Happy New Year, everyone!  With love from one of the most beautiful costumes I have ever had the privilege to wear, as Mrs Higgins in "My Fair Lady" in Cologne.  For something designed to flatten my curves, it is ridiculously gorgeous, and I have been trying (thus far unsuccessfully) to steal the hat since I first laid eyes upon it.

I am also having the time of my life working with utterly brilliant colleagues who respond upon a sixpence to novelty, whether planned or not.  We have the luxury of a pretty long run here (twelve performances).  Small tweaks are discussed and tried out, and we can gauge whether the public responded well to such changes.  It is a fabulous way of working, and I wish we as actor/singers had the opportunity to use it more often.  

One of the many changes which has had a very positive effect was a joke which, I realised only when we started rehearsals here (because our previous outing to Oman was a little rushed as regards rehearsal), fell flat because it hadn't been set up properly.  I can only say that I am THRILLED to be working with a tenor and leading man, Stephen Chaundy, who not only agreed with my analysis of the joke situation, but voluntarily learned new lines in order to better set it up.  Those in the business will know what an amazing coup a tenor learning new lines which don't lead directly to his glory might be!!  (Joke!)  

May your 2016 be beautiful and life-affirming.  And thank you so much for reading this!

Katy x

This was really meant to be the other way up.  Starting from the inception of this not-totally-sane venture and following it through, in a scientific and disinterested way, to its culmination.  However, heck, firstly it was me, and secondly it was me actually in the middle of all of this, never mind writing about it, and the possibility of commenting on what I was far, far too busy experiencing just went right out of the window.

So what am I actually talking about?  Well, an opportunity came up to learn a role in a Brecht/Weill piece on a terribly short timescale.  And the chance was a little random in the first place as my agency had recommended me on the basis of the wrong opera!  I'd sung Mrs Peachum in the Britten version of John Gay's "The Beggars' Opera" when at music college.  Great stuff, but musically absolutely nothing to do with the Brecht/Weill version of the same piece, which uses the same situation and characters, but utterly different music and dialogue.  (Not that the latter would have helped anyway, because the version in question was in German.)

I'd been very excited when I first got the call from the theatre.  It's a great theatre, very near me, and I'd been wanting to sing for them for ages.  When it became clear that they thought I'd done this particular role, however, I explained that I hadn't, and directed them back to the agency.  I said how disappointed I was, and that I could probably learn the role in an emergency.  Upon talking to the lady at the agency, she said in no uncertain terms that they wouldn't let someone loose on such a role at such short notice unless they'd performed it on the German stage previously, and that they'd recommended other performers, and, well, that was that.  I sighed and carried on.

However, ten days ago I got a slightly panicked call from the theatre again; evidently the other performers couldn't do that particular date or something.  Long story short - they begged me to do the role.  The message landed in my voicemail at 10 p.m.; I spent an anguished evening asking friends and colleagues for advice (I am very lucky indeed to have such a great network of contacts willing to help!).

It was a very finely-balanced decision; definitely not without the bounds of possibility, but requiring unstinted focus until the performance and a huge amount of trust in myself as a performer and as a German-speaker.  Needless to say, I didn't get a huge amount of sleep that night, but at some point in the morning, as the dawn was starting to break, I just thought, BUGGER IT, I'm doing it.  

The bloke had said he'd ring me at 9 a.m.  When he did, I said I was actually standing at the stage door of the theatre and maybe we could discuss it in person.  Within minutes we had an agreement and copies of the score and libretto and a DVD of the performance were in my bag as I headed back home.

At which point the fun started!  Naturally, the entire process was a gut-churning mixture of adrenalin-fuelled excitement and soul-destroying dread, involving the detachment of much of my brain from functioning life for the duration.  Contact with friends and family was severely curtailed (sorry, everyone!).  Food and exercise had to be plotted in as necessary; I would have forgotten them for the most part, but was conscious that they were necessary to the higher functioning of the organism as a whole, and they therefore had to be allowed a certain percentage of brain function.

A few "highlights" of the intervening days:

-  the realisation that despite having looked over the score and thought, oh that's OK, the rest of the cast being actors meant that the whole shebang would have to be sung an octave lower than my normal tessitura.  *gulp*

-  waking to the incessant noise of the words I was trying to drum into my head.  Failing to fall asleep because of the same.  Repeat unto insanity.

-  realising with cold horror quite how much stage business there was to get my head around, quite apart from words and music.

