This has all to do with my character in Eugene Onegin.  We (the director and I - more about him later) have had such fun with her.  I have been through a gradual descent into dementia, made all the more mind-bending by taking place within a journey that replicates another...

He's set the beginning of the opera in a train journey to St Petersburg that takes place after most of Acts I and II, when the family moves to St Petersburg.   I start off very uncertain and forgetful, wandering along the train in search of.. the loo?  The past?  Whatever.  The future is utterly uncertain, the present very insecure, grabbing hold of at least the certainties represented by (in my character's case) a samovar - the only way to make the past something remembered and solid.

And then the layers of memory kick in, and, wandering unsafe and uncertain (and probably still looking for the toilet!), she sees Lensky and Onegin...  The past comes to the fore once again, everything returns to the crystal clarity of what she's currently seeing... we're in the past/present (and if we're of a philosophical or over-thinking bent, we're buggered once again).

In this opera I had assumed from what was written that I would be out of the picture pretty much by the end of the first act.  Which is when my singing role comes to an end.  Nope.  Carry on, much wandering around in my nightie etc.  Well, fair enough.  Thought I'd got a promise that I was DEFINITELY dead by the time the family had reached St Petersburg in the third act, however (this would have perhaps released me to bow, after the première, after the break, therefore getting to tootle home at least an hour before the others!),

Turned out, yes I did indeed die , but I still have to wander (once!) across the stage.  As a ghost.  And in the slow, slow movement, reach out once to lightly touch Tatjana - and remind her with an invisible frisson that she has no-one in whom to really confide any more.

Except, ohhhh the WRONGNESS of crumpled socks when you're a ghost.  Tried it once, then went to the director and asked if I couldn't do this being-dead thing barefoot and upright, practising gliding along etc etc.  And the director agreed.  Wonderful.  Hence acting my socks off :-)

(The socks in question are hand-knitted, most likely by one of the prompters here, who always has knitting needles in hand.  As I have never knitted a sock in my life and have no intention of starting, I present a photo of a very weird pair of gloves under construction. They were for my mother at Christmas and I was making them up as I went along.  I can tell you that crocheting gloves is a jolly strange business, when you have no pattern...)

For a moment today the world fell away and all was pure light and ecstasy... oh this has to be the best job in the world!

I was called for a Sitzprobe (rehearsal with orchestra) of Eugene Onegin - very early on in the process but the conductor wanted to get a couple of tricky scenes worked through.  There was at this point just me and the soprano, and for some reason instead of sitting on the tiered seating behind the orchestra as normal, we were bang in the middle of the players.

I will admit that I'd spent the earlier part of the morning absorbed in Walt Whitman's poetry, and was probably therefore rather more inclined towards wonder than usual - but this was really the most amazing experience.  We'd already gone through a previous scene a couple of times, and then moved on to the bit just after the famous Letter Scene.  

It starts with a sunrise.  Tchaikovsky's writing here is superb - a pianissimo start with a minor chord murmured darkly by the bassoons, rising slowly and inexorably, creeping tone by semitone upwards, in a marvellously long crescendo, to a triumphant and massive C major chord... and I was so flooded with the music, with its beauty and the actual resonance of the instruments all around and through me, that with that final held chord, it felt like the sun had not just come out in my head, but that I had actually disappeared into the light.

This is the scene in question, in case anyone's interested.  I can assure you it sounds even  better if you're lurking amongst the instrumentalists - and afterwards I reflected on just how lucky I was to experience such a thing.  

If I had any doubts that music was my religion, they would have been put to rest today.

(Mmm, I know the firework pic isn't quite right -  but for all the spectacular sunsets I've leaped to photograph here, I don't have a single one of sunrise, which tends to creep in quietly in shades of grey...).

On the Importance of Posture

Thing is, you see, I thought I knew all about posture.

When I was in music college, I paid my way by working as a secretary in the School of Dental Hygiene (yep, just as fascinating as it sounds) on weekday mornings, and studying singing the rest of the time.  The sheer psychological / physical effort involved in swapping hats over and over again (as a secretary you are (a) often sitting hunched over a hot keyboard all the time you're there and (b) expected to put yourself aside to make your bosses' lives as smooth as possible; as a singer you need to be upright yet free, and frankly to put yourself first) was not doing wonders for my shoulders, which were often to be found stuck to my ears.

So I took advantage of cut-price Alexander Technique lessons and gained back the physical freedom of childhood (yes, I had to work at it, but my goodness, the work paid off).  The feeling of free and easy bodily balance, both when static and in movement, was so exhilarating that I resolved never to lose it.  Ever since then I have been aware of slight imbalances and tensions, and have corrected them at the first signs, however long it took.

The results aren't bad, either.  It helped my singing a lot, and I often get compliments on my good posture.  Or people thinking I'm a lot taller than I actually am (well I put that down to posture but it could also be my addiction to vertiginously high heels...).

I was even aware of the psychological aspects of posture, especially since having watched this excellent TED video (WELL worth your time to watch, whatever your calling in life).

So basically tootling along feeling pretty pleased with at least that aspect of my existence, and probably looking irritatingly smug about it.

Then...

Well, this week has seen the start of the Onegin rehearsals, and I have thrown myself into the challenge of portraying an old lady with the onset of dementia.  From the start I knew that I wanted tension in my fingers, producing slightly clawed "arthritic" hands, and a slight forwards stoop to my shoulders.  I welcomed slightly uncomfortable shoes from the costume department (the designer was rather amused that I asked to be made as shapeless as possible but drew the line at my hopeful request for a bosom drooping down to my knees) and allowed my neck to express a fear of the world around me.  I am experimenting with just how much to slow my movements down.  Subtle things - really trying not to "portray" old age as such; aiming rather to allow the audience to feel the aches and physically sympathise.

