From the rain and wind of the early week emerged a day that put a bounce in the step. I had reason to see the woodland carpet of daffodils in Holland Park and although the air began to bite when the sun descended, the smack of Spring was unmistakeable.
It has been a week for celebrating our decision to produce L’amore. Although Barry Jobling made a good fist of rubbishing my assertion that it was a post-verismo masterpiece in his lecture(it’s post-symbolist-proto-Wagner apparently) he nevertheless presented s a superb distillation of the piece. A packed Leighton House listened to him play samples on the piano and broadcast – loudly – passages from the RCA CD. It was an odd experience hearing amplified music in that setting but fascinating to hear the shuffle and murmur of pleasure from the audience when a particularly glorious extract had finished. Knowing that what was a first listen for the vast majority of those present had hit the spot left me with a grin the size of the Thames Barrier. All who attended (and there is another one soon) were urged to book for the opera and would all have no doubt rushed for their cheque books if they hadn’t already done so before attending the lecture; for L’amore, as things currently stand, has sold a higher percentage of its capacity than any other opera in the season.
Things are at the holes in the ground stage with the canopy. Concrete. Even culture relies upon it.
The Friends have recently advertised for an administrator (who works amid the ever-growing throng in our office). They had a remarkable 170 applications for the job and there are many of an extremely high calibre. Naturally, as one left the interview room, Clarinda recognised an old friend from, yes, you guessed it, Kings College London. Apparently this mighty number will be distilled down to what must be a genius–like final 16, at which point James and I will also get to run the rule over them, so to speak (what’s the collective noun for a group of geniuses?) Whatever, it bodes well for the chances of engaging someone very good and a testament to the appeal of the company. It is an important role too – the Friends' contribution to the season has grown exponentially in the past three years and will continue to do so.
Sarah showed me a photograph taken at a first night that featured me talking to Kate. I laughed at how drunken Kate looked in the photo, only to be met with perplexed faces. “Oh,” Sarah said, not really bending over backwards to be tactful, “I sent it because I thought you looked particularly bad in it”.
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Saturday, 3 March 2007
Bursting at the seams
Walking into the office these days is akin to arriving at Terminal one at Heathrow. The door opens and the sight of a sea of people milling about greets you. I don't know where they all came from! They could be working for us or they could be the artistic team of a production showing a model, as was the case yesterday when it was lovely to see the latest Peter Rice model (complete with cardboard version of the new steel gantry/proscenium). He was in along with Tom Hawkes and Jenny Weston (choreographer) to show the designs and ideas for Lakme. As ever with Peter, the drawings were beautifully rendered and I am sure Lakme will have the sumptuous oriental elegance it deserves. Indeed, he is off to India shortly for a trip he has wanted to do for many years and whilst there will be doing some fabric shopping so authenticity is assured too.
It is obvious that the expansion will make demands upon us across the business but as is the way, those demands don’t arrive at equal intervals; like London buses, they all arrive at once and suddenly one is faced with getting things done in short order. Since we don’t have endless resources in order to employ outside agencies or recruit lots of new staff, we have to be a little more creative. In recent times we have been rather successful at find talented graduates looking for experience. Indeed, Clarinda and Kate both began as volunteers (or Interns if you are American) and ended up in full time employment. Kings College London seems to be our university of choice since there are many music students there and Clarinda has been sifting through a number of CVs and interviewing possible graduates who we would want to come and work with us. I had a look at some of the CVs and was confronted by lists of academic and music attainment that embarrassed me. How does a person find the time to get Grade 8 in about four instruments before they pass 18 years of age? All seemed to have columns of exam passes at A* too. In fact so prevalent was this last fact that when I saw one who had only attained an A, I scoffed. It was hard to escape the truth of how utterly misspent was my youth. I suspect that not only will we have a problem finding space and computers for these mini-Einsteins, we might also have difficulty in supplying work that is challenging enough to keep them from falling asleep. I am reassured, however, by the undoubted fact that they are unlikely to make good coffee.