Oh yes, it was . . . interesting.  I enlisted friends and colleagues, scribbled upon reams of paper and doodled upon scrolls of wallpaper which I then draped around my flat (see photo above for one of these in its growth stages!).  This really is when you realise how lucky you are to have people who support you, calm you, slap you gently back into reality, feed you, encourage you and remind you to actually breathe.  Thank you, everyone!!

Anyway, yesterday evening was the performance.  I'd had a run-through on a rehearsal stage the previous afternoon, with a couple of my colleagues who were nice enough to give up their time.  Their generosity of spirit reassured me hugely; this was mainly an acting role, and in true Brechtian spirit, the production involved a nod to the fact that the audience knew that we were in fact actors playing these roles, rather than actually "being" the characters.  Far too complicated right now to explain coherently what I mean, but in practice, I was reassured that if absolutely necessary (i.e. totally drying or venturing into completely the wrong scene), my fellow actors were free to feed me lines, and I to ask or to shout out that I couldn't hear the bloody prompter and that they weren't paying me enough to jump in etc...

The colleagues I met were superb.  Much reassured on the acting front, I was still pretty nervous about the one classic ballad I had to sing.  Doesn't matter how many arias etc one has memorised and sung on stage, the fact remains that when you transfer anything learned on to the stage, there is normally a bit of a memory blip whilst doing so. Well, there is with me, any rate.  I was a bit worried; this is a classic Weill ballad, the audience might well know it far better than me, and the logistics (pretty much darkness apart from a follow-spot, huge movements of stage machinery behind me) meant that any prompts would probably be inaudible and any words scribbed on fingers unseen.

Suddenly, there was nothing more to be done.  I was out on stage.  And BUGGER ME IT WAS FUN!!!  Feathers flew everywhere (I really, really hate having feathers up my nose, but in such a role it was permissible to fish them out again, and with something like five changes of feather jacket, a few here and there were probably unavoidable).  Most of the words came out in the right order (I rather think a further post is demanding to be written concerning acting on stage IN GERMAN - but it's going to have to wait; it would make this post interminable).  The ballad somehow got sung.  I managed to spit out the important verbal cues, and to be roughly where I was expected to be at certain moments.  I might have trodden on a couple of extras, but they forgave me (happily, I'd worked with one of them before, and she must have given me a good report - thanks, Alice :-) ).

When push came to shove, I even got the bloody ballad right.  Not the best singing I've ever done in my life, but the words came out, and I meant them, and - for me at least - they were not overshadowed by a whorehouse in all its glory being rolled out and used to the max behind me...

I ended the evening sweating and triumphant and happy; I am a couple of new friends up from these colleagues, and have gained a world of experience from being allowed onto the stage as an actress (there is an amazing freedom of timing, of improvisation, of expression, to be found.  As an opera singer, my constraints are usually slightly different).

So, still floating on a tide of adrenaline, and happy as a sandlark, and yes (this usually freaks anyone who isn't in The Business out), all that work was just for the one performance.  Still you never know; anyone need a Frau Peachum in the Brecht/Weill "Die Dreigroschenoper"?  Correct pronunciation of "Brecht'scher Verfremdungseffekt" guaranteed ;-)

Anxiety Dreams . . .

We all get these of course.  Our subconscious simply tailors them to our particular requirements.  I find them occasionally useful yet often - as at present - baroquely absurd.  I have been having ridiculously vivid dreams for the past few weeks - possibly something to do with the weather, as spring has definitively not yet sprung here on the banks of the Rhine - grey, louring clouds have been an enduring feature, along with rain and unseasonal chilliness (I had to turn the heating on this morning.  It's nearly June, for goodness' sake!).  The sun has been notable by its absence.  And such weather gives me headaches, which make me ratty and irritable, and the constant feeling that my brain is being squished from above, forcing my eyeballs to bug out in a cartoonish fashion from the pressure.  

The simple ones, shared by most if not all performers, are those where you step out on to stage, only to discover they changed the opera/play/symphony without telling you; you often have to improvise madly despite desperately insisting you weren't told and have never sung/acted/played this piece).  That's enough to make you wake up sweating.  And a nice - if pretty unsubtle -  reminder from the brain to put in more practice, make sure the piece you're working on is learned as thoroughly as humanly possible, and then a bit more for the road.  Fair enough.  I've learned to either take note and step up my game, or ignore with dignity, as required.