I think it's going pretty well, actually.  I mean, I can consistently apply the above and yet still sing freely (ahem, when the Russian words don't fly off into the ether, that is).

EXCEPT - my goodness I really hadn't banked on those small and totally physical shifts having such a pronounced effect on my mood.  Despite enjoying the rehearsals immensely, I could feel misery creeping up upon me virtually by the minute.  And it was a vicious circle; as the insecurity descended, my shoulders stayed stooped even when grabbing coffee with my colleagues in the canteen.  I found myself avoiding eye contact even with friends, and feeling, for no good reason, utterly desolate.

This was just a few days of submissive, beaten posture, worming itself into my psyche and trying insidiously to destroy my confidence.  It really is that powerful.

Very luckily for me, my best friend is something of a yoga expert, and recommended various postures as defence.  I incorporated those into my (shamefully spotty) yoga practice, and felt the results straight away.  For those interested, they were downward dog for quieting the mind, back bends and raised arms for optimism and energy, and various power postures.

So that particular crisis has been averted, and I am left in awe of the sheer power of the mind/body connection, and determined to counteract my bad posture while acting this role with supportive postures before and afterwards.

However as I look around me I see - everywhere - bad posture.  People slumping over computers, slouching tiredly in the bus, scuffing the pavements as they scuttle past me in town...  How much misery around us - and in us - is due to this correlation?

So please, if you haven't done so already, take the time to watch the TED video I linked to above.  Or if things are chronically bad, do search out an Alexander Technique practitioner - or maybe Feldenkrais if Alexander Technique is not for you.

Sorry if this comes across as evangelical, but this week has been something of an eye-opener for me in this regard and I simply want to make as many people as possible aware of the clear and present dangers of bad posture.

__________________

Photo is, as always, completely unrelated!  A rainy day coming through the graffiti-enhanced underpass looking out onto the Rhine, with a neon-turquoise-lit cruise ship as focal point.  I like that tunnel!

Well WELL.  This promises to be a lot more interesting than I had feared!  We had the concept speech for Onegin today, so from now on it's all go.  I've just about got the words nailed (although some of them currently feel about as safe as nailing jelly to a tree) and have sung through the role enough times to feel vocally secure (it's not that it's at all a difficult sing, it simply doesn't sit where my voice blooms naturally, so have had to work on keeping my voice even throughout the registers).

I have to admit, however, that I was a little - no, a lot - nervous about portraying this character.  What I tend to do really well is stand on stage and scare people.  Or cast spells on them, or seduce them, or any combination of the above.  I'm fairly tall, and I hold myself naturally pretty upright.  Which is great if you're cast as the regal lead role - and an interesting challenge if you're portraying the old nanny at the end of a life of servitude.

I had been playing around with ways of showing age without "showing" age (and naturally still being open and relaxed enough to sing properly), wondering exactly how old the director would want me to be, and hoping desperately that he wouldn't simply say "Right.  Sweet and doddery old retainer - GO!" and concentrate entirely on the leads (it's in my opinion unprofessional but, erm, has been known on occasion!).

Now I can relax, and breathe, and launch myself into what, with the right support, will indeed be a very exciting challenge.  The director had some great ideas for the whole piece, and had evidently thought very thoroughly indeed about how each and every character fitted in.  Funny how you instinctively relax when you realise the person in charge knows exactly what they're doing.  And just how quickly that realisation sets in.

So.  What he wants from me is an old woman whose mind is starting to fray but who is trying not to let it show (apart from anything else, she's terrified that if she's no use any more, she'll simply be chucked out by the family.  Historically not an unreasonable fear.).  Total vulnerability.  No over-the-top wandering around with outstretched arms looking mad, no wild-eyed panic (shame, I'm not bad at that!), no explicit "Ooh look - dementia!".  Nope.  This is going completely against physical and mental type, and doing so subtly and to the side of the stage.

The journey begins!  Wish me luck...

Learning words again.  Today, this is driving me absolutely up the wall.  I am irritated beyond belief that the phrase I have been dinning into my brain all morning will not stick properly!

And in case you think I haven't been trying properly, well let me explain what the process has been so far.  This is for a Tchaikovsky opera, in the original language.  I was lucky enough to study Russian back in the day, so I at least have the advantage of being able to read the language, and recognising many words.  I also have a pretty good idea of pronunciation.  However there are many archaic words here which I haven't come across before, and of course singing pronunciation differs slightly from the spoken word.

So the first step was to make sure I understood every word I was to be singing, and those of everyone else in the scenes my character is in.  Laborious work with a dictionary, but essential.  Next was to screw down exactly how each word in my role should be pronounced, with the help of a CD produced especially for us by a Russian coach.  As an accented language, it is tremendously important to understand where the stress is in each word, as the vowels change drastically according to whether they are stressed or not, and how far from the main stress they are.

Next was to have an initial coaching with the Russian coach (with two of the repetiteurs who will be taking the musical rehearsals attending and taking notes).  This sharpened up a few details; a rounder vowel here, a harder consonant there... and unearthed a complete tongue-twister which I hadn't actually noticed was difficult until the coach remarked upon it, after which I tripped over it helplessly and repeatedly (have to laugh at how the mind works, sometimes).  All duly noted down in my score.

And now the grunt work.  I generally choose to work from the end of the score backwards, so that my brain is always moving towards something about which is it surer.  Each sentence, each phrase within a sentence, each repeat, has to be drilled into my brain with a thoroughness that would surprise many people who see singers as fly-by-night non-musicians.  It's not enough just to remember it.  It has to be so well-absorbed as to be automatic.  There are times for every singer on stage when your brain goes totally blank.  You simply have to be able to trust that once you open your mouth, the right words will come out (often leaving you thinking in a slightly amused fashion, ah THAT's what I was trying to remember!).  Knowing the meaning of the words is essential, but this learning must also be the sort of rote repetition that sticks the sounds of the words into a deep place in your brain.  THIS is what I've been doing today.  