It is obvious that the expansion will make demands upon us across the business but as is the way, those demands don’t arrive at equal intervals; like London buses, they all arrive at once and suddenly one is faced with getting things done in short order. Since we don’t have endless resources in order to employ outside agencies or recruit lots of new staff, we have to be a little more creative. In recent times we have been rather successful at find talented graduates looking for experience. Indeed, Clarinda and Kate both began as volunteers (or Interns if you are American) and ended up in full time employment. Kings College London seems to be our university of choice since there are many music students there and Clarinda has been sifting through a number of CVs and interviewing possible graduates who we would want to come and work with us. I had a look at some of the CVs and was confronted by lists of academic and music attainment that embarrassed me. How does a person find the time to get Grade 8 in about four instruments before they pass 18 years of age? All seemed to have columns of exam passes at A* too. In fact so prevalent was this last fact that when I saw one who had only attained an A, I scoffed. It was hard to escape the truth of how utterly misspent was my youth. I suspect that not only will we have a problem finding space and computers for these mini-Einsteins, we might also have difficulty in supplying work that is challenging enough to keep them from falling asleep. I am reassured, however, by the undoubted fact that they are unlikely to make good coffee.
Thursday, 1 March 2007
Queasy
Sitting down to formulate the next two months work, Clarinda and I began to feel a little ill at the length of the ‘to do’ list. Minute by inexorable minute, as each and every issue came up for discussion a line was added to the list. It’s nothing new really. It just feels like a lot more this year because of the other well documented matters that we all have to incorporate into our schedules. Events are sprinting towards us every day – next week, the first of the L’amore lectures for example – and it is now even time to discuss invitations and lists of guests for the first night. It’s March. It’s mental.
Friends continue to flood the box office with booking forms and from those processed the average number of tickets per member is very healthy. Exciting, too, to see how well Lakme and L’amore are doing. It is a weird time of year now that people are actually parting with their hard-earned because essentially, that which they are buying does not yet exist in anything but name alone. Productions are not settled, designs not finalised etc. Casts are done of course but nothing tangible really exists until the shows go into rehearsal and things begin to be made and built. There’s no going back now though!
The company did anther visit to a day centre for a group of elderly people. Everyone came back feeling very moved and excited by it all. These people took the time to speak with James and quite a few expressed their feelings about the singers they had heard. It was very rewarding.
Friends continue to flood the box office with booking forms and from those processed the average number of tickets per member is very healthy. Exciting, too, to see how well Lakme and L’amore are doing. It is a weird time of year now that people are actually parting with their hard-earned because essentially, that which they are buying does not yet exist in anything but name alone. Productions are not settled, designs not finalised etc. Casts are done of course but nothing tangible really exists until the shows go into rehearsal and things begin to be made and built. There’s no going back now though!
The company did anther visit to a day centre for a group of elderly people. Everyone came back feeling very moved and excited by it all. These people took the time to speak with James and quite a few expressed their feelings about the singers they had heard. It was very rewarding.
Sunday, 25 February 2007
The grindstone
Several days in the northern Portuguese town of Porto were blessed with the unexpected bonus of sunshine and warmth. A dose of light works wonders for the spirit – even when the spirit is sodden with quantities of the beverage that took its name from the town. The trip was pleasantly embellished by texts from James reporting on a steady stream of black pen entries on the 2008 Magic Flute board, which really is good news. I was in Porto for a football match and I can tell you that these days, the multifarious professions and characters that make the away trips is startling. Saying that I work in opera is still raises more eyebrows than most but I did meet “one of the top ten re-insurance lawyers in the world”. A thoroughly nice fellow with a lawyer’s sharp and educated brain, he nevertheless descends, with the rest of us, into squawking hysteria at the mere sight of a green pitch and white ball. The referee was especially subject to some colourful and Public/Catholic School inspired opprobrium. Football is like that and it has been a tradition at Holland Park for many years that we should make public announcements of the score of England matches during big tournaments. I suppose I could make one of those “from the pulpit” type speeches about how opera and football are not so different, but the memory of Billy Connolly’s brilliant sketch on the subject is enough to keep me the right side of such pretentiousness. I have no desire to end up Pseud’s Corner (actually, I’d probably consider it an honour if truth be told).
It has been good to hear of the success of two OHP favourites in the production of La traviata at the Sydney Opera house. Kate Ladner, who will reprise the role of Violetta for us in July, deserves the success and Aldo di Toro, one of the stars of our season in 2006 - and who will return in Jenufa in June - was a big wow too. He is going to be harder and harder to get as time passes I suspect. When he knocked everyone out in Fedora, his phone didn’t stop ringing for a week.
And now it is back to the grindstone. I am feeling somewhat freer of the theatre build since we finalised the mezzanine contractors but it is never ending and I suspect I shall continue to be as pre-occupied with the theatre as I am with selling tickets and everything else. I have been talking to gardeners about ferns and hostas, lavender and sweet pea, banana and fig. If nothing else, we’ll have the raw material to start up an OHP brand homeopathic range. Or maybe a fruit stall.
