I saw some spectacular sights before work last night:
Imperial War Museum
from the Lowry
Those dark eyes
watching over me one last time
Imperial War Museum
with a flood of poppies
Those dark eyes again
Gotta take the rough with the smooth
Speed Blog
Shades of Blue - offstage position
I haven’t blogged for some time. It’s been busy and I’ve started three blog posts but haven’t had time to finish them. So this morning I thought I’d try something new - speed blogging! Sounds like some kind of dodgy online challenge doesn’t it? My longer blog posts don’t take too much time to write and they can be spread out over a few days, or weeks as is the case at the moment. What does take time is the photos and editing, which can go on for a few days after publishing a post.
Blogging can be a great way to attract traffic to a website and to please that search engine, and I love written expression. It feels like a safer way for me to communicate as a lot of the time I can’t articulate my thoughts into sentences fast enough. I used to avoid saying what was on my mind but blogging has taught me to better express myself.
This week is one of the busiest so far this year and is the polar opposite of how my life was a year ago. Tonight I’m playing offstage harp for Opera North’s Tosca in Leeds, so I leave at 4pm, play around 2 minutes worth of music and I get home just before 10. It seems crazy that that minute moment of music involves so much time and effort. Tomorrow is a lunchtime chamber music recital at St Paul’s at Huddersfield University followed by a Q&A session around being an orchestral musician, chamber musician and freelancer. It will be an interesting challenge to push myself out of my comfort zone. I’m not a natural public speaker (see above) and I’ve even volunteered to introduce our last piece, Pastorales de Noël by Jolivet. Then I can come home and be ill for an hour as I’ve got a cold, and we get into preparation for Friday, which is the really big one this week - playing the pit part in Tosca.
Debut
In the pit this Friday night
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve always wanted to play Tosca and I set an intention not so long ago to do that. Here we are, the moment has finally come. Saturday and Sunday I get to cover Merry Widow by Lehár, that’s less stressful as I did it when I was in Cape Town and had a decent amount of rehearsal on it. I was hoping for a quiet day off Monday but I might have a rehearsal now. That’s as far as I can go in my head without it imploding.
Warming up
Enjoying a few precious moments with my harp before the shoot
It’s great to be busy. If I could change one thing, it would be the amount of practice time - I would like to quadruple that! My phone stopwatch is ticking and I need to add photos and edit this. I’ve also vowed not to revisit this post and tweak it - my next challenge is learning to let go.
Intention
It's a funny old thing intention, as I'm discovering. At the end of last year, when I was starting to face some major changes I needed to make in my life, I set a few intentions out of curiosity, just as an experiment. I was mildly cynical but willing to give anything a go. At the time I was receiving some coaching around my business which blurred into my personal life too as I realised I had quite a few matters to address across the board. The coaching helped immensely and my life started to take a more positive direction as I felt my empowerment surge upwards. One of the intentions I set myself was to perform Tosca once in my life. I was listening to a lot of music at the time which comforted and reassured me and helped with the deep sense of loneliness I felt. I listened to a lot of Puccini, one of my favourite composers. His harp parts are refined and carefully crafted with such intricate detail and he always writes beautifully for my instrument. His music is a joy to study and any opportunity to plunge my fingers into his generous fistfuls of notes is a delight. Puccini's score is vibrant with passion. In it, he explores a full spectrum of emotions, the colours of which are exposed in his exquisite writing. The pacing of Tosca, both musically and theatrically, guarantees a great night's entertainment for audience and performers alike.
Powerful imagery
Those dark eyes from the Opera North brochure
I've been invited to play in the offstage band for a season of performances of Tosca with Opera North starting this month. I've played this role before, about ten years ago. It's a sweet simple Gavotte for flute, viola and harp which comes at the beginning of Act 2, soon after the soberingly spiritual Te Deum which closes Act 1. It's a lovely moment that vanishes like the twinkling of a star. In so many ways it's a great gig as there's no need to tune my entire harp, which I do anyway because of the resonance, and I don't need to put my orchestral blacks on. I don't even need to wear make up as I'll be invisible to the audience. In theory, when you play in the pit, you're invisible too but I always feel there's something missing unless I've got a slick of lipstick or some eyeshadow to bolster my confidence. After a minute or so playing, I pack up quietly and leave. I always felt musically deprived and hungry for more when making my exit from the backstage area to those delicious sounds that continued without me. An unfamiliar Puccini heroine, I'm looking forward to getting to know Tosca intimately.
