No time to waste

Just shy of 6 weeks to go and where to begin? Rehearsals and the first meet and greet for Jenufa happened today. A fabulous cast is about to begin a journey that culminates on stage on June 6th. The office is beginning to take on a surreal air - props everywhere in stage management - including blood-soaked baby dolls.
And of course, the steel for the new canopy has arrived and will begin to be installed tomorrow. It's frighteningly close. I suppose I have waited 18 years for this moment. There is very little time to get everything done since planning permission only came through recently. It's all hands on deck for the finishing touches once the main structures are up. Then hey presto - test night and then first night.

Ticket sales are amazingly good. L'amore dei tre Re, one of the rarest things you are likely to see in the UK this year is clearly on the way to a total sell out. In the first two weeks of booking, over 30,000 seats are gone for the season. Lakme too is a huge success.

heard from our good friend Sir Denis Forman yesterday. He'll be along for L'amore (always one for the unusual Sir D) and no doubt he'll bring suitably interesting guests as ever. A great man who wrote a great book about opera - hilariously funny yet still retaining a comprehensively educational element. We shall look forward to after show dinner with he and his wife as usual.

Forgive the brevity of this entry but there are plants, gravel, carpets and sundry aesthetic embellishments that need confirming.

Here we go

Good Friday. GOOD FRIDAY!
It really does worry me how quickly time flies by these days. I am about to embark on my 18th season at Holland Park and it is still growing and developing. Perhaps that is why the time is barging past me so rapidly - something about when you are having fun?
Discussions about 2008 and 2009 are occurring frequently now. One such with conductor of L'amore dei Tre Re, Peter Robinson, involved a sharp intake of breath at the mention of La Gioconda which we produce in July next year. A sharp intake of breath from Peter is the equivalent of a raging tirade from me about the idiocy of the congestion charge. Even then, people pay far greater heed to Peter's teeth sucking than they do my hair-pulling. When I rant, you might believe the matter is important; if Peter Robinson draws sharp breath, look to the sky for a meteor or listen for the four minute warning. He can also do it when he is smiling but only a fool would be diverted by that. This is a man of steely nerve and purpose who once wrote a six part woodwind representation of an organ passage in Luisa Miller when a storm had disabled the real thing. He had less than half an hour to do it and nobody noticed the difference. His warning (for that is what it was) relates to the size of the piece. I suppose, to put it into a context, the opera represents our equivalent of the Ring Cycle. In the verismo stable, Gioconda holds the title of biggest animal. Where Fedora is an engaging show pony, Gioconda is the galloping shire. And of course, we can't wait.

The box office opens on Tuesday once the wholly inconvenient Easter break shuffles off. Phones and internet are ready and waiting. I believe the technicians are having special drill sessions over the Easter weekend to ensure it all goes smoothly. A repeat of last year's early debacle will illicit one of those hair-pulling rants from me. Although I doubt peter Robinson would waste a breath on it.

Onwards

We have now confirmed the final opera in the 2008 season (Tchaikovsky's gorgeous Iolanta)so James can get to work on the season in earnest. He is also, of course, getting close to the real gubbins of the 2007 season - rehearsals begin very soon. We'll need as much time as possible to get the 2008 season into shape - there are at least two monumental operas to get on stage (Il trovatore and La Gioconda for starters).

Trepidation, too, about the new theatre. Paper drawings, computer graphics and any amount of imagination will not, I suspect, prepare us for the impact of seeing that vast new roof being raised into position for the first time. I'm also getting sleepless nights about how it will perform as a space. I shouldn't worry, but I am. I suppose we shall know more about how people will behave, space allocations, comfort and acoustic performance etc once we have carried out the test night on 30th May. We are inviting 1000 Friends and supporters for a free night at the theatre to enjoy some excerpts from Nabucco and Jenufa. We'll all be standing around with clipboards taking notes. Ideally, it will be pouring with rain on that evening so we can also see if our covered spaces are sufficient. It will possibly be the most nerve-wracking evening of our lives.

Goodness gracious

April is knocking on the door. Over 1100 Friends' forms have gone through the system and there are a few hundred more to go. The high demand for L'amore is gratifying of course but so too the excitement that obviously surrounds Lakme.

Phone systems for the box office have occupied time this week. We had some problems last season so the technical teams are keen to avoid a repeat performance (their eardrums cannot take it). So I need to write some scripts for the hold and queuing messages. I guess the lovely dulcet tones of Kate will once again be the voice of OHP.

Monday sees another ex-Kings graduate start work as our Friends administrator. Very bright, very motivated, I am sure she will be a big hit.

The holes in the ground proliferate. I cannot speak anymore of it. I want it done. Then I will eulogise until the peacocks roost.

Questions

A blizzard of questions from the Planners about the canopy characterised the week- questions we thought had been answered. If they had been answered, more detail was required along with drawings we already thought had been supplied. If they had been supplied, more detail was required. You get the idea. Mike Harth, our operations manager got busy on his CAD program. His wife has just had their first baby so he had better get used to doing things over and over and over again.

Chelsea were drawn against Valencia in the Champions League. I'd like to see Valencia but the day of the match coincides with the day the box office opens to the public. Since there is a crazy deluge of calls on that day, I need to be around to help solve any problems (which invariably means shouting down the phone at a technician about how, since MY life is flashing before my eyes, his ought to be doing the same etc etc). Flights to Valencia rose to ridiculous levels on the announcement of the match so I think it would involve a circuitous route featuring Madrid and a train (only 12 Euros for a long journey - UK train companies take note). This Sunday, Chelsea play Tottenham in the FA Cup. Since James is a life-long Spurs fan, Monday morning might be tinged with tension.

Tonight I am probably off to see a friend in Gubbay's Butterfly at the Albert Hall. I'm not a great fan of the piece since I think it features some of Puccini's dullest "filler". It does, though, feature one of his most exquisite musical phrases (bimba dagli occhi etc). I might not last the course.