Young Artists Blog
Out of the mouths of babes and children...
Blog 1
According to the oft-quipped maxim, the place
to go for endearingly (or embarrassingly) honest truths is to those
naive enough actually to tell them. I suspect, though far be it for
me to make assumptions, that it may have been with this sentiment
in mind that Sarah Crabtree asked me to keep this blog about the
new Opera Holland Park Young Artists’ Scheme; amongst a cast of
operatic children (all in our twenties and early thirties) I am, at
23, very definitely the baby of the group. I will, therefore,
solemnly swear to attempt to uphold her faith in my unfailing
honesty, and to try to give a sufficiently truthful (whilst,
obviously, tactful...) account of the proceedings in the Young
Artists’ rehearsal room.
I think the time has come to introduce myself
to you legions of adoring fans (ahem...) - my name’s Maud Millar
and I’m going to be playing Nella. As I have said, I am very much a
baby, not only in operatic terms, but also in terms of blogging. In
the spirit of youthful honesty, then, I’ll confess that this is my
first attempt at this particular kind of literary venture, so you
may have to bear with me as I find my bloggers’ feet...
The scheme is really a clever one. The basic
premise is that the OHP crew have, for the first time, double-cast
their production of Gianni Schicchi; one cast of seasoned
professionals and one of fledgling singers beginning their operatic
careers. The young artists are fully rehearsed, with our own
associate MD (Matthew Waldron) and Director (Oliver Platt) and, as
well as serving as a cover cast for the main show, we will also
take to the stage for one night, and one night only; the “Young
Artists’” matinee on the 14th July. One of the real
treats for us babies is that Alan Opie has been booked to sing the
eponymous Schicchi in both casts, so we youngsters will also get
the chance to tread the boards with him.
I suppose it falls to me to do a kind of
virtual cast meet-and-greet... As I’ve said, Alan Opie is our
Schicchi, although we have been having the wonderful Charles
Johnston, his cover, join us in our rehearsals-
he’s playing Marco in the real thing, so it’s doubly kind of him to
give up more of his spare time to chivvy us along. To introduce the
Young Artists, however; Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta, is played by
Christina Petrou, her lover (and Buoso Donati’s nephew) Rinuccio by
Adam Tunnicliffe. As Zita, the aged matriarch of the family, we
have Laura Woods, the even older Simone is played by Timothy
Dickinson, his henpecked son Marco by Laurence Meikle, Marco’s
grasping wife La Ciesca by Chloe Hinton, and old drunk Betto (a man
so drink-sodden and dishevelled as to be “of indiscriminate age”)
by Aidan Smith. That leaves Buoso’s other nephew, the useless
Gherardo, played by Leonel Pinheiro, and his young and rather
spoilt (trophy?) wife Nella - which, as I’ve said, is where I come
in. There are also hilarious cameos from Nathan Morrison as a very
short-sighted Doctor Spinellocio, Timothy Connor as the Notary, and
Ian Beadle and Alistair Sutherland respectively as Guccio and
Pinellino, his two ‘testes’ (hee hee). It must also be mentioned
that we all owe a deep debt of gratitude to Christine Collins, the
woman who has made all of this possible through her sponsorship of
the project and, once more, I can only hope that we do credit to
her generosity by producing a really spectacular show.
In thinking about the first entry for this
blog, I kept coming back to the idea of us as “young” artists, and
musing to myself on the tensions that our relative youth creates.
Gianni Schicchi is a masterfully chosen show for a Young
Artists’ Scheme, being not only both short and funny (two major
pulls in any opera), but also being a true ensemble show, allowing
all of the Young Artists almost exactly equal chances to shine, and
forcing us to really pull together to create a cast. It is not,
however, a show about the young. You may have noted in my pitiful
character descriptions the alarmingly regular appearance of the
words “aged” and “old”- the show’s focus is, with the exception of
Lauretta and Rinuccio, on a family whose youths have long passed
them by. For most operatic casts, this is (with all due respect),
somewhat of a godsend. It is a sad truth that in opera, one is
almost always older than the part they play; both Susanna and the
Countess, for example, are listed as being nineteen years of age-
but what nineteen-year-old soprano would ever be let loose on a
stage with a role like that? No, Schicchi is one of the
rare operatic works where the ages of the singers can actually
converge with those of the characters.
