Thursday 27 May 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 26: Much to agree with

I can't help agreeing with much in this article by opera critic Robert Thicknesse. When we are in the rehearsal room, I always imagine we are preparing a performance for people like us - and despite the occasional diva strop or difficult colleague, most people involved in the coalface of opera are pretty normal folk - but come the performances I always feel very uncomfortable surrounded by an audience from a very different world. Something has to change, but I don't know how.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 25: New Blog

I've started the new off-the-road blog. That's where you'll find me until June 8th when I go back on the road. It's called ...and when the music stops...  and you'll find it here.

Sunday 16 May 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 24: Review

So Idomeneo opened 10 days ago. The final stages of getting the show ready for the public were not entirely without problems so it was a bitter-sweet experience for all of us on the production team. We were not quite able to realise the standard of technical proficiency we were aiming for. Not that the lovely people at the Estates Theatre were unwilling or unable, just that there is a cultural difference which seemed to make consistency and responsibility for these elements of the production difficult to achieve. The public reaction was very good at the premier though and the management happy with it. the show did look very beautiful and all performances were strong, especially those of Charles Workman (Idomeneo) and Hannah-Esther Minutillo (Idamante) who in performance  found new psychological depths to the troubled father/son relationship.

I was very glad to get home and have been thoroughly enjoying being back in York. It's funny though, this blog is something of a lifeline when I am away and has been a very good exercise for me. However it feels like a work place - a place for part of me but not all of me. It doesn't seem the right place to talk about what I am doing when at home, although I want to share that too.

So I think I am going to start another tandem blog - a sort of 'home space'. here I will write about life in York, our allotment, how a freelancer gets his head around life when not working. Whether that will be interesting for you I don't know, but I think it will be another good exercise for me and will fill in the gaps.

So watch this space....for news of another space!
Goslings down by the River Ouse, York