Slightly more rococo variations are endless - different settings, clothing, audience etc etc.  This morning's was one of those.  I'd (in real life) been to a "Fiesta" I'd helped to organise; with a Spanish theme, we were trying to welcome in the summer.  Given the weather, however, we'd been forced to set up a couple of fires (it was a garden party), and despite my best attempts, the firewood was not bone-dry (ha ha, given the recent rain and humidity) and there was a thick pall of smoke and ashes adding "atmosphere"...  However much one tried to circle round to avoid this, the changing wind directions made it impossible, and even though I tried to compensate by drinking as much (non-alcoholic) liquid as possible, it was perfectly rational of my brain to worry about the condition of my voice before the performance tonight.  Fine.  Thanks, brain.  But did you have to translate that into my voice becoming a froglike croak that embarrassed me so much I failed to sing any of my lines, and instead cawed along ruining everyone else's lines?  And somehow I'd forgotten about getting dressed, and upon discovering this before my first entrance, decided that I'd go on naked, as this would distract from my lack of voice.  That apparently not being enough, my brain decided that I would now sing my role hanging awkwardly from a splintery wooden frame, which I proceeded to do whilst anxiously squashing down bits which might suggest I was not the old woman I was meant to be portraying...  

The worst however appeared out of nowhere a couple of days ago.  I smashed into that particular dream having just murdered one of my best friends (she has in real life escaped back to Canada, and I can report very thankfully that she is still alive and kicking).  I have no idea *why* I'd killed her - even my feverish brain apparently couldn't think up an adequate reason for that - but I now had to somehow wrap her up and hide the body, and was consumed in the hunt for proper wrapping materials and tape, and proceeded in jerky, interrupted scenes, to dispose of her, with many scenes reminiscent of something out of Laurel and Hardy (feet falling out of a cupboard, tape unwinding, the body slipping inexorably down a chute into view) but desperately unfunny and heart-stopping at the time.  As light relief, these gruesome scenes were spliced with some sort of concert in a HUGE arena, where I variously heard the introductory chords to my aria but couldn't find the stage, started to sing but provoked a mass exodus from the crowd, and came on to find a tenor singing my aria instead, because I had been late arriving - at which point my dream self, enraged, stood behind the poor man and simply roared louder than him.  Oh dear!!

Really, dear subonscious, I don't need this.  My current roles are well learned, and the one I have coming up is (a) small and technically uncomplicated and (b) not yet required to be off copy.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring enough to warn me, and to provide embellishments which evidently amuse your creative impulses, but... enough, please!

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!!!

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!

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...

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%!

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've written before about the importance of learning music correctly in the first place, and am currently reinforcing that lesson in my practice... I am re-learning huge chunks of Carmen (which I adore) for a forthcoming concert in England (which I am looking forward to) and discovering to my dismay that my initial preparation was bloody slapdash (in my defence, I accepted the contract with one week to learn the opera, one week to rehearse, then flying straight out to Thailand for a tour, so I didn't really have the time for proper preparation!).

It's not so much the broad sweep of things - the words are pretty much stuck in my memory, the arias of course have been part of my repertoire for years (you can't look like I do and fail to have a Carmen aria or two up your sleeve for concerts!), and the basic rhythms are just so right that they can't go wrong.  No, it's the little details.  Where notes are dotted and where not.  How long to hold a particular note for.  Very quiet here, slightly louder here...  Emphasize this note, pull off on that.  Oh, there's a world of nuance and sophistication that I missed the first time around, and am now under a moral duty to correct.  Bizet took the time to compose this with particular effects in mind, and as an interpreter I am failing him if I ignore his intentions.

Damned hard work, though.  It really is so much more difficult to re-work something than to learn it correctly in the first place.  The slightest lapse of attention, and your brain reverts to previous patterns...

Still, definitely worth it.  I love how, as a singer, you discover new aspects of a character every time you sing her.  It's similar to re-reading classic novels; you are never the same person you were when you previously read them, and new angles present themselves to the older you.

Right.  Back to annoying the neighbours with the same little phrase repeated thirty times!!!

