... though not a glamorous one particularly: a fund-raising recital with the opera company I met N at while we were both doing their Carmen a few years back. All very last minute, but as is often the way came off surprisingly well, even though one of the other sopranos had pulled out so I ended up doing a load of extra duets on no notice. The ( Read more... )

Received passport at eleventh hour - slightly anticlimactic in the end, it was delivered on Wednesday morning by a delivery boy who looked about 14 and clearly couldn't care less. So I went to Salzburg after all and it was lovely, although the whole choir were all pretty much zombies on Thursday thanks to our 6.30 flight. (I got up at 2.45 am ( Read more... )

Well, I'm still 'on the waiting list' for the German thing, which I am 95% certain means they won't need me but are stringing me along in case someone else pulls out. The audition did get me some nice looking choral work though (which was the original idea after all), the first bit of which involves going to Salzburg on Thursday. Naturally I'm now ( Read more... )

Typically, after doing the usual round of CV-sending to opera companies, the one and only audition I've had so far this autumn was via an old university friend who publicised it on Facebook. Theoretically this was for choral work, but it turns out there's a possibility of doing a run of a staged performance of a Handel oratorio in Germany & France ( Read more... )

I went to the ballet last night with my friend K: we agreed a few years ago to try and educate each other about opera and ballet respectively by lots of evenings out together in Covent Garden. (Unfortunately most of the operas we've gone to have been pretty obscure because I'm not that bothered about seeing Marriage of Figaro or Carmen again, ( Read more... )

So the run for my cast finished with the matinee on Saturday afternoon - slight anticlimax since it was probably the least well attended performance. We went to the cast party in the evening, with most people exhausted and partly covered in paint from the evening show, but with plenty of energy left for gossiping.

( Cut for waffle about the opera )

I'm slowly gathering enthusiasm for this production. Even for a mostly-amateur show, it has had more than a fair share of people dropping out and not turning up generally, but judging from current rehearsals it has more promise than several other shows I've done which turned out fine. The crucial test will be the first rehearsal in the theatre: ( Read more... )

Rehearsals for Magic Flute on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, wedding on Saturday morning, usual service on Sunday morning, went to see N's show in Suffolk (about a 2 hour drive) on Saturday afternoon/evening. It had fun parts, but I could now do with another weekend to recover! Another reason to scale down on amateur productions: the ( Read more... )

Realised I haven't mentioned how Big Fat Concert went - which was very well: I think it is probably the highest profile single event I've ever done, and while there's a lot more I could bring to the piece given some more work, I was pretty happy with how my bits went.

( Cut for detailed waffling about the piece )

A successful audition for once: with Guildford Opera again (Oskar in Un Ballo in Maschera). I am waiting to confirm until I hear whether N also got the part he went for, though as he was one of three men auditioning on the whole day vs about 20 women, I'm pretty confident ( Read more... )