You can imagine my bemusement at realising that I'm about to fulfil one of the intentions I set myself at the end of 2017, and far sooner than I imagined. I've been invited to perform the pit part for two performances of Tosca in Hull in November. Hmmm. Interesting. I'm seeing there's a lot to be said for intention. I'd better go and wash my dishes. I've given myself this morning off before continuing to cram - my first rehearsal has been moved forward to tomorrow. Six hours of Puccini on a Monday. What a great start to the week!
Clonter Opera
Clonter
Rose Garden
I'm enjoying a fantastic busy fortnight working at Clonter Opera in deepest darkest sunniest Cheshire. I remember hearing the name Clonter with some fascination as an undergraduate student at the RNCM and I do have a strong sense of déjà-vu, although my memory won't stretch quite that far back. Hailed by some as the Glyndebourne of the North, Clonter is a fantastic endeavour for singers seeking to gain experience of some of the core operatic repertoire and it boasts strong links with the RNCM. If it wasn't for the signage you would be forgiven for mistaking Clonter for just another Cheshire dairy farm. My drive to work past droves of cows lolling along their well-hooved path from pasture to parlour with bovine discipline is proof of the terrain. In effect, it is an opera theatre in a barn. How cool is that? You can find out more about Clonter's fascinating creator Jeffery Lockett and his brainchild by copying this into your browser: https://www.clonter.org/about-clonter/jeffery-lockett/
Workplace welcome
The tree lined driveway and its neighbouring maize fields. Not a parking meter in sight
I arrived bright and early last Saturday morning and had a quick car catnap in the quietest car park you could ever imagine before polishing off my breakfast, having been warmly greeted by Chief Executive Isabella and her faithful companion Cedar the spaniel who, in her tenth year, seems to be something of a Clonter legend. Isabella is a legend in her own right of course. One of three Lockett daughters, she ensures the smooth running of the Clonter Farm Music Trust along with her siblings. I unloaded my harp after being shown the best route into the pit (what, no lift?!) and was helped by another stalwart Clonter personage who goes more than the extra mile to ease all things backstage, the lovely Mel. A natural multitasker, she assumes her role as Production Manager and Stage Manager with the greatest of ease, and I remember her from my more recent RNCM postgrad days. As my colleagues arrived, I felt reassured to see some familiar faces and the new ones proved very friendly - there's a genuine sense of camaraderie in the pit.
With three consecutive six hour rehearsal days kicking off at 10am, and to break down the driving, I stayed over one night at one of the nicest most peaceful hotels I've ever experienced! I slept like one of the trunks outside my window. Everything about Cheshire screams bucolic idyll.
Room with a view
over woodland and a stream
In keeping with my healthy eating plan, I took my own food most days but on Sunday night, I enjoyed the luxury of a naughty chocolatey indulgence. I'm sure I play better when I've had my cocoa fix:
Sunday
Naughtily virtuous supper treat, it was really good and luckily still fresh
I've played in quite a few productions of La Bohème and this is an interesting experience in that it's the chamber version scored for just thirteen lucky players. Unsure what to expect, I wasn't disappointed - the luscious plenitude and delicate intimacy of Puccini's delicious timeless score remains the feast it was the first time I savoured it some twenty years ago.
Vibrato!
First page of my well thumbed beloved Bohème part
I'm one of the luckiest - some of my colleagues have never played Bohème before and devoid of a bigger section of the same instrument playing the same part, I marvel at their skill in managing the negotiation of such a difficult score overflowing with vertiginously tricky corners that just has to be known by heart. How would you explain the broad spacious freedom that is key to Puccini's music? Performing with guts, gusto and increasing swagger, the band sounds impressive in spite of, or possibly due to its reduced forces. It feels great to be unofficially part of a section and I'm perched next to the cello with bass behind just to my left and violins directly in front, and the woodwinds and percussion are facing us on the opposite side for a change. It works. I'm so used to hearing the winds that it's great to hear the string parts with such clarity. That's one of the best things about a lengthier project like this. We've already had 18 hours rehearsal and both dress rehearsal and opening night are now behind us. It's been way too long since I relished the indulgence of a long sequence of rehearsals - every time I get into that pit I hear something new as I start to feel more relaxed about my part in the whole process. I love that, when I get to that stage where I feel so comfortable with it. I'm not quite there yet and I will always have a bit of practice to do to deepen my knowledge of and refamiliarise myself with a part that is so well written that it falls easily and comfortably under the feet and fingers. It's like meeting up with an intimate old friend again after quite a few years. I'm probably the oldest one in the pit except our seasoned conductor, Clive. He has over forty performances of Bohème under his belt and thus a very clear idea of what he wants. In guiding the full voiced exceptionally talented budding cast past the pitfalls of what can be a treacherous piece, he can be a hard task master in what is clearly a beloved work. He certainly kept us on our toes in rehearsal!