Some people are better at this than others.  I'm not bad, I reckon, but I have a tendency to overthink which can mean I worry about whether I will remember the next phrase, generally a self-fulfilling prophecy... so I HAVE to drill every word, every phrase, every cue in with military precision.

Hence spending an entire morning on ONE damned phrase which is a bit of a beast to pronounce and in which two particular consonants (in a previously unfamiliar word) appear desperate to swap themselves around.  

They will NOT get the better of me!  Luckily, in this age of miniaturised bluetooth handsets, someone walking around town appearing to speak to themselves is not regarded as automatically crazy :-)

(The photo is of the single glorious blazing hour when the Rhine suddenly caught fire and dragons swooped through the burning clouds; the only light and colour we've had here all year!)

Now THAT was what you might call satisfying.  Jumping in for my (unfortunately for her, and I DID send her a get-well-soon message!) sick colleague, to sing the role I had been covering for the past six weeks in rehearsal.

DEFINITELY the best thing about tonight was the support and good wishes I got from all sides.  That made me SO glad: not just a hug from every single colleague on the stage, but grins and toi-toi-toi (German version of "break a leg") from everyone I met en route.  Anyone who says the Germans are an unfriendly lot are simply in the wrong place :-)  That made me very happy.

Of course it wasn't a perfect performance.  For a start, I'd never been on the stage myself with orchestra, and it sounds very different back there (especially with modern opera, what you hear in the piano reduction - and calculate pitch from - might well not be audible).  Oddly enough, what I found myself concentrating on most was how to sort out small glitches, not necessarily my fault, just the sort of thing that happens on stage - hmmm, that veil fell in the wrong place, what if I grab it as I kneel before the next phrase, then I can let it fall to the left as I stand up... and rats that bandage failed to make it to its allotted resting place, so if I position my right foot here I can kick it as I step across... that sort of thing.  Which means I had studied the music and the role thoroughly enough to simply allow them to happen.  It's always good to have proof positive that such is the case!

So this was a good end to this phase of my working life (of course it's always possible that I might have another performance in this role; I don't know as yet).  As said before, covering is never going to be "my thing" (and I have absolutely no idea how those who mainly make a living out of it manage to retain their sanity), but I managed to achieve the goal I had set myself, of doing good enough work to earn the respect of the director and conductor, whilst staying quietly in the background until needed.  And that, combined with now being able to list the role officially, since I have now sung it in a public performance, is most gratifying.

___

The photo, in case you're wondering, has absolutely bugger-all to do with the above ramblings.  I just like it because it looks a bit like an eye.  It was taken in a tunnel in the Citadel in Mainz, with artificial lighting in the foreground and snow in the background. 

A new year!  I wish you all a happy and healthy 2013 (2013!!  Still sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel.  I suspect I am showing my age with that comment...); and thank you so much for keeping up with me here.

So have I anything world-shaking to import now?  Nope.  The recession is biting HARD into the whole of Europe - indeed as far as I can see, the world - and singing jobs are few and far between.  So far this season, despite the good will of agents, I haven't had a single audition.   Anyone in work is hanging on with tooth and claw, and the theatres are, as described previously, trying to cast everything without using guests. 

Well of course that could be damned depressing.  However I was reminded as I walked through St Pancras station in London a few days ago that it is really all a matter of perspective.  The last time I'd walked along those particular paths, I'd been temping and HATING it.  I might be living slightly hand-to-mouth at the moment, but at least I am earning whatever I make as a professional opera singer.  I have a cover role followed by a secondary role, at the Staatstheater Mainz this season.  I am not starving.  I am living in a wonderful place, with a great network of friends, and with family and great friends a click of a mouse away (ah technological advances are SUCH a great help to the expat!). 

And who knows what's to come?  May we all have a year of interesting surprises...

The photos seemed to chime in with the theme of perspective.  A step nearer, a different camera angle, and... all change.  This was Whitby Abbey,  with in the foreground a copy of the Borghese gladiator, a beautiful classical sculpture.  I prefer the second photo, with (as it were) mankind triumphing over all obstacles...

Happy New Year!!!

I was discussing the transformative power of the theatre yesterday with a colleague.  Not simply the magic that happens onstage - although of course that's why we're all there, and is perhaps the outward and most obvious aspect of what I mean, but also the fact that - and this is especially resonant in Germany, a land where without a bit of paper to prove you can do something, it is generally not believed that you can - so many of the people working here started off as something else.  

Of the two stage managers I have worked with, one started as a singer, the other as a dancer (she has clocked an unbelievable 40 years' unbroken service here!).  The man I was talking to yesterday, a senior lighting technician, started off as a circus artiste!! 

So many people seem to have hidden aspects of themselves, career paths that doglegged somewhere in the middle, drawn instinctively into the theatre, a maelstrom of, if not precisely like minds, at least a certain multifaceted eccentricity.  

In a society where even the slightest deviation from the norm is regarded with huge suspicion, this means that the theatre is probably the only place I could actually work in Germany - and our talk brought it home to me how lucky I was to have landed up in this profession!

OK, well even by my standards that's pretty embarrassing.  I was walking through town today - something I hardly ever do as I usually cycle, but I'd just dropped my bike off for repair and was wending my way rather absent-mindedly back to the centre, reading a book, singing to myself without realising it and occasionally snapping at snowflakes (I like the feel of them on my tongue).  All of a sudden I heard a loud "... and ONE..." followed by gusts of laughter.  I looked up and focused, and there was the conductor of my current opera waving a cigarette at me instead of a baton and laughing like a hyaena...