Not so in our production; in fact, Adam and
Christina, our Rinuccio and Lauretta, are the only two characters
in this opera who are playing parts younger than their actual ages
- the rest of us are donning hunched backs and grey moustaches
(mine’s particularly fetching) in the hope of aging up a bit. I
mean, fortunately for me, I look absolutely ancient, so it’s really
no stretch, but not everyone’s as lucky. In this, our first week of
production rehearsals, we’ve mainly been getting to grips with some
fairly complex blocking, but I think the effect of this is going to
begin to show really interestingly in the inter-character
relationships over the next few weeks. More on this after our
projected stagger-through tomorrow...
Until then, yours in great anticipation,
Maud
Out of the mouths of babes and
children...
Blog 2
Evening all!
This second installation of my Young Artists’ blog comes to you
fresh from two momentous events; the first being our first full run
and the second, far more important, being our first cast
post-rehearsal drinks/bonding session. The run was, in itself, an
occasion of great excitement, mainly because we managed to get all
the way through without stopping- which, after four and half days
of rehearsal, is pretty damned impressive (even though I do say so
myself). As with every first run of a production, there were
inevitably things that needed tightening up, but the feeling of
being secure enough in the music and blocking to do the whole thing
without hesitation was hugely heartening for us as a cast and means
that we can look forward to a couple of really intense weeks of
character work and detailing - which are, with an opera like
Schicchi, the things that really make the show.
The two Schicchi casts are rehearsing
almost concurrently within the same building (St. Gabriel’s in
Pimlico), the ‘main’ cast two weeks ahead but otherwise inhabiting
the same space in the same time periods. Their show is rehearsing
in the larger, and significantly more lovely, hall upstairs, while
we are in one of the, shall we say, cosier rooms in the
basement. Being based in the foundations of the building, we have
the added advantage of an extra cast member in a large cast-iron
pole running smack down the middle of our ‘set’ - we call him
George. The rehearsal set-up is rather convenient, as it means we
can go upstairs when we’re not called to brush up on the blocking
of the main show so that in the unlikely event that we’re called
upon in our roles as covers (ohgodohgod the terror), we will have
some vague idea of their positions. It also leads to a wry
upstairs/downstairs feel, with we babies as the “help” in the
bowels of the building, toiling in service to the gentry above. As
I said yesterday, Charlie, our cover Schicci, is also playing Marco
‘upstairs’, so he feeds us tidbits from the main rehearsal room,
and word on the street is that the big boys didn’t manage a full,
score-free run after their first week; a piece of gossip which led
to just a tiny bit of (admittedly rather unattractively sweaty and
breathless) post-show preening in our swelteringly hot basement
this afternoon...
To more important issues, however, the cast
drinks were a roaring success. Charlie, as the grownup,
thoughtfully bought the first round for us impoverished students
and, sufficiently lubricated, talk turned to such enlightening
issues as hilarious cast marriage proposal stories (corner me after
the show and I’ll regale you with them all at great length),
tattoos and the Gilmore Girls. From the ridiculous to the sublime,
however, I talked briefly yesterday about the age issue in our
casting, and some interesting thoughts on this particular topic
were also thrown up over a pint or two. From my perspective, I
think that my Nella can only be a young one, especially if I have
to go on as a cover; there’s no way that the age difference won’t
be glaringly obvious, not only in my youthful grace (ahem) but also
in my vocal capabilities, so I’ve decided to embrace that rather
than to fight it. I do have some backup from Puccini- in the
manuscript she is, at 34, the youngest of the cast, so my Nella is
shaping up to be a grown-up spoilt baby who hates not getting her
own way (a real stretch for a soprano...) and REALLY hates the
younger Lauretta encroaching on her turf as the little girl of the
family. We decided at the talk-through that she had probably come
from money, and married Gherardo in a bid to continue to live in
the style to which she was accustomed under daddy’s roof. She
bosses Gherardo around, pouting and preening and being terribly
bored by anything that doesn’t concern her directly, and the looks
she shoots at Lauretta are of pure venom. This was partly a
decision made in tandem with Chloe Hinton’s La Ciesca, as the two
women can so often be almost interchangeable; singing roughly the
same lines, grasping for the same booty, bossing around their
Donati counterparts, but we wanted to differentiate them as women.