Intimate
Great to be beside the woodburning stove again
I do have a very soft spot for opera and one of the things I enjoy most is walking in through the backstage area past an enviable array of intriguing props and equipment. Cue Mel and her team. The oysters look toxically tasty and there will be snow in July. As for the beverages, I'm not giving anything away. Designer Grace Venning has conceived an imaginative atmospheric sepia hued traditional set and costumes and there's an intoxicating Frenchness about the entire production that leaves me with a feeling of peering into the shared accommodation of impoverished students in the gods of Parisian gables with their sublime voices and warm hearts as their only riches. The set transforms miraculously into the breezy atmosphere of Café Momus for Act 2. Jiggling old school light bulbs suspended from what look like a very basic piñata dangling from the ceiling remind me of the importance of lighting and I'm amazed at what can be achieved on what must be a shoestring budget by operatic standards with the clever creative skill of continental lighting designer Petr Vocka. It's difficult to tear my eyes from the stage which I can see very clearly, and that brings me to the other reason I love Puccini operas - I rarely put my harp down. He uses the harp with such variety of colour and precision that it's always a privilege to be offered a chance to perform in any of his masterpieces. Thanks to the genius of Puccini's "verismo", there shouldn't be a dry eye in the house.
At Clonter, the ambience is easily intimate and there's a convivial family feel to everything, from the homely meals offered on rehearsal days featuring the most amazing sausage roll I ever tasted to the mouth watering cakes I managed to resist until Wednesday night. It was the dress rehearsal and we were all warmly invited to supper afterwards. I had some delicious potatoes and a cheeky slice of baguette, not a continental prop I hasten to add. And I succumbed to the heavenly fruity meringue, but not the freely flowing wine, which I was told was excellent. Despite elegantly taking my leave Cinderella style to face my long drive home, it was really good to go and get to know my pit, onstage and offstage colleagues a bit better and find out more about this amazing place.
Gateway
to pool nirvana
Oh, and I did it, my long awaited pool dive. I managed to contain my exuberant enthusiasm until day two when we had a longer lunch break. It didn't disappoint. I tried to enthuse a couple of my colleagues who were quite rightly curious about the moves I'd learnt in my Aquafit classes, but I don't think I'll be giving up my day job...
Puccini
My passion for opera was ignited when I was 17 and I saw my first opera, The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev. I was blown away! When I was in my third year as an undergraduate at the RNCM I was fortunate enough to be invited to perform Madama Butterfly. I just loved being in the pit, and being part of the excitement of all the musical and theatrical elements around me. This was over 25 years ago and I don't think I truly got it.
My first professional job was with the Cape Town Philharmonic, an orchestra that performed symphonic, ballet and operatic repertoire (more about that in a future post). Imagine my delight when Madama Butterfly came up! And with an Italian conductor! Again, I don't think I got it - I was going through a phase where I was quite rigid musically, and Puccini demands so much flexibility, a real feel for every note and the space between the notes, and very specific sound qualities.
I had another stroke of luck in 2012 when I was invited to perform Butterfly again, this time with Opera North, and I like to think this time I got it! Everything seemed to fall into place and I really felt I knew where each note belonged and its significance. Puccini always writes the most amazing harp parts and I have enjoyed each of his operas that I have learnt. My all time favourites are Butterfly of course, and La Boheme, and I often shed a tear in the pit! They're not easy but they just work and fall into the fingers, and are a joy to relearn - there's always a new detail to discover and a different way to interpret a phrase or a new fingering to try.
I will be performing Butterfly again with Opera North on the 28th January. If you haven't seen a Puccini opera, go along and experience it for yourselves - and remember to take your tissues!
In the pit before the dress rehearsal. "America Forever" (it's one of Pinkerton's lines in Act 1) Photograph by Michael Ardron