Standing next to him and also grinning delightedly was his wife, to whom he introduced me.  I was mortified!!  I muttered something along the lines of, oh dear, that's bloody embarrassing... but at least you know I was practising (it had been a rhythmically tricky bit of my role that I discovered myself singing) and scuttled off post-haste.

I have a nasty feeling I made their day!

Ah yes, that time again.  Covering (being an understudy for) an operatic role.  Some people seem quite happy to make a living (an admittedly decent living) from doing this at a higher level,  but I reckon they must be far further along the Zen path of selflessness than I am; I find it very challenging indeed to take a back seat when my entire body is yearning to leap up there on stage and perform. 

I took this on because for lack of a delicate way to put it there is bugger-all going on in the German opera scene at the moment. My agents all report dead space as regards possible vacancies for my voice type, and all the positive thinking and virtuoso singing in the practice room isn't going to change that in the slightest.  So when I was offered a cover for this role, I thought, well better that than simply wandering along the Rhine throwing stones at the ducks.  And, it is (I'm a dreadful thrower, always have been; it would upset me to actually hit a duck by accident!).  Plus, I had a bit of a dead time before a role in a Tchaikovsky opera (Eugene Onegin), and I thought, well why not?

As always, the circumstances differ from the light in which they were first presented.  I had understood that the woman singing our role would be away for a month during the first rehearsals.  Nope.   (Although I did get to sing the first stage rehearsal, therefore getting to create the character's mood from the start...). This means a lot more sitting around (I have embarked for reasons unkown even unto myself upon the embroidery of a golden dragon on long-napped black velvet.  Well, you have to do something in the bits where you are not involved!) than I had anticipated, and I find it hard to bite down the frustration at being so near the creative action yet utterly separate.    And that after having slaved over a hot piano to make sure I was totally au fait with the role.

Still.  Such frustrations are more than made up for when the director (a Big Cheese here in Germany) comes over to thank you, after a day in which you have not sung a note but have embroidered quite a lot of complicated dragon and bitten your tongue a few times, for simply bowling up.  He absolutely didn't have to do that, so I was gratified that he did.  (Directors on your way to Big Cheese status, please take note!).  Somehow this validated the whole thing as what I protested it was: a learning experience.

Because somehow, looked at in the right light, it really is.  I mean, you get to forgo wearing suspiciously sweaty rehearsal dress.  You can arrive at rehearsal three minutes before the start without panicking, and that's even taking into account the lift which invariably wanders up to the second floor or whatever before descending to the infernal depths of the rehearsal stage.  You can look meaningfully at your score, as if you were actually following the action therein, whilst simultaneously stabbing your left index finger rather painfully during a session of free-skating embroidery.  Not least, you really can learn an awful lot from the sidelines.  

I would love to direct at some point in the future.  So being in front of the action is a heaven-sent opportunity to see how things actually work.  This particular director comes from straight theatre, therefore his working practices differ from those of many directors whose only passion is opera.  Again, fascinating.  And last but not least, it feels wonderful to be the one sitting at the back knowing the words backwards, when your counterpart on stage is looking around going, oh bugger was that meant to be my line?  (This invariably happens at some point during the first stage rehearsals; somehow when the body gets involved, the mind often decides to tootle off elsewhere for a while, hence the music you thought you'd got memorised COLD disappearing completely as soon as you have to negotiate a chair, a raked stage, another singer...).

It is really a more delicate balance than those on the outside can usefully imagine.  I am heading into the rest of rehearsals buoyed by directorial interest (feeding the ego; always necessary for a performer) yet cognisant of the debilitating effect of putting my ego deliberately aside.

I shall take courage from another understudy.  We lost the singer in the title role of this opera a week before musical rehearsals began, due to illness.  This is, to put it mildly, an opera which is seldom performed.  Ergo a lot of stress during rehearsals and the end result that we HAVE a singer in the title role but that he won't be here until next week.  

So in order to at least craft something together, the director has drafted in an actor who knows the play to stand in for the lead role and at least act, react and provide a sounding-board for the other singers.

I bearded the bloke after rehearsals today.  Great, sez I, that you propose at a certain point in the action to drag this table over and then  leap nimbly upon into to deliver your final trumpeted thoughts.  Could be the singer coming after might not share your views.

He looked me in the eye and smiled fit to kill:  "Ah, but I'll be long gone  by then..."

I intend to enjoy the whole of the rest of the process!!

Emerging from the fog, as it were.  I always forget just how all-consuming the first throes of rehearsal for an opera can be.  Especially if, as in this case, the lead role is not yet cast (it's a hellishly difficult sing, and the intended singer pulled out just before musical rehearsals began.  He is a consummate professional, so he must have had very solid reasons, but that still leaves other colleagues (luckily not me: the role I am covering is not so big) a bit adrift in a piece which requires long dialogues with the lead...  Let's just say that doesn't lead to happy relaxation, on the whole.

And I also have to admit to having been nervous before the initial music call.  I hadn't sung for this music director before; and no matter what anyone says, it FEELS like an audition when you sing for someone in a position of power for the first time.  It would of course have helped to have had masses of time to prepare this role, or even to have had a more voice-friendly opera to start with, but hey,  beggars can't be choosers, and at least (despite having missed my very first solo entrance due to still... STILL!!!... having to mentally translate numbers from German to English, rats rats RATS!!) we've got that bit over with and from now on it's simply business.

The interesting bit is just HOW exhausted one feels during this process.  The brain seems to focus itself very narrowly, and everything which doesn't directly concern the learning of this particular music is ignored. (I remember coming across a colleague, who shall remain unnamed, stealing a roll of loo paper from the theatre, in the throes of rehearsals; the (understandable) rationale was that there really hadn't been enough time to hit the supermarket...). 