I was vaguely playing in my mind with starting this post along the lines of "Last week I found myself in Spain..." (I write pretty much everything mentally first, and only when it's polished and shiny do I actually head for the computer.  This can lead to problems when I perfect an email, for example, then forget to actually send it.)  Firstly, though, it sounded a bit disingenuous.  I mean, I admit to travelling with the absolute minimum of planning and organisation - in this case, I don't actually speak Spanish, nor did I know exactly where the airport was, nor the ins and outs of getting from thence to Toledo, but I had actually booked the flights a few weeks beforehand and had a rough idea of where I should be heading, so I can't really claim to have "found" myself there, as it were.  The second thing was, I got to thinking about the phrase "I found myself..." and realised (after a couple of days there) that I had actually rediscovered a part of myself that has somehow got lost here in Germany.  I have no idea what it was - the light? - but the urge to paint was incredibly strong, indeed almost overpowering.  I realised only then that my paints had been gathering dust ever since I came to Germany.  Strange.  I'm not a particularly good painter, I simply like the process, and find it really helps when appreciating great art (shout out to El Greco's hand of Christ, as seen in the eponymous museum in Toledo, top left...).  I have tended to photograph rather than paint whilst I've been over here.  Must have simply been a different energy, a different vibe, as it were;  I returned on fire with artistic inspiration (I also fitted in a visit to the Prado whilst I was in Madrid for the weekend - what marvels!),  but strangely, whilst I have managed to prep a couple of canvases and even do a few preliminary sketches, the urgency, the necessity even, has evaporated.  Hmmm.

At least I have more to concentrate on than simply the audition.  I know singers for whom the audition is the be-all and end-all; I honestly can't do that.  Yes, if concentration is necessary, I concentrate.  But if there's the slightest chance to investigate the marvellous places I find myself when auditioning, I certainly take it.  I adored Toledo (I was there chasing down a Spanish touring company.  Totally normal to be squished between two sopranos in audition, therefore simply wandering onto stage, grinning out into the auditorium to an conductor whom I hadn't actually met, singing for, oh, three, four minutes, then sauntering off . . .  had I not a train to catch in order to paint Madrid red with a friend whom I'd previously only known online, it might well have seemed a long way to come for such a short audition opportunity.)

Should anyone be contemplating a visit to Toledo, I can thoroughly recommend my little hotel, La Posada de Manolo (website here).  Probably not for those who absolutely require trouser presses and international cable channels - I spend a lot of time trying to avoid such things when choosing hotels - but central, charming, quiet, clean, inexpensive.  Let me see if I can insert a video taken from the breakfast room in the morning, looking over the city.  It had been wonderfully quiet until I turned the camera on - cue delivery lorry below and random helicopter above!!  Not to mention, I left my bag there whilst spending the day trotting around the place, returning shortly before my audition to grab my stuff.  The lady on reception grinned whilst handing back my bag and coat, and presented me with an envelope.  I explained (well hopefully, as I said, my Spanish is not wonderful) that I'd already paid, and had simply left my excess stuff.  She said this was a present from the staff, because they loved my singing!  (All I'd done was test the voice out in the shower after breakfast.  I'd been rather ill due to a spot of nasty gastric flu, and hadn't sung for a week...).  They had presented me with a lovely necklace, engraved with a bird, in typical Toledan style.  Now if that isn't a good omen...

I did recognise the irony.  Wanting to muse a little on the amazing powers of the human mind, specifically in relation to memory, and I couldn't damn well remember whether I'd written on the subject before!!  Just goes to show, though, what a complex and fascinating subject this is.  (Or that I am prone to forgetting quite a lot...)

What made me think was a performance yesterday after a very long and stressful day waiting with, waiting for and worrying about a friend undergoing a rather nasty operation.  I hadn't slept well the night before, either, so by the end of the day - well, by the end of what normally constitutes a working day, I was pretty much exhausted.  Except I then had to get costumed and made up and venture out onto the stage.  Now, this is a part I have done several times before.  I learned it very thoroughly at the beginning (having learned over the years that to undo mistakes takes about ten times more effort to put right than going to the trouble of taking endless care over the first studies).  I'd mentally rehearsed while I was waiting for my friend to come out of surgery.  I was prepared!

The peculiar combination of extreme tiredness and relaxing due to playing with colleagues I know and in a piece I have done over and over again, however, led to a couple of the cold-sweat moments where you hear your cue echo strangely through your brain and have absolutely NO idea what comes next.  

This is where experience kicks in, and actually, being knackered helps.  You simply have to trust the unconscious bit of your brain to come up with the goods, whilst standing aside with the conscious bit.  

Goes a bit like this:

Conscious mind ("C"):  AAAARGH what the hell comes next???

Unconscious mind ("U"):  Breathe!  It will turn up!

C:  No, really!  I am meant to be saying/singing something here and I have NO clue what it is!!

U:  Chill!  Set eyes to neutral, breathe, and trust.

C:  Ooooookay . . .  here goes! . . .

U:  (comes out with the right words, heard with fascination by C)

C:  Ahhhhhh, so THAT was what I was meant to say!!! Congratulations!

Hopefully the opera continues without many more such soul-stopping panics as this...

