Cherry Potts, Writer, Editor, creative writing tutor; Lesbian, cat-mother, would-be singer. Any of these can crop up here.

Eugene Onegin – Fourth Production Rehearsal

Well! The marketing of the Opera is in full swing, I’ve been handing out fliers and putting up posters and getting it listed on referral sites like Bachtrack, and the Halls team have been putting up interviews on Youtube with Harry & Nick so if you still need convincing you should be inviting ALL your friends to come…

July 2, 2011
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…

June 27, 2011
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…

June 27, 2011
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,…

June 26, 2011
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…

June 26, 2011
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…

June 23, 2011
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…

June 21, 2011
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…

June 19, 2011
The Future for the Onegin Posts

June 19, 2011
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…

June 16, 2011