However I must admit that despite all the stress and uncertainty, I really do love these first few rehearsals.  A question of how your role fits in to the rest (in this case it's quite amusing - the court ladies get to sing some really rather beautiful chords before my character leaps in and spoils it all!).  Total concentration on one thing is rather marvellous.

Even if it means you utterly forget to buy loo roll ;-)

More musings on language etc.  I was talking about the power of our level of fluency in a foreign language to unconsciously influence the perceptions of others, and I KNOW I've waffled on about such things before, but I couldn't find the relevant post (goodness I write far more than I think I do!).  Apologies therefore to those who have been bored by this subject before!

What brought this on was the realisation that of the books I am currently reading, two of the "just for the heck of it" category are in German.  That is a definite first.  I have previously read books in German very conscientously, as self-assigned "homework".  Somehow I appear to have got to the stage where they have shuffled over into pleasure rather than duty.  I am very pleased by this; it represents a step change in my reading of the German language which means there are now thousands of books which I haven't read available to me at my local library!!  (You probably won't appreciate this excitement unless you are also an expat bookworm, mind).  (Another drawback is often having to fish a dictionary out of the assorted cushions whilst making the bed, but we'll pass swiftly over that one.)

Interestingly, I have recently noted a slight impatience in the response of native speakers to my attempts at German.  Took me a while to work out what that was about; it would appear that because I have tried (I cannot help BUT try, somehow it is hardwired into my being) to cultivate a native accent, then the better I get at the language, the fewer mistakes are tolerated.  I was a little freaked out by this at first.  However then I got thinking about a good friend of mine whose first language was NOT English, but who spent a certain amount of time in Hawaii whilst growing up.  He sounds American.  However sometimes, due to English being in effect his third language, he makes grammatical mistakes.  And those mistakes are FAR more shocking than those of people speaking with a noticeable accent.  They jar.  And therefore I am actually more inspired by such disapproval, rather than dispirited.

The original subject I wrote about (somewhere) was the disdain which is often felt for those who don't speak "our" language.  It's not a conscious decision, that; but the automatic assumption of superiority is only really obvious once you've experienced the other side.  Once you've sat there, Cambridge degree totally useless in the circumstances, helplessly allowing strangers to judge you  by your lack of witty response to the topic (the time lag involved in translating the subject laboriously into your native language, thinking of something decent to say, then translating it back, basically means that it's inevitable that you're going to be at least three topics behind.)  This realisation means that (damn it! it was so easy!!) you are never again going to be able to dismiss someone simply because he or she does not have complete command of your language.  You now know that a lack of fluency does not automatically mean a lack of thought.  It's a powerful realisation, and one which can really connect those of us reckless enough to charge into learning another language.  I do really feel, however, that at least trying to learn such languages allows us slightly more intimate insights.  Damned bloody hard work.  But maybe worth it.

I thank you all for the good wishes, and thought I would post as soon as possible that the concert in Lisbon was, despite me still being full of cold, a great success. We ended up with one of those wonderful standing ovations where people don't just rise dutifully, poked by their spouse, but actually leap spontaneously to their feet.  Absolutely wonderful!!  The venue was glorious - the picture shows the right-hand wing of the exquisite room in the Palacio Foz where we were honoured to perform.  It ended up packed to the gunnels and my goodness was the crowd enthusiastic!  I was particularly moved at the reaction to my rendition of Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs.  These were the works I have enthused about and absolutely love, but to be honest it's not often that songs composed recently (as in the latter half of twentieth century onwards; these are actually 21st century), never before heard by the audience (I asked.  Definitely not.) and not in the native language get such amazingly positive responses.  I was utterly flabbergasted to be overwhelmed with "Brava"s even before the last chord had faded on the piano...

We were rewarded for our efforts with standing ovations and SUCH enthusiasm.  I was hoping for a video from this but despite having set it all up beautifully, someone managed to knock the tripod while the audience was filing in, and we ended up with footage of the back of various audience members' heads and absolutely nothing of us.  Rats! Still, if the audio footage is decent, I shall put it up (once I have permission from the publisher, which I am still in the process of seeking).  More here, as and when...

So, I have a cold.  Or the sniffles.  Or whatever it damn well is.  Something is irritating my vocal cords, the upshot being that I can't sing at present.

Well hey, you say, make a good strong batch of your patented Singers' Soup (bashed-up chicken wings, ditto masses of garlic, ginger, and as many chilis as you can stand; boil for hours, allow to cool, reheat, strain, add soy sauce to taste, sip endlessly) and go to bed.  I DID.  Whatever this is managed to live through that and continues to plague me.

The trouble is, I am flying to Lisbon today in order to give a concert on Monday, and I don't know whether the voice will be there, and even if it is, how it will behave.

It's hard for non-singers to grasp just how terrifying this is, I know.  Imagine that you are going to play tennis at Wimbledon, for example, but you won't know until you get onto the court and the first serve is flying towards you whether the racket is sound and the strings taut.  There might be a satisfying thwack as you demolish your opponent's serve; there might just as well be a nasty soggy little tearing sound as the ball goes through your racket and the crowd falls silent in sympathy...  You just don't know what state the racket is going to be in as you pull it out of your kit bag.

Such is the uncertainty that a singer faces when nobbled by something as simple as a cold, or allergies.  Then there is the tendency to allow that uncertainty to affect the psyche, which can be fatal to a performance.  Some days you need to accentuate the positive and believe the voice will be sound despite all the gunk on your vocal cords, and lo!  all is well.  Some days you do the same and your voice gets progressively hoarser until you know that if you sing any further you will do some serious damage.  It's a judgement call based on the throw of the dice.  And people wonder why we singers can sometimes come across a little neurotic!!

