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Eugene Onegin – 2nd full run through
Thursday: the second full run through, except it isn’t quite; we have the marvellous Duncan Robertson instead of the orchestra, and Nick Jenkins has to conduct us backstage for our first entrance, and then run back across stage to his podium… but we are missing Simon Marsh our lead peasant, so Nick has to sing us in; after a…
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Eugene Onegin – 1st full run through
Wednesday: and the orchestra and the children from Brooklands School are here for the first full run through. I’ve decided not to take any more pictures while we are working as I must concentrate, so today’s pictures are from earlier rehearsals! For our first entrance we start singing while still off stage, (ie crushed into…
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Eugene Onegin – Sitzprobe
One of my fellow chorus members kindly explained what sitzprobe actually means. I assumed it was some kind of abbreviation that was lost in the mists of time, but it turns out it’s German and means ‘sitting rehearsal’ not terribly accurate, but at any rate standing still rehearsal. Back in the Halls (hurrah) and I’m…
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The Blackheath Onegin: Backstage at a Community Opera
Coming Soon (Late August probably) The Blackheath Onegin Backstage at a Community Opera By Cherry Potts 80 pages of comment and photographs £15 All profits will go to next year’s Blackheath Halls Opera If you pre-order, we hope to have enough orders to get a bulk discount, which means that, provided you are prepared to…
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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…
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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…
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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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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…
Cherry Potts, Writer 