Sad Banter

2 Commentstravel, Uncategorized
Being an opera singer, I’m something of a pronunciation nerd. We all are. It comes with the territory.
I actually feel a jab of pain and stress when someone who should know better calls Don Giovanni “Don Jee-oh-vahn-ee” or sounds the g in tagliatelle. When a pretentious American – and I have no idea why it’s only pretentious Americans who do this – pronounces the great tenor’s name “Pah-va-roh-ti” I want to slap them. I can’t help myself. We singers spend so much of our working lives perfecting this stuff that when someone cocks it up, it seriously grates.…

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Call me Rusty

1 Commentsingers, travel

“Lead by example” they always say. Not that anyone is asking me to lead anything but if a young singer came to me for advice, amidst much spluttering and umming and aahing I’m pretty sure one of the things I’d say is “make you sure you sing at least twice a week, just to keep everything in shape, especially when you’re not working.”
Yes, well, easier said than done. Especially at my age when, idle for a morning, listening to some cricket on the radio is infinitely more appealing that sitting down for half an hour with Mr Vaccai and his worthy but dull exercises. And once the rot sets in and you find you haven’t sung a proper note for two weeks, the task seems pointless, uphill and Herculean. You’ll get back on the horse in time for the next job, you tell yourself.…

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Thought of train

travel

Yesterday, my housemate Stephen and I went up Mount Generoso. This sounds like an achievement but it was really quite easy.
It was certainly a lot easier than the last time I did it three years ago. Then I took a train from Milan to Como, walked across town to another station, where I took a train across the border in Switzerland, then switched to a Swiss train which took me to Capolago at the bottom of Lake Lugano, where I boarded the cog train that climbs the mountain. Back then, the mainline train was scheduled to arrive at Capolago a minute before the cog train left. Given that this was Switzerland, where the trains really do leave and arrive on the dot, I assumed that this was all part of some slightly smug planning, a demonstration of immaculate time-keeping.…

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Pole dance

1 Commentopera, singers, travel
In the early 90s I was working at the Vlaamse Opera, based in Antwerp, singing Pisandro, one of the three suitors in Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria by Monteverdi. I can’t remember who the counter-tenor was. The first one was fired after three weeks of rehearsals. I can remember that. And as for his replacement, all I can recall is that he was busy doing something else at the same time, so for a few of the main rehearsals on stage there were just two suitors, which is quite a problem when you’re trying to sing lots and lots of trios.
I have absolutely no idea who directed it – a German I think, or was he Greek? – or who conducted. Not a clue. …

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