Really, though, you have to admire a biological structure which has all those built-in safety nets!

I must also take the opportunity to reinforce the confidence in that unconscious layer of the mind when it comes to auditions.  Doubts are so pernicious.  Learning to take a deep breath and trust to one's preparation is surely a laudable aim for a musician!

A somewhat belated Happy New Year!! I know it's the middle of January already, but time has gone a little crazy during the past few weeks and frankly I seldom know which way is up at the moment, hence the reckless abandonment of my poor writings here.  All in a good cause, mind - out of the blue, a few auditions have turned up (which can only be A Good Thing), necessitating lots of frantic learning of new material, practising same and working through it with great coaches, precautionary visits to the spa (steam rooms are GREAT for the voice and I'm convinced that jumping from hot to cold like you're meant to confuses bugs so much that they give up...), and flying here there and everywhere.

In my defence, the time weirdness is not confined to my brain.  I have slowly become aware that my smartphone (ha!) reckons it's a darned sight smarter than I am, and therefore alters any appointments I have made according to the time difference (hmm, that could have been more snappily put...). What I mean is, I note down, for example, an audition at 1440h  for a certain date, in London.  Because I was in Germany when I bunged that in the calendar, it then without damned well asking (or even telling me) shifts the appointment to an hour earlier once I arrive in England.  This has led to me hyperventilating in slight panic a couple of times when in the UK, and once arriving waaay too early at the airport for a flight (sorry L, my dear friend, I was too chicken to admit this, you having hauled yourself heroically out of bed to transport me to the station!).

It snarls things up in the other direction, too.  Having agreed when in England with a friend here in Germany to meet her at the spa in Wiesbaden at a certain time, I was gathering my bits and bobs together in a leisurely manner when she rang wondering where I'd got to.  Blasted phone had switched that appointment to an hour LATER!  Aargh.  Mind you, that particular meeting was somewhat ill-fated anyway - I leapt on the bus and arrived at the spa rather out of breath and unrelaxed, to feel a little smug that my friend hadn't yet arrived.  I texted her to say it was a bit too cold to stay outside so I was lurking in the foyer.  Text back - erm, so am I, and I can't see you.... Oh yes.  It turned out we had different ideas of what "the" spa in Wiesbaden was...

I do have to say, though, that I SO much prefer having pages to learn and places to go; many of the auditions I am currently facing are pretty much guaranteed to turn up nothing concrete in the near future, but the thing is I shall have sung for that particular company, and hopefully they'll remember me when it comes to casting the season after this...  And I have to admit, new stuff can be glorious - whatever the outcome, I shall never forget my first musical theatre audition this last weekend (outfit as per photo above, much admired by fellow auditionees, for which I am hellishly thankful for the advice of my New York Musical Theatre Guru, who knows who she is ;-) ) - I have seldom enjoyed myself so much!

There really can't be many better starts to the new year that that, huh?  Prost!!

Last Saturday night the season turned unmistakeably to autumn.  (This was a bit annoying, actually, as I had met a friend and was wandering around the wine festival in town, and my lack of jacket meant that suddenly, the idea of sitting around until late in the evening testing one wine against another rather lost its appeal.)  Anyway, I decided to use the new crispness in the air to look towards the future, rather than mourning the non-summer and the past.  From now on, I am a freelance singer who happens to be based in Germany, and whatever auditions come along, I shall be more than ready for them.  I have been doggedly going to practise in the theatre most days to that end - all sanctioned by the new management there, so there's no need to feel awkward (although I have to admit that I did at first, seeing as how I was employed there for two years, and now am no longer.  This was one of those things where you just have to take a deep breath and do it.  Without such practice facilities, I'd have to heave my life up and reinvent myself yet again, as I can't really sing in my tiny flat.)

So, readiness to audition - tick.  Availability of auditions.... ah, well that's another story.  I sang for several agents last season and they all said they'd think of me whenever anything for my voice type came in.  Then, erm, nothing did.  The general advice over here seems to be, ring them often so you're in their minds.  I did - and every time got the same response - sorry, there are very, very few opportunities around, and nothing for your voice type.  Financial crisis is definitely hitting theatres.

So it's not the most wonderful vista out there, but I'll do what I can to expand what opportunities there are.  I have rung all my agents at least once (provoking some irritation in at least one case, as not all the theatres are yet back after their summer break), and am in the process of contacting new ones (more the merrier, provided I can afford to travel to audition for them).