I am therefore setting off armed with cold medicines, positive thinking, lots of water, my trusty Humidiflyer for the plane, my fingers firmly crossed... and my very flashy "diamonds", given that a nice low-cut dress combined with madly-sparkling jewellery can distract at least a fair proportion of the audience if the voice is not 100%!

Cycling back home this evening I found myself laughing with pleasure.   Some of this was no doubt provoked by the brilliant slip road off the bridge - there's no street lighting, so unless there are cars somewhere you're pretty much zooming along in the dark, but the best thing is it used to be riddled with potholes and they recently resurfaced it, so it's a brilliantly smooth ride, and the feeling of successfully rounding the corner at the bottom, having failed to hit anything vital or fall off the edge, generally provokes a feeling of joy.  However the giggling persisted, and I realised that this wasn't particularly unusual.  I quite often cycle home and find myself laughing.  So thinking about it, either they are sneakily infusing the water supply here with Ecstasy or something, or I am thoroughly enjoying many of my evenings out.  (Well yes OK it could have a little to do with the marvellous wine too, but given that you can lose your driving licence here for being under the influence whilst riding a bike, probably not so much.)

No, the thing is, I have met, and continue to meet, such wonderful people, and have great conversations, which leave me feeling thankful to the point of grinning all the way home.  I think a lot of it has to do with being an expat.  I was discussing this with a friend tonight.  Sociologically speaking, we're programmed deep inside to get on better with "people like us".  And moving away from one's home automatically shifts the boundaries of who gets defined (I'm speaking of the subconscious here, obviously) as "people like us".  Over here in Germany, well it now includes anyone I socialise with who has English as their mother tongue.  Birthplace, accent, social status - all the things which divide us amongst ourselves - here become irrelevant.  And I feel all the better for it.  I have wonderful friends now who I probably would never have met to talk to seriously had we all been in an English-speaking country.  Oddly enough, I think I have almost learned more about how other people's brains work differently (so fascinating!) from interactions with other expats than from socialising with the natives of whichever land I happen to be living in.  Obviously not always; I enjoy hugely the experience of gradually mastering a language, and have done my fair share of return-journey laughter from the sheer joy of having communicated properly with people in a new language.  But I am thoroughly grateful for this experience, and maybe it has permanently broadened my mind.

Certainly makes cycling back home a lot more fun!

Been to the ballet again.

Cycled back with, as usual, my head exploding with observations and questions and frankly trails of wonder.

There follows a selection of these.  As you'll see, there is no way that this lot can be edited into anything resembling a coherent narrative, so I'm just going to leave them roughly as they were...

Dear god.  HOW is it possible that we share the stage with such surefooted, gracile creatures?  I mean, we literally tread the same boards.  We look down on the same people waving their batons at the same orchestra.  We even on occasion share the same composer (tonight was Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake - as of March next year I shall be singing Filipyevna in his Eugene Onegin in the same theatre).  We are all surely doing our best to interpret and communicate the music...  yet, oh yet, we are such worlds apart.

There's all these people knowing to a millimetre where they are in relation to the staging and to each other, and I have been trodden on more times than I care to mention and have had to resort to tripping the tenor over in order to remind him he's meant to be speaking to me.

I wonder if  I could learn to do that with my hands.

Ouch.  I DEFINITELY could not learn to do that with my legs.

Interesting how no-one ever goes up to a dancer at a party and says "Come on then, give us a quick pirouette", whereas we opera singers get asked to "oh go on, just sing something" all the time.  How come it's assumed in all these TV talent (haha) programmes that anyone with a decent voice could be an opera singer, whereas there is pretty much no evidence that anyone has ever said of a bloke with a decent sense of rhythm and who managed not to fall over whilst getting on down at his aunt's wedding, "Oh I bet he could make it as a ballet dancer"?  I am the first to be totally in awe of the physical commitment and hours of practice that the dancers put in.  However we singers are also usually the product of several intensive years of study.  Weird.

Actually I am not totally averse to modern dress on the dancers (this generally means the poor buggers leaping around in not much more than their knickers).  Being visually aware of the demands made on the musculature of the body, especially for the ballerinas, who, hidden by the traditional tutu and tights, can seem to float in a preternatural manner, brings them firstly closer to us humans (yes, the tautness of that muscle betrays how much effort she has to employ in order to hold that leg up there) and then of course takes them immeasurably further away (no, damn it, if I attempted to bring my leg up halfway there it would, with reason, go on strike and probably never work the same again).

Except I rather like tutus.

Even when the blokes are wearing them too.  And both sexes in certain scenes of this production look topless, the men being actually so and the women wearing flesh-coloured tops.  

Interesting how homogenous the dancers look when all dressed the same.  Is this a function of their profession, or of holding themselves in the same positions whilst dressed the same, or what?  Certainly wouldn't apply if you went and mixed in opera singers amongst them :-)  (Certain amount of covert sniggering in the aisles...).

Actually however I like having a decent cleavage! (Oh how un-PC!)

(At half time, squeezing through the throng of sweaty dancers) - oh poor boy, he has goosepimples on his thighs, must be damned chilly, I wouldn't like a costume like tha.... WAIT!!! I am squashed right behind the lead male dancer, him wearing pretty much nothing, and that in tight flesh tones, and I am commiserating with his virtual nakedness?  Do I not realise how over 50% of the population would kill for such a view?...

There are exceptions.  But on the whole, opera singers do not look anything like that in their knickers.

What can I do to better myself in terms of physical awareness on stage?  In terms of graceful moment?  Of surety of aim, of expressiveness of form?

There's always so much to learn.

A singer in transit...

I admit I usually post pretty random photographs, mostly unrelated to whatever I am going on about; this time however I was mid-flight from Geneva to Madrid, en route to a concert, when I looked down at the tray in front of me and thought, oh that could only belong to a singer travelling to a gig.  That made me giggle, so I thought I'd bung up a photo and write about it.

