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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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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…