And finally, it's important to me to keep the artistic flame burning, as it were.  I have practised my handful of audition arias until they are deep in my bones, and shan't cease to refresh them now and again, but if that's all I have to think about, they will quickly go stale.  So I have chosen two roles for which I would cheerfully rip off an arm to have the opportunity to sing (Azucena in Il trovatore and Klytämnestra in Elektra, since you ask) and am learning those thoroughly.  Not to mention preparing an eclectic range of song literature which I have fallen in love with over the years but not really had time to explore.  Artistically I shall not be bored.

Nor, if I can help it, shall I let myself just sit around at home and mope between practice sessions and badgering agents.  My current project is making a dress.  Regular readers will not be totally surprised to discover that I am doing so totally without patterns and on a whim, with only the vaguest idea of what's meant to happen in dressmaking, having occasionally watched my mother sew as a child, and never made anything myself.  Should be interesting to see what happens!

So - new season, new start, fingers crossed!!

An enjoyable, if somewhat eccentric, leavetaking of Germany (just for the summer).  A friend had planned a lawnwarming (like a housewarming, but for her fresh new lawn, of course) for the afternoon before I flew to England; this then grew, slightly out of control, into a sort of high tea / garden party (probably says a lot about us that it was only about two hours in, chatting to some German guests, that I realised we'd forgotten...erm, the tea!).  I was far more occupied by planning for cucumber sandwiches, and scones (we outsourced most of the baking to a sweet American friend whose hobby it is), and correctly-constituted Pimms, than anything quite so mundane as packing a suitcase (lord alone knows what's in there - it will be interesting to find out over the summer!).  We even managed to track down doilies (doilies!!) and bunting, which we scooted up ladders to hang from branches in the grey and overcast morning cool.

Amazingly, the weather brightened just as the first guests started to arrive, and it really felt like one of those perfect English days (helped, naturally, by the Pimms).  Wonderful relaxation, once the pre-party scurry of peeling and chopping and buttering and arranging was swapped for the glass in the hand. 

A singer, however, is seldom properly off duty.  I was press-ganged (there really is no other term for it) into singing by my friend's next-door neighbour and landlord, a delightful and totally crazy sculptor with a passion for playing guitar in the pub.  He dragged me to one side, eyes shining, and showed me the crib sheets for three songs, explaining that they'd fished out a music stand for me so I would be able to read the words, and that he could play in any key I wanted, and he was just DYING to make music with me.  I tried a few pathetic little excuses (like, just because I'm a singer, it doesn't mean I know how the middle bits of popular songs necessarily go), but I was swept away on a tide of his enthusiasm (yes, yes; and Pimms).

Thus I found myself standing in the sunshine at an English garden party in Germany, complete with hat and gloves, belting out Moon River and Somewhere Over the Rainbow and finishing with Memories (from Cats... this one in German!!)... and grinning like a loon!!  The sheer joy of performing, with no pressure at all and mainly for the purpose of making someone else happy, was overwhelming.  A much-needed reminder, as I head for a period of (relative) vocal rest, of just how exhilarating being a performer can be.  Cheers!

There is a nightmare, familiar in detail to all opera singers, and in broad outline surely to performers of whatever ilk the world over, whereby you stand on stage frozen in the basilisk glare of the conductor, whose baton is raised expectantly for your entrance.  Your brain is a total blank, you haven't a CLUE what you're meant to be singing, and you break out in a cold sweat as eternity beckons.

Well, I've been there for real several times this week and I can attest that it really isn't pleasant.  Only on the rehearsal stage, thank goodness, but that's bad enough.  I'm something of a perfectionist by nature and am always prepared to put the work in so that by the time stage rehearsals start, I know the music pretty much backwards.  Setting scenes generally knocks the occasional phrase out of kilter, but one can forge on secure in the knowledge that it will soon gel again.  

What's more, on those few occasions when my mind has gone blank on stage, I have usually been able to breathe calmly whilst thinking (with conscious humour), ho hum, wonder what comes next?, and the muscle memory has thankfully kicked in to leave me thinking, mid-phrase, aha, THAT's what I was meant to sing! 

One of the things this modern opera has taught me, however, is that the way my brain learns is strongly related to the sense of the WORDS I am singing.  I string things together based on responding to other characters, on the emotional surges generated by the orchestra, generally supplying my own subtexts to link disparate thoughts if there are none given in the sung text.  Pretty effective, on the whole - except of course in this case.  Lots and lots of repeated and broken fragments.  Especially in my big scene.  As far as theatre is concerned, this is tremendously effective - hell, it's a MAD scene; expecting it to make sense would naturally be a dead end.  