Chloe’s Ciesca is, we think, the second wife of Marco, a woman who
has been upgraded (through shady means) from mistress to wife, and
is thoroughly disappointed with her lot in the feckless Marco, a
truly rubbish black-market trader to whom the Second World War (the
show is set in the forties) has not been kind. As a result of this,
she is perennially dismissive of her subservient husband, treating
him with a queenly disdain from the moment the pair make their
entrance. Nella could easily be a woman in the same mould, and
certainly she controls her husband, but she does it with the
pouting, saccharine manipulation of a woman who knows that her
husband worships her, merely smiling kittenishly and flicking her
fingers to send him scurrying to do her bidding.
Interestingly, Aidan Smith agrees with me on
the issue of playing to our youth - Betto, his character, is listed
as “of indiscriminate age”, and most people play him as an elderly
sop, blind to most of the activity through his constant
inebriation. Aidan, however, has seen room for a new interpretation
in his lack of specific age, and thinks at this point in the
rehearsal process that his Betto may be only in his early thirties,
but prematurely aged through his lack of self-care. He sees his
Betto as a man ravaged by the cares of life, a man who lost a
beloved wife in the war and has let himself go completely as a
result, drinking away the Donati dowry he married and drowning his
sorrows at the bottom of a pint glass. The immediately clever
result of this is that he doesn’t clash with Tim’s hilarious
elderly Simone, a man who is clearly denoted as being seventy (so
no wiggle room there), who genuinely can’t see, hear or smell as
well as the rest of the family and so lives in a world of sensory
numbness, always responding a beat or two behind the others. He is,
fortunately, a master of physical comedy, so pulls it off
completely- watch out for his hysterical candle-blowing out moment
(you’ll know it when you see it). I genuinely still can’t keep a
straight face when I look over, which is a bit of a hindrance
during what is probably the only moment of true Donati grief in the
entire piece. To return to Betto, however, his youth also allows
him real moments of lucidity when he rouses himself from his
drunken stupor, as well as creating a far more tangible connection
with the younger relations; he does enjoy a cheeky glance at the
ladies’ posteriors, for example, and he is also the only family
member who manages to appreciate Rinuccio’s youthfully impassioned
(and somewhat revolutionary) aria on the potential benefits to
Florence of the nouveau riche. As a non-Donati, he also has a
softness to him that the other men cannot muster, as well as being
possessed of rather spectacular eyesight and an impressive working
knowledge of Latin...
I know I’ve really only scratched the tip of
iceberg with these musings on a few characters, but more soon;
right now, I’m off to enjoy the beginning of our long Jubilee
weekend before we’re back to dodging George on Tuesday morning.
Night!
Maud
Out of the mouths of babes and children...
Blog 3
Corpse
Noun- A dead body, especially of a human being
Verb [theatrical slang]- spoil a piece of acting by
laughing uncontrollably
I think it would be safe to say that both
definitions of the word “corpse” were at play in the Young Artists’
rehearsal room the day that Buoso Donati came to play. Maybe it was
nervous laughter at the sheer array of the deeply tasteless
dead-body gags, or maybe it’s just hilarious to spend a day kicking
and dropping a fully grown man dressed in a onesie, but this is a
show which really does test standards of professionalism to the
limits. Honestly, it’s getting to the point now where it’s
virtually impossible to look at another cast member on stage
without choking on your own laughter at the faces and voices that
are appearing at this detailing stage of the rehearsal process. As
everyone’s characters have grown into the most spectacular of
charicatures, the comedic stakes have upped themselves to the point
where everyone is constantly looking for little way to out-funny
everyone else (while loving and appreciating their talent, of
course... healthy competition, healthy), which makes for some
disastrous attempts to turn bouts of illicit giggling into passable
sobs. For me, the absolute worst culprits are Tim “Simone”
Dickinson and Adam “Rinuccio” Tunnicliffe, whose rubber faces are
constantly contorting into some new and hilarious interpretation,
and who are both lethal to the art of the straight face. If either
of you are reading this blog; stop making me laugh. It’s getting
embarrassing.
Joking aside (literally), it’s really
wonderful to have got to a point as a cast where we are relaxed
enough as a company to find one other genuinely funny. I think now
is the moment for a heartfelt apology to our long-suffering
Director, Ollie, who probably doesn’t always find it as easy to see
the warm’n’fuzziness of a cast who are incapable of working for
minutes on end as they literally weep with laughter
(*cough*laurawoods*cough*) at one another’s antics, but I really
hope that the fact that we find the show so funny is something that
will transmit in our performance, and that you all find it as funny
as we do. We promise not to corpse. Can’t say as much for Buoso
Donati... (boom boom!).
