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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…
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The Future for the Onegin Posts
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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…
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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…
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Eugene Onegin- 4th rehearsal
In order to help me write this blog I scrawl things in the margin of my score, then erase them when I’ve updated the post. This week’s scrawls say: Marvellous Nearly marvellous Will be marvellous. This being either Nick or my assessment of where we’re at. I write things down because my memory is unreliable…
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Eugene Onegin- 3rd Rehearsal
Sunday Morning: Nick is back and tests us on what we’ve learnt with Duncan. “What would you give yourselves as marks out of ten?” he asks. “Four,” “Two!” we compete to be self effacing in our judgement. “Well, I’d say it was a six, so let’s see if we can get to nine and a…
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Eugene Onegin- 2nd rehearsal
Thursday evening, and I should be at my writing group but here we are at Blackheath again, clutching our carefully marked up scripts. Jonathon is also clutching an article about charity shops, which we hope will help with finding our costumes. It’s half term and we feel a bit thin on the ground, indeed Music…
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Eugene Onegin- 1st rehearsal
So! First rehearsal: musical director Nick Jenkins is jetting in from Brussells or somewhere, and not expected until midday, so we collect our hired scores and amuse ourselves updating them with word changes from Director Harry Fehr; in pencil of course! Then Harry introduces us to the designer Tom Oldham and costumer Briony. Harry has…
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Requiem First Night!
Well we’ve done the first performance, and we remembered when to sing quietly and went at it full throttle when it was required- at one point we were so loud I couldn’t hear what I was singing myself. From the depths of the choir you don’t get a clear picture of what the audience is…
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Requiem First Night Approaches
A friend of mine describes the Verdi Requiem as religion as high opera, and it certainly is full of drama and glorious tunes. You can watch a video of some of us singing the Dies Irae in protest at threatened cuts to the funding of our beloved Blackheath Halls here, and I promise we will…
Cherry Potts, Writer 