Quiet stars

Finally I have some time to write about my week with London Opera Vocal. I made pictures of the rehearsals. The one on the left was made through the glass window of the door. S, one of our wonderful tutors is working on a duet with two amateur singers in the top floor rehearsal room at the National Opera Studio. They were working so intensively that I didn't want to break their concentration - so I took the picture through the glass door. The entire week I was surprised by the enthusiasm and willingness of these amateur singers to work hard. Two productions, Beggar's Opera (short version) and Mozart's Ladies, were put on stage within this week, plus a number of concerts featuring solo arias or ensembles - some of them semi-staged by the singers. All of this happened in a rather relaxed atmosphere as you can see in this picture of my friend K's feet (who was one of the tutors), here playing piano for the Beggar's Opera rehearsal. K's being on the team included going to the pub after the work was done. We had to be out of the building by 5.30 and the weather was great (not like now when it's raining). Susan has put up all the pictures from the rehearsal and performances on the LOV website. Go there and check them out, they are pretty cool! Another nice thing on this year's course was to meet C, one of the new tutors. I had heard her playing years ago in the Finale of the Kathleen Ferrier Competititon. I have to say I cannot remember who she played for (shame on me), but her piano playing was absolutely fabulous. She was a real asset to have on the team and she was very easy going. She didn't even mind me taking a million pictures in her classes which usually disrupts the precious time that singers can spent alone (or with their ensembles) and a pianist to work on the pieces. After having done extensive German coaching last year I ended up doing Italian coaching! Not my speciality, but I coped well and coached the enthusiastic male duet from the Opera I Puritani. Suoni la tromba. Besides dragging 12 heart-shaped balloons through the street to the performance venue (thankfully G was free that weekend and worked with me!) and buying 'tenor safe confetti' - the wedding confetti out of a small bomb apparently lead to near castration of the main character in a course last year - I got to teach a couple of singers on their arias. Passing on 'my wisdom' to people who are definitely older than me always feels slightly strange, but then I have to remember that I have done much more as a singer than they will probably ever do. So yes - wisdom it is :-)
The rest of this Sunday will be devoted to not working at all, since I have worked for the last 13 days with out a break, more about this in another post. All the results of this will be online soon to share. I will go back to listening to my audio book and knitting my jumper. Does this not sound like a great Sunday?