This week has been really wonderful in terms
of opportunities- we’ve had the lovely Paola come in for some fab
Italian coaching (I can now order a cappuccino like nobody’s
business; the trick’s in the double consonants), and we’ve had our
first session with Alan Opie as our Schicchi. While totally
different experiences, they shared the common ground of being both
educational and really interesting- and thankfully we managed to
hold it together long enough to reap the benefits of these
wonderful things that the OHP folk are throwing our way. The thing
that’s really lovely about this scheme is that, while we are- on
one level- a cover cast, there is never any feeling from the powers
that be that we are anything other than a set of young artists with
every right to create and form our own show. This is wonderful for
everyone except, perhaps, for the very generous Alan Opie, who has
gallantly taken up the gauntlet of learning two sets of blocking,
and interacting with two completely different and very
sharply-drawn sets of colleagues, and is navigating the whole
process with great grace and panache. It’s a real compliment to us
that OHP are taking the scheme so seriously and, whilst the
occasional bout of corpsing might give the impression that we are
taking it less seriously, I can assure you that it’s not the case.
James, Sarah, if you’re reading this, I give you my word that, when
push comes to shove, there will be no laughter! Oh no, we will be
so sombre and deadpan, in fact, that you might even be forgiven for
thinking that someone had died...
Until next time, may the funeral gags
continue!
Maud
Out of the mouths of babes and children...
Blog 4
Sunday in the Park with
Schicchi
This post comes to you direct from
the back row of the auditorium at OHP, where I'm taking the
opportunity to do some singbathing (n. to lie back and soak up the
glorious sounds of singers far better than yourself. Try it; it's
great for the complexion) at the first stage/orchestra rehearsal
for Schicchi. The experience really is rewarding- the difference
between this and the stage/piano rehearsals I've been watching is
palpable. We had our first Young Artists' S/P rehearsal on Friday,
and it was a little scary- the electric Clavinova piano is so
bright that it suffers none of the diffusion of acoustics so fatal
to voices in outdoor spaces, and it felt like a real challenge just
to be heard over it, especially at the lower end of the soprano
register. Maybe I'm kidding myself, and it's just the expertise of
the main cast that makes it sound so much easier, but the pellucid
sound of the orchestra seems to provide a far softer cushion for
the voices, which are carrying fantastically clearly over it. While
we're still miles behind, it does go some way towards reassuring me
that when we get up there in just under a month, we may just about
be able to handle the acoustics!
I think that watching these performances,
something which we are strongly encouraged to do, is also having a
huge effect on our understanding of the challenges. Most of the
Young Artists have worked on this stage in some way or other over
the past few years, and so are far more aware of the acoustic
pitfalls than me as the newbie. You see, I came to the project in
an unconventional way; I was working with a student company called
Shadwell when I was an undergraduate in Cambridge last year, and
the Shadwell team managed to persuade the OHP team to allow us to
have a matinee slot on the Yukka Lawn in the grounds of Holland
Park (where Fantastic Mr Fox has its home) to perform our Albert
Herring. James Clutton and Sarah Crabtree came to see it (truly
terrifying for us as a cast) and I think they must have seen the
startling similarities between the Miss Wordsworth I was playing in
that show and the Nella they were looking to cast in Schicchi,
because they asked me to come and sing for it.
For me, it was a huge honour and an
incredible instance of luck, and is an example of one of the great
things about this Young Artists' scheme in particular. Holland Park
haven't just taken "young" artists who they've "found" by watching
them already perform at a high level for other companies, but have
really made an effort to seek out genuine youngsters from amongst
their ex-chorus members and small, off-the-wall companies (like
Shadwell). This means that we are truly being given a unique
opportunity in starting our careers with a company which is taking
a risk on us. This will, hopefully, be a wonderfully mutually
beneficial experience as it creates Young Artists who flourish on
the OHP stage and will, again hopefully, become loyal regulars to
the company's cast list (if we're good...!) Holland Park have
already been wonderful in making us part of their team; I was taken
to the sumptuous Shoreditch House and the Royal Hospital at
Christmas as part of the Carol Singing Crew (for which we were
remunerated handsomely in the bar afterwards...) and represented
Team Young Artist at Sarah Crabtree's fundraiser for her marathon
run for breast cancer singing some Opera Pops (you know, the usual
Fledermaus, etc. High point of my career so far: one woman
overheard at the end saying "Ooh, I loved the acoustic guitar
player- and, actually, the operatic soprano wasn't bad either!"