Firstly, of course, there's the sheet music.  Before a gig, I'll often use the time in transit to check and re-check everything I have learned.  Silently, of course (an aeroplane is really not an appropriate place for vocalising!).  The pencil is there in case I notice anything slightly awry and need to make a note.

On the left there is a little rectangular thingumajig.  That's my MP3 player.  It's a marvellous bit of kit, even if it freaked me out when I first got it by rummaging around in my computer and grabbing not only all the recordings, but also all the photos it could find (I didn't know until I was looking for something else that it was even interested in photos!).  Saved in a folder are the recordings of my coachings of the songs / roles I will be performing, and (if needed), me on my own bashing out the odd harmonic change or notes to listen out for, singing the phrases, and counting out loud where the timing is trickiest.  Plugged into this are noise-reducing headphones.  Normal earbuds really don't seem to work for me (they are hellishly uncomfortable in my ear canals) although they would of course take up less room.  I was VERY glad of the noise-reducing capabilities of these little darlings when waiting at Geneva for my ongoing flight - I'd naively thought I could find a nice quiet area to study in - NOOOO!!  For those who might be considering a similar thing, be warned that Geneva airport is plagued by tinny Musak.  Even in the Meditation Room I could hear it twanging away (although it was nice to see a Christian and a Muslim praying separately but in the same space).  Noise-cancelling headphones came in bloody useful, even though they're a little uncomfortable (I sort of inherited them from my father's Collection of Exciting Gadgets, but the foam padding on the ear bits had rotted.  I keep meaning to bodge something together with the feet of defunct stockings or something, but it's been summer so I haven't been wearing stockings... I shall have to try and remember, now that it's turned so definitively to autumn).  (Oh, and that's not just meanness; I tried to buy new foam coverings but was told that because each headset is different, they don't make all-purpose replacements....!!).

Next along is a slightly odd-looking device; a mask made of soft, transparent plastic, which fits over my nose and mouth and leaves me with interesting but short-term weals across my cheekbones from the elastic.  It's not really necessary on short hops, but since using it, my incidence of getting miserable colds approximately two days after each flight has decreased dramatically.  All it does is recycle your own moist breath so that the sensitive tissues of your nose, mouth and throat don't dry out - and I FEEL the oxygen and moisture being leached from the air as the aeroplane starts up! - not rocket science, but it really works.  For long-haul flights I would say it's a must for singers (unless you're one of those irritating cast-iron singers who never gets ill!).   Pretty cheap too.  It's called a Humidiflyer.  If you want one, the link is here.  Yes, it ships from Australia, but the customer service was, in my experience, wonderful.

Half-eaten sandwich - um, wonderful!  You get served up some pretty weird stuff on some of these short-haul flights (return Madrid to Zurich was a small tub of caramel ice-cream...).  I had a home-made ham baguette stuffed into my hand luggage just in case - well, I was due to spend a few hours in a Swiss airport.  Switzerland is many lovely things but cheap isn't one of them.

Finally, a glass of water - of course, as a singer, you need to keep hydrated.  I have a nifty flat-packable plastic water bottle which clips onto my handbag or hand luggage.  Nowadays you can't take your own huge bottle of water through to the plane - fair enough, given the threat of terrorism, but the prices most airports charge for a bit of water are EXTORTIONATE, so I prefer to take my chances with filling my own bottle from the taps in the airport.  Haven't succumbed to any odd diseases from doing this yet.

What?  Ahem, yes, well the wine was slightly accidental. I mean, what's a girl to do when they have run out of tomato juice (my usual drink of choice when flying, complete with accompaniments if available; I read somewhere that your tastebuds are compromised by being so far above the earth; this would of course explain the tastelessness of airline food the world over).  I am pleased to report that I reacted gracefully to this setback and enjoyed the wine a lot!

Safe travels everyone!

I have been thinking about ways of learning, of appreciating music, of absorbing the meaning of a piece.  There are, I believe, two main approaches.  The first is instinctive, emotional, reacting to the tone and energy of the accompanying music; singers who learn like this look very puzzled when asked how they learn their music - once they've sung it a few times, it's obvious to them what goes where!  The other approach is intellectual - counting beats, repetitions, rhythms, imposing order upon seeming chaos; singers who learn only like this tend to look blank only when asked what they do when emotion overtakes them at any given point.

If such things were given to us to choose, I would LOVE to be a totally instinctive singer.  But we don't get to choose, and I'm not.  I over-intellectualise as a matter of course, and whilst my reaction to the music in the practice room is sincerely emotional, I have seldom been able to lose myself wholly in the flow of things when performing.  A snide little inner voice pops up now and again and asks how on earth I know what to sing next, and am I on the first repetition of a phrase or the second...  and this is terrifying!  (This once happened in the middle of a particularly repetitive Handel aria.  I crashed and burned rather spectacularly, and I swore - NEVER AGAIN!).

This tendency of my brain to flip from one mode to the other means that, to feel anything like secure, I have to in effect double my safeguards.  Belt and braces indeed.  On the one hand, there is the need to minutely study note values, counting, working out where you can find the first note of a phrase, knowing what others are singing, knowing what the orchestra is up to in case the cue you were expecting to get from another singer doesn't happen...  Hard work, yes, but if you're not a totally instinctive singer, able to trust your subconscious, utterly necessary.

On the other hand, for a truly worthwhile performance, technical knowledge alone is not enough.  The emotional aspects of the piece have to be considered, explored, dived into, allowed to wash through your spirit; the aim is to understand on a sub-lingual level the feelings which inspire and animate that particular piece.  With any luck, such study will lead to an absorption in the performance of the piece which carries you along to such an extent that the technicalities are irrelevant (or at least required only seldom).