But for a perfectionist to be in such a state of uncertainty and doubt, especially when you feel that a good deal of the overall responsibility for the opera is on your shoulders, is not a particularly comfortable state in which to live.  I will admit to the odd bout of tears brought on by the stress of it all.  Mind you, the irrationality is certainly not confined to me.  My Macbeth, who is astoundingly wonderful, was seen to actually jump around for joy (he's a very stable sort of person; this is well out of character) on singing Saturday's performance of another opera, shrieking, oh my god, listen, there are CHORDS in the orchestra, and a BEAT, woohoooooo!!  (And this is not the sort of opera where you normally sit back and luxuriate in the music...)

Ha.  Yes.  This aspect of the German system seriously doesn't help, and makes you realise why prompters are necessary (we haven't had one for this modern opera until now, which seems utterly mad but was something to do with politics.  Fingers crossed one will magically appear from this point forward...) - over a four-day period I have played in three separate productions, with rehearsals for the forthcoming opera in between.  Three and a half languages.  Totally different styles... I saw a badge on sale in a shop last weekend which said something along the lines of, Oh dear, my brain is full.  I would have bought it but had forgotten to stock up on cash...

Still, it's spring, and in such a beautiful place I can't help but rejoice in the season.  Flowers are releasing the most glorious scents everywhere (particularly notable are a patch of wild roses on my cycle ride to work by the river, which mix with the smell of hot sand to make an unforgettable perfume, and the unexpected ambush from above of previously-unnoticed white acacia blossom), and to top it all, and make all the stress worthwhile, I am currently honoured to be quartered near a nightingale.  The first time I heard it, I was belting back on the bike, exhausted and ready for bed, and all I thought was, oh what the heck is that silly insomniac blackbird doing awake at this time?  It was only later that I thought, oh hang on, it really is actually NIGHT, and the sound was coming from low in the bushes... I checked via Google, and sure enough, it is a nightingale.  I can hear it clearly if I open my balcony door.  Truly, it is a sound to nourish the soul.

(Even if, as a singer, I am blasted well jealous of its tonality and rhythm just at the moment...)

Euphoria in the practice room!  A small, hard-won but vital epiphany in the way I approach the tonality of this modern piece occurred in the third hour of hard slog today.  The first hour was official, spent with the conductor (who growled at me for coming in early, forbade me to sing unless he gave the sign, then was forced to giggle as he didn't give me a sign for the next, totally obvious entrance, at which point I was silent) and the pianist (who is amazing; I can't believe that he can read all those lines in the orchestral score, given that no proper piano-vocal score exists, fishing out fragments from various instruments and playing them despite them being in different clefs, all on a few days' notice).  From this, I knew exactly where the tonal trouble points were in this particular scene, and lugged my nice fresh score into another room to explore them; a process which is not dissimilar to poking worringly loose teeth with one's tongue.

I would like to point out that I don't usually have such troubles.  Mainly because the composer has usually seen fit to have the orchestra playing melodies or at least chords underneath, which one can interpret, follow, and use as jumping-off points for finding one's own note.  Not the case here.  Much is going to depend on me being able to hit any given starting note cold, which without perfect pitch is - how shall I put this? - bloody terrifying.

Anyway, whilst snarling away at this scene, it suddenly occurred to me that the axes I had been using (an axis being a note around which one can hang a phrase; coming back to it, using the leading note, calculating intervals therefrom etc) could actually (and I would like to point out in my defence that this is NOT obvious!) be poked around to fit the dominant seventh chord of A major (and I know the name only from looking it up afterwards; I have anything but a solid theoretical grounding in music, and recognised the arpeggiated chord from a snatch of "Adriana Lecouvreur" with which I am familiar).  No, not every phrase starts with a note from this chord, but a surprising proportion do, and many others either use the semitone on either side of a member note (known to me technically as "up a bit" or "down a bit", as attested to rather shamefully by my old score) or have such a note as the axis.  I can thus construct a sort of tonal scaffolding to hold these phrases together, thus making me feel far more secure, which can only be a Good Thing.

All I have to do is burn that particular chord into my very sinews.  I started today; hopefully it will become second nature soon - at present I have been waking up imagining the notes G sharp and A, and fumbling for the tuning fork on the bedside table at dawn to check my accuracy; this is simply an extension.  I've already whipped through the score marking the relevant notes in a particular colour.  I just wish that the T. S. Eliot quote "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" wouldn't run quite so nakedly through my brain!