Maud Millar, bringing opera to the masses, ladies and gentlemen.
Step aside, Katherine Jenkins). This was also the historic occasion
on which James Clutton dusted off his guitar to join me and jazz
pianist/this season’s Don Alfonso Nicholas Garrett in a rendition
of the Aretha’s classic “Natural Woman”, so all in all it was an
evening for the history books. We haven’t quite decided what the
name of our new jazz band will be (Starving in a Garrett? As The
Millar Told Her Tale? The James Clutton Experience? Oh, who am I
kidding- it’s got to be the third), but it’s always nice to know
that if opera falls through, the three of us have a whole different
musical route to explore… Expect our first album spring 2013.
Right, I'm going back to my singbathing-
until next time...
Maud
Out of the mouths of babes and
children...
Blog 5
Wigging out
Yesterday we had our second full
stage/piano run of the show, and it did not rain. This in itself is
cause for jubilation (audience participation moment: insert some
kind of rain-and-jubilee-related pun here. Blogging is fun!), but
for me the high point of my afternoon was my wig. I have been, for
some years now, a bottle blonde (if you tell anyone it’s not
natural, I’ll kill you), a sartorial decision that has thrilled my
Aryan father’s family and devastated my Irish mother’s. For Gianni
Schicchi, however, I am not allowed to be blonde. My conversation
with Ron, our amazing wig dude (official title), went something
like this:
Me: So... am I going to have a wig then?
Ron: You’ll have to.
Me: Why?
Ron: Well, you can’t be blonde like... that.
Me: Why?
Ron: (bewildered at my utter stupidity) Italians ain’t blonde like
that.
Me: Janice [Watson] is. (touché, Millar...)
Ron: That’s a different show (ah.) Anyway, she’s meant to be an
actress, so she’s allowed to be blonde.
[NB: I always knew I wasn’t going to win that
argument. Ron is a legend in the business, regularly beginning
anecdotes with “As my dear friend Jessye Norman used to say...” or
“When I did Larry Olivier...” Who can argue with that?]
Now, I’m not getting hung up on the fact that
in the original libretto, Janice’s character is a courtesan, nor am
I going to dwell on the fact made famous by Notting Hill, that the
word for “actress” is the same as the word for “prostitute” in
myriad languages, because the inevitable actress-prostitute-blonde
connection is only going to make me feel insecure about my hair
choices. What I will say is that my wig is an utterly glorious
red-brown mane, piled up on my head in artful forties glamour. The
effect of this in combination with my blue eyes, pale skin and
emerald green suit is sadly not, ladies and gentlemen, an
Italianate one. I think it’s safe to say that I am the most
Irish-looking Italian woman you will ever meet in a mansion in
Florence (my mother is going to die of joy. I can already hear the
rapturous comparisons with Great Auntie Eithne in her forties
heyday). But, then again, I was the most Irish-looking Italian
student in my language school in Florence last year, and the
Italians didn’t seem to mind. Maybe it was the
actressprostituteblondeness...
In a rather nifty segue back into my blonde
actressness, never fear, ladies and gentlemen, you will be seeing
my hair in all its natural (ahem) glory in the course of this
double bill, as I have also been cast in the vital, if silent, role
of Young Sylvia in Zanetto. Now, because Janice, who plays Real
Sylvia (not Old Sylvia), is conceded her blondeness on the
grounds of her actressness, I too am allowed to wear my normal hair
for this first-half appearance. There’s literally nothing I can say
about my part that’s not going to give away the brilliant coup de
theatre dreamt up by Martin Lloyd Evans for the show, but be
content in the knowledge that I have a gloriously befeathered
costume, and that I am relying very heavily on Janice Watson to be
mature enough not to make faces at me during my appearance, or I
fear there could be another, less favourable, account of my
corpsing appearing in print after the opening night. Which is on
FRIDAY. Be there or be quadrilateral.
Love,
Maud