Like a lot of aspects of singing, it's a question of balance.  There is a constant and necessary tension in our art between light and dark (chiaroscuro), between nicely crisp consonants and legato (a smooth line joining all the words we sing, in effect), between vivid energy on stage and finding the right place to deliver the voice to best effect... oh, the list is endless. 

I may be simply in the grip of bog-standard pre-concert panic, mind (useful in that it concentrates the mind wonderfully on what remains to be learned)...  Should anyone be in the relevant cities, forthcoming concerts include the Ateneo de Madrid (23 September) and Palacio da Foz, Lisboa (Lisbon) on 22 October!

So before getting this off my chest, I'd like to clarify that I LOVE the music I sing.  We're paid, on the whole, FAR too little for it to be worth doing what we do without having an unquenchable passion for the music we live through.  Just sometimes, however, it drives you totally bonkers.

The thing is, in order to learn music, it has to be repeated.  Again and again.  And sometimes that repetition gets stuck in the brain...  and a constant soundtrack of one particular piece, however wonderful it started off, can quickly become maddening.  In German they call it an Ohrwurm.  Quite literally, an ear-worm.  Something that has wriggled itself into your brain and can't be got rid of... In this particular case it is a spectacularly beautiful Monteverdi duet (Pur ti miro, from L'incoronazione de Poppea).  Doesn't help that there are repeats in the music itself.  The effect is a gorgeous but unending loop.  I've been living with this for several weeks and it's driving me crazy!  

I've been through this a lot, of course, but (like hauntings, perhaps, if you believe in ghosts), some are more persistent than others. Since starting to memorise this duet, the simple repetition of the melody means that it sets in as soon as sung, and lasts at least the rest of the day.  Which, given that I am practising the repertoire for my next concert pretty much every day, means virtually continuous haunting by this particular earworm.

There's really no cure for this.  You can drive it away temporarily by your concentration being grabbed by something else (a conversation, another piece of music, a great glass of wine), but as soon as you remember it again, it's back.  This effect can last for years; every time I am haunted by an earworm, I remember a holiday in France over a decade ago, when a supermarket visit in the pouring rain instilled the advert for Géant Vert, a French sweetcorn concern, which has remained with me stubbornly ever since... and the ad invariably starts playing in one ear, over and over again.

Worse, it would appear that it is possible to be haunted by two earworms at once.  This is mind-blowing (in my experience they are never in the slightest bit compatible) and even many musicians don't understand why your eyes have crossed and you are incapable of rational thought...

Ah well.  This is simply part of the price we pay to learn.  I am very glad of a couple of concerts coming up for which I have had to learn music new to me, don't get me wrong; it's just that the wriggling of these earworms has been driving me insane - any friends who have found me inattentive during the past few weeks might be reassured by the explanation!!

Apologies for recent lack of communication.  Things have pretty much wound down for the summer on the opera scene here in Europe, but I was busy using the last weeks to keep the momentum going.  Well, that and (certainly in the past week) visiting other countries, figuratively or literally!

The figurative comes from celebrating Independence Day on the U.S. Army Base at Wiesbaden.  It's just up the road from me and I'd never visited before... but goodness, it really is America in miniature.  Bowling alley, hotdogs, ribs... but most of all, Americans in all directions, and all celebrating 4th July with gusto.  And with such *pride* in being American, not to mention good humour (I apologised for being British a few times and always raised a laugh).  The fireworks were splendid, too (even though an officious soldier kept on moving us back and back until we ended up sitting rather inelegantly on the tarmac road.  Whatever.) - the photo is of a firework on slightly longer exposure, which I posted as part of an album on Facebook, and a friend commented astutely that it looked like music.  I have been contemplating it ever since and trying to hear that particular symphony (Scriabin and his synaesthesia come to mind...).

The literal was hopping over to France for a camping trip with friends this last weekend.  Now camping is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when most people meet me, and certainly my friends were a little amused when I set to erecting the tent with gusto, dressed as always in lace, embroidery and sparkly stuff.  As I explained, my father would never have forgiven me for not knowing one end of a mallet from the other.  I ended up with sore hands (pride meaning that as long as someone else was toiling to hammer in tent pegs through what felt like solid rock, I was not going to give up.  (At one point, a group of Dutch blokes walked past as I whacked a particularly recalcitrant peg and the rubber mallet head flew off.  They were highly amused and let out a stream of ribald comments.  Minutes later, I asked my friend what I should do next.  "Oh, you could do the guys on the other side of the tent please," was his answer.  "Not really my type, but they certainly seemed keen," was mine...) (guys = guy ropes, hammered into the ground with previously-mentioned tent pegs in order to prevent the tent sailing off into the night when the inevitable gale arises, for those who don't get the joke...).

It was such a pleasure to speak French for a weekend, even if I was three times mistaken for Belgian.  I suspect that being taken for German last time made me think about my consonant sounds, particularly the "r", and modify them... but not quite enough.  I am certain, though, that *should* some work in France come off, my French would make a dramatic reappearance.  Fingers crossed.  And should some work in Germany come off, well I'd be pleased too; and of course I continue to try and improve my German.  In both cases, rain, or rather summer (indistinguishable at this point; rather like the English weather has followed me, damn it) has suspended play and I shall have to wait until the start of next season to hear anything concrete.

So... a few weeks of being unable to really chase anyone up career-wise.  Pleasepleaseplease let there be sun!!  When it shines here, it is absolutely perfect, and there's the most wonderful open-air swimming pool just down the road.  Meanwhile, of course, there is practice to be done most days.  Just because there are no auditions planned for the next few weeks doesn't mean that I can let the standards drop.  My job at the moment is to keep my audition repertoire fresh, learn thew new stuff thoroughly, and not get downhearted because there isn't as much work around as I would wish.  And the occasional trip to a foreign country, whether real or imagined, certainly helps in that respect.