Anyway, it felt good.  I have a definite bipolar relationship with this opera; waves of exhilaration, waves of despair.  My partner-in-crime, whom I met by chance after this revelation, laughed at me for being so excited and cautioned against the inevitable downswing.  Yes, yes, yes; I know.  But I'll take the elation for the moment!

To reward myself I spent the afternoon and the last of the brilliant sunshine that the afternoon unexpectedly brought on my peaceful local river beach, armed with book, remains of a bottle of wine, and palpable lack of opera score: my only companions a pair of small and incredibly grumpy geese, and the first sand of the year between my toes.

As further reward, the sunset, now I am back on my balcony and writing this, has proved rather spectacular.  In one of those wonderfully self-referential 21st-century moments, the photo above shows my laptop perched on my balcony railing, this entry half written, as the sun sets along the Rhine in the background.

Perfect.

Irony.  Theatres are incredibly good at this.  Tonight, as I remarked to a member of the theatre administration before the rehearsal, the poor director had already got as far as the first orchestra/stage rehearsal, and this was the first time he'd actually had all the soloists together on the stage at one time.  Ahhhh yes, she said, seems he's stuck at the airport elsewhere and won't be there...

But my goodness I am not looking forward to my dose of the cold, flu, virus or whatever it is that's making the rounds.  Singers tend to spend this time of the year compulsively washing their hands, then thinking about it in terms of smooth skin and slapping on hand cream.  It's pretty inevitable, though, and the usual pattern is for the illness to sabotage whatever you're actually looking forward to, so I am hoping against hope that this doesn't ruin my next premiere!

Back to my current fascination with straight acting for the moment; sorry, won't take long, I imagine.  I was struck tonight by the sense of a more immediate connection with the audience than when singing opera.  The connection when singing feels more visceral, perhaps deeper, but relies on something felt underneath the major conjunction of voice and orchestra/conductor.  That is where the emotion - feeling - uh, whatever it is that moves an entire body of people - starts, and it flows out from there.  When it's just you, the audience and the words, there's a definite sense of "sounding out" the public to determine exactly when the punchline, or the emotional twist, ought to sit.  My timing has been very different in each performance, not of my own volition but completely as an instinctive reaction to the energy of the audience.  In opera, I feel that energy in a different way; it can feed my interpretation, but doesn't generally alter the timing of it.

So much to learn!

It occurs to me that there are very few things in this life more satisfying than having colleages unable to resist the urge to poke their noses around the practice room door to see who's singing :-)

Because I need to prepare properly for any auditions that may come up for next season, I have been nipping into one of the practice rooms every day since my recovery from the operation (well, pretty much every day.  Certainly enough to have the porters grinning and reaching for the practice room keys as soon as they catch sight of me), and practising my audition arias.  Now it has to be said that apart from the Herodias, I haven't really been required to use my full voice when singing here.  So it's hardly surprising that people don't know what I can actually do.

Hence the sneaky peeks around the door.  Best excuse so far was the (lovely) soprano who sent her son "looking for his mother".  The fact that I'd heard her give a lesson for the previous hour was conveniently overlooked...  And the one which pleased me the most was the conductor who opened the door, saw me, grinned widely and said "Haha, should have known!".

Yes of course practising singing has really nothing to do with what other people hear.  But communication is really the thing overall.  And if I am communicating enough to make other musicians unable to resist the temptation to open the door and see who's damn well singing, well, I'm happy with that!

Ah, the irony...

Yesterday I had my first coaching of the season, and got back from that to an e-mail from the director of the next thing I'm in, obligingly sending me the bare bones of my script.

The coaching was on the 21st-century opera (the one that's not until May or something but we're starting now because it will take that long to learn the music...).  The conductor seemed pleased with what I was doing, and we had a discussion about what exactly was happening, stylistically, so he could make suggestions to a couple of the other singers.  What it boiled down to (and this is absolutely as per the composer's instructions, I hasten to add) is NOT singing.  Letting go of "being an opera singer" and the need to "have a beautiful voice", and simply being an actress whose sentences happen to follow that particular musical phrasing. 

The script is a comical mix of English and German (luckily it's meant to be funny).  My character will be an Englishwoman who has emigrated to Germany but who has never quite got the hang of the language, nor indeed the accent.

So here I am having worked so hard to get where I am vocally, deliberately Not Singing, and having worked so hard on my German, being asked to speak with an English accent and get all my phrases muddled up!  I am mightily amused at the irony of both situations, and thought it rather neat that they coincided on the one day.  Satisfying!