Cherry Potts, Writer

Month: June 2011

  • Eugene Onegin – third production rehearsal – arrival of the principals!

    Eugene Onegin – third production rehearsal – arrival of the principals!

    A swelteringly hot Sunday and I’m very glad that the rehearsal has been moved to the morning, and to Brooklands school, where the doors of the hall are flung wide onto a very pleasant square shaded by a vast tree – Thank you Brooklands! The Principals have arrived, and so has the poster.  We’ve worked with Nick…

  • Open Door Opera – Iphigenia

    Open Door Opera – Iphigenia

    A hot summer saturday evening by the river, the ideal moment for a bit of opera. I’d spent the day at a workshop on writing for young adults, and A, slogging over her book, so we were glad to be going out, and even more glad to be in the open air.  We planned to come…

  • Rats in the Shadows

    Our second night out in a row.  I recall saying about a month ago that we would have no social life while rehearsing Onegin, it has turned out not to be true – tired, yes; frantically busy, yes; but going all sorts of places. This is where being part of the community opera pays off,…

  • midsummer music… and dancing

    midsummer music… and dancing

    We’ve had a busy few days celebrating midsummer with music of all kinds.  Thursday night Jon Boden celebrated the end of a year of folk songs in his A Folk Song a Day project with a gig at Cecil Sharp House.  I have listened to every one of the songs, though not every day, tending to gorge…

  • Roaming Round Romsey

    Roaming Round Romsey

    I’ve been trying to create a montage of the glorious stone cats of Romsey Abbey, but no matter what  I do with it, I can only get half of them into the featured image at the top of the page, so here they are in their full glory. They leave me wondering whether the stone mason(s) working…

  • Eugene Onegin 2nd Production Rehearsal

    Eugene Onegin 2nd Production Rehearsal

    So we are upstairs and don’t have enough doors for our entrances and exits, and have to crunch against walls and pretend we aren’t there.  It’s hot and it’s raining, and there isn’t enough light for photographs; good job I took loads last time. This is one of those rehearsals where there is a lot…

  • Eugene Onegin – 1st Production Rehearsal

    Eugene Onegin – 1st Production Rehearsal

    Our first production rehearsal is six hours long. Nick is stuck on a delayed Eurostar, so Duncan is conducting from the piano, Bryony is poised with measuring tape to review costumes, Tom has collected flower pots, (which he later walks into and sends in all directions) baskets, cushions and a watering can, and the floor is marked…

  • The Future for the Onegin Posts

  • Eugene Onegin – 6th Rehearsal

    Eugene Onegin – 6th Rehearsal

    This is the final ‘Music’ rehearsal, and Nick is trying to get us off ‘the book’. Some of us require weaning, others are trying to go cold turkey. The waltz scene from Act II worked pretty well without the words ‘n’ music in front of us, although the words on some of the more exposed sections…

  • NOT Eugene Onegin 5th Rehearsal- RtR go wild

    NOT Eugene Onegin 5th Rehearsal- RtR go wild

    I’m sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea and a very happy cat who is glad I’m home from a weekend away.  We’ve been playing truant from the opera!  Green fields and pastures new, we’ve been on an organic smallholding in …Swindon … for a weekend of singing with a small selection of the…