Sunday, 18 February 2007
Audience's of the future
Barely a day in the word of the arts passes without a mention of "education". And of course, education programmes can attract lots of money from sundry charities or government bodies. Our own principal programme for this is the Free Tickets Scheme and I have to confess, I find it easier to raise money for this scheme than for almost anything else we do - £25,000 this season and counting. We are happy about this of course because we believe in the scheme - over 1200 young people will get the chance to attend normal, public performances in 2007. Every major opera company has an education programme of one kind or another; some focus on going into schools (we do that too), some are designed to make opera accessible to one group or other and some, like Grange Park’s prison project, have more ambitious aspirations to help turn people’s lives around. Most, however, when all is said and done, are about developing potential new audiences for the future. But I think the cultural benefits of introducing opera in its formal state to young people should have higher ideals than to merely increase the chance of them growing into future audience members (which is not a bad ideal I should add!) In Britain, among young people, the arts seem to me to be polarised. And too many people who work among young people are setting the agenda – in a sense telling kids what it is they can, will, should or are entitled to enjoy. It is incredibly damaging and patronising. It is getting better but I think exposure to the classical arts of young people is still criminally low. It needs to be pointed out that there is no “choice” to be made – one can still enjoy jazz, soul, rock or whatever alongside opera and classical music.
Among commercial sponsors of the arts, there is a growing desire to be involved with projects that are accessible. Korn/Ferry, our main sponsor, was very attracted to the open and informal nature of Opera Holland Park and they can be sure that their investment is indeed helping to sustain that principle. I recently met with another company and in the course of our conversation I saw an opportunity to present an “education” idea that has been floating around the office for about two years. As is the nature of these things, I can’t tell you the idea or the company! Suffice to say that it will offer thousands of children the opportunity to spend at least one hour of their lives thinking about, studying and listening to opera. I am glad to say that the company have responded well to the idea. It will be expensive – very expensive – but we as a company would retain not a single penny of the money from the sponsorship of the project, which we will in reality only be a partner to. We have to be clear about what the aims of these schemes are and that we a) follow through with them and b) ensure that should we succeed in sparking a love of opera in young people that we make it possible for them to actually enjoy the art form.
I note that Wasfi over at Grange Park has begun to fulfil her blog obligations (link provided in the column) and mentions meeting with James and I. It was a very enjoyable evening – Wasfi is never anything less than fully engaging company and it is easy to see why she has been so successful in building and sustaining the Grange project. Over a couple of bottles of wine, we had an interesting philosophical chat about the role of companies such as ours in the great opera picture; about how people on the outside see us as “competitors” when in fact we are nothing of the sort and actually spend a good deal of time communicating with one another in a cooperative fashion. We talked about how we might add some flesh to that co-operative bone so to speak. You’ll be the first to know how we get on.
Among commercial sponsors of the arts, there is a growing desire to be involved with projects that are accessible. Korn/Ferry, our main sponsor, was very attracted to the open and informal nature of Opera Holland Park and they can be sure that their investment is indeed helping to sustain that principle. I recently met with another company and in the course of our conversation I saw an opportunity to present an “education” idea that has been floating around the office for about two years. As is the nature of these things, I can’t tell you the idea or the company! Suffice to say that it will offer thousands of children the opportunity to spend at least one hour of their lives thinking about, studying and listening to opera. I am glad to say that the company have responded well to the idea. It will be expensive – very expensive – but we as a company would retain not a single penny of the money from the sponsorship of the project, which we will in reality only be a partner to. We have to be clear about what the aims of these schemes are and that we a) follow through with them and b) ensure that should we succeed in sparking a love of opera in young people that we make it possible for them to actually enjoy the art form.
I note that Wasfi over at Grange Park has begun to fulfil her blog obligations (link provided in the column) and mentions meeting with James and I. It was a very enjoyable evening – Wasfi is never anything less than fully engaging company and it is easy to see why she has been so successful in building and sustaining the Grange project. Over a couple of bottles of wine, we had an interesting philosophical chat about the role of companies such as ours in the great opera picture; about how people on the outside see us as “competitors” when in fact we are nothing of the sort and actually spend a good deal of time communicating with one another in a cooperative fashion. We talked about how we might add some flesh to that co-operative bone so to speak. You’ll be the first